Allow users to ignore whole discussions?

LeeH

Fielded a question from one of my users asking if there was within Vanilla the ability for them to ignore entire discussion threads. Obviously they can ignore individual users and un-announce announcements, but sometimes threads drag on and a user might not want to look at them anymore. There's too much community involvement to sink the thread for everyone, but it would be neat if a logged-in user could tick a box next to a discussion saying "Ignore this discussion" and it didn't appear at all in, say, /discussions/unread.

Might something like this be possible? I don't have the php ability to code up an addon myself, and I didn't see anything like this in the addon library.

Todd

This isn't core functionality. If I were to write a plugin for this I wouldn't change queries, but just hide the ignored discussions on the server or through css. The general rule is you don't want to alter queries too much or the site is more difficult to scale.

UnderDog

It's the same logic as ignoring a single user, if you can find the addon to do that...

I think that ignoring an entire discussion requires a special extra table, so I don't think it's possible for the moment.

It's also the same logic for 'favoriting' a discussion, so maybe you could do something with that too :-)

peregrine

Could probably be added to meta table. Sometimes I don't understand why users can't just close their eyes and ignore things.

Also is /discussions/unread part of vanilla 2.1 or are you referring to the plugin.

LeeH

@peregrine - /discussions/unread is a 2.1 thing, yep. Sorry, should have specified.

peregrine

LeeH said: @peregrine - /discussions/unread is a 2.1 thing, yep. Sorry, should have specified.

How did you even find the unread option? It doesn't seem readily apparent, unless I'm missing something. I don't see any settings in 2.1 in the dashboard or any links for it in the themes supplied. I had to manually apply the link. Haven't looked through the code to see if there is a config option for it yet.

I wonder what other plugins will be rendered unnecessary in 2.1 because they are in the core?

LeeH

How did you even find the unread option?

I started this thread and got directed to github, where the change has been in place for a couple of months.

The behavior is still a bit squirrely—for example, discussions marked as read with "Mark All Viewed" still show up in /discussions/unread, which is annoying—but it's definitely handy.

phreak

Another appeal could be one, where users are able to "sink" threads only on their own view. That could be a nice feature.

My forum, wen't very lively with around 10 new discussions and 350 comments a day. My users are already asking for ways to filter topics of their interests besides categories.

Any ideas?

peregrine

I think adding to the meta table would be the way to go. But it could get very large if you have people ignoring and/or sinking every discussion, whichever method you choose.

Lincoln

@phreak said: Another appeal could be one, where users are able to "sink" threads only on their own view. That could be a nice feature.

For the reason Todd mentioned, this would scale badly.