Anyway I should have cleared this up ages ago, but when I said "I'm not even going to respond to that" in your thread, I guess people inferred negativity when there was none intended. What I meant was that my opinion differed on everything in your post so there would be no point on my responding - as it would just be me picking apart your post on everything and that's not why I'm on this site. I'm here to chill and have fun.

Keep in mind that none of this is Yoda's call, he can;t carry the weight of being the technical lead and designer as well as the sole decision-maker on philosophical changes.

I'd like to hear from the top ten users.

I do agree that the minus can be abused, but that's mostly only because that is the only time people use the +/- system of voting. If everyone used it more often it would not only be noted in the cases where it was being abused.  I usually give a + to every thing I see because I appreciate that people are contributing to the site.  I only ever use a minus if the person has said something disrespectful to another poster.

Perhaps that is the problem - the ambiguity.  I know Yoda, you were at one point considering a more felshed out system fo 4-5 buttons that had statements emotions like Funny, Lame, Sad, Cool, Agree, Disagree etc... that would work much the same way as the plus / minus system.

=-=-

As for ignoring the comments of a user, I'd be opposed to that, as it only avoids the problem rather than resolving it.  If a user is being abusive to another user then delete the post and then post an explanation.  After a while that user will get the message.  If it's less than that, click the Hide button and ignore the statement.

I think the effect of ignoring a user's comments permenently will just create more confusion down the line, with people double posting the same information, or responses being mis-construed (because you posted something that may look like a response to something you did not even see).  I could also see a user ignoring almost everyone and just using this place as a soap box.  I could go on and on, but it's just too rife with potential confusion.

^Which speaks to the ambiguity of the minus and plus (which for your purposes would be resolved with a perment Hide) and for my purposes would be resolved with a fuller range of descriptions.

I'd like to note that most of you are likely unaware of the Hide Previously Read option in your account settings. If you've visited a page previously, only comments that are new will appear expanded. This also applies to GG Weekly, meaning you'd want to have the Jump Last Unread setting checked as well, meaning you don't go to the last page of GG Weekly when you click News, but to the last unread comment.

The +- are meant to highlight good posts, and to call a spade a spade.

aspro said:

As for ignoring the comments of a user, I'd be opposed to that, as it only avoids the problem rather than resolving it.  If a user is being abusive to another user then delete the post and then post an explanation.  After a while that user will get the message.  If it's less than that, click the Hide button and ignore the statement.

This is pretty much the wrong approach, though it depends on the term "abusive."  It's there to devalue trollish behaviour as a substitute for hardline rules and deleting posts via moderation.  The community will well you when you're out of line.  Again, it's meant as soft moderation.  We have no rules about being a dick, only a community that can call you on it.

phantom_leo said:

the Hide Read option is kinda like using an elephant gun to kill a fly

a PERMANENT HIDE option would be of nearly invaluable use!

The latter, at a glance, sounds like the former to me.  I don't understand the habit that includes a need of a persistent hiding of comments, but the precludes the consistent hiding of comments.  So while I still don't follow what kind of behaviour elicits such results, I at least see the request.  I haven't bothered with the persistent hide prior because of a combination of it isn't a simple fix, and it sounded needless.  That's what feedback is necessary.  Myself, I use the Hide Read option (I'm currently the only one) and find it annoying now to have it off.  Now we see why we have options!

You're going to have to do a lot more than that to make much of a dent in the amount of work compiled already:

http://thevgpress.com/forumtopics/so-site-suggestions-and-rules-version-10-vote-now_25_4.html&perPage=20#comment16656

...

aspro said:

I stopped using the hide read because was in the habit of clicking on comments from the front page (not knowing where in the site they were), and if it happened to be a comment on the latest news page then all the pages prior would show as being read (obviously).

I'm going to give it a try again though.

When it was first added, the Jump Last Unread option didn't exist, making it kind of suck (GG Weekly would always start on the last page), plus the forums you'd have to do the calculation yourself for which page to go to).  Now that you get sent to the last unread on GG Weekly, and the last unread page is highlighted (still should make a separate button, though), it's much more workable.  I stopped using it when you did also because of the GG Weekly issue.

phantom_leo said:

I was just saying I'd like a way to hide individual comments permanently without having to hide whole pages at a time. I see however that you have quite the list to work on already. I know nothing about building websites, I thought it would be something simple for you, but if it's too big a job, it's not a problem for me to keep doing what I am doing now. Thanks!

Don't worry about those, most of them have been there forever.  This topic is here for you to tell me what you want.  That's the entire purpose of this.  If you're not, you're making the site worse by omission.  What actually gets done is a balance of how important it is combined with how difficult or time-consuming.  Stuff that I know exactly how to fix in a few minutes always gets done first just because I don't have to think, but the rest eventually follows.

phantom_leo said:

If Hide kept things Hidden permanently, I would use it much more often.

Done.

Yeah, thanks Yoda.  I'm diggin' the Hide Read feature once more, it's working out quite well for me.

My suggestion today is for a small box somewhere on the front page that pulls a thread randomly from 24 months ago today.  So the Header would Be "Two Years Ago Today"... and then under it a random quote and the poster.

It could be fairly entertaining or profound.

=-=-

Another suggestion is to check out this tool: http://corp.topsy.com/developers/api/

It lets you track tweets about the site and publish them to the site. Might be an easy way to keep track of any inbound tweets (which I don't think anyone currently monitors or responds to ).