I'm wearing a rut in my brain trying to figure out the fork spoiler. What do you want in the interface, a reminder to switch eyes every hundred posts?

In post 3254, ita asked:

MARCIE also needs to be specced.

Not quite sure what that means, but here's how I see it:

• Up to 15 hidden users. That'd be enough to skip 50% of some threads.

• Hiding someone in one thread hides them in all threads.

• No way for a user to know who's hiding them.

• Mr. Hyde - Apr 2, 2003 4:19:03 pm EST #3585 of 3590 Mark Don't Hide

  This post rendered blinvisible by MARCIE.

• Every post has a "Hide" link where I have "Don't Hide." (Jon B's great idea.) Clicking "Hide" toggles Marcie and takes you back to the post (as if you had clicked the post number), except now it's hidden and has a "Don't Hide" link instead.

• The hiding message is in unobtrusive <p class='edited-by'> font. The link explains what Marcie does, how to use it, and why it's called that, and has an etiquette sentence: "This feature is to let you avoid unpleasant behavior, not to change it. Please don't rub it in by telling everyone when you filter someone." [could use improvement and humor]

• Hiding a post also suppresses the user's tagline. (Could be offensive, draws the eye, reminds you of the person.)

• I think if there isn't another interface in the user profile, people will always be asking "How do I ignore a poster?" Putting the answer in the FAQ would be easier than coding an interface, I know. One example of when people would use a profile interface is if they decided offline that they would be better off ignoring someone, and logged on to hide them right away. Another is if they wanted to see everyone they were ignoring.

• A profile interface would look like an HTML list of names under the heading "Ignored Posters." The list would say <None> when empty.

• Underneath the list of names: a single-line entry box, an Add button, a Delete button, and a link, What does this do? that goes to the same explanatory page as the link in each blinvisible message.

• The Add button checks to make sure you've entered an existing poster. The error message mentions the "Hide" link on each post as another option if you can't get the correct spelling. You have to type someone's name in the box to delete them from your list, because you can't edit the list directly. It would be nicer if you could just highlight a name and press "Delete," though.

• This seems related to the "posts per page" display option, so they should be close together in the profile.

• On the coding side, remember ita said you'll be blocking by User ID, not name.

I hope that's good for something. A starting point for discussion or coding.

Um... testing

edit: hm. For some reason Natter won't let me post. I thought I'd see if I was blocked from all threads. I guess I'll try later.

add'l edit: You can ignore me, really, I'll just go over here now.

Thanks DX.
I was surprised coz for some reason 'Zoe Finch' never seemed to log out. Not even with my computer switched off so I'd stopped thinking about logging in and out at all.

Noumenon's "Blinvisible" and "What does this do?" links could simply go to an entry in the FAQ rather than a new page.

Please. I spent the last 15 min typing out a long but very funny lawyer joke. Then I posted it, my page refreshed and I was logged out.

The common practice here is to use a simple text editor like Notepad to compose long posts. It's also a good idea to do it that way when you're writing up your private "watch-and-post" posts. One long post is easier and less confusing to read then a bunch of serial posts.

The common practice here is to use a simple text editor like Notepad to compose long posts.

I know, but that would have required forethought and common sense. Neither of which I had online at the time.
t noted for next time.

Ha. In my case, "the common practice" means "what I always wish I'd done the second after I've just lost an epic post that would have been a turning-point in the entire worldview of everyone who read it, but not to the extent that I can actually be arsed to rewrite the whole thing"

You know, if we turned the caching back on, this wouldn't happen. We'd be able to go back and find our post still in the posting box. It would probably save us some bandwidth, too.

What Angus said.

I still haven't found out how to turn caching on, is the problem -- anyone else know how?

Nou, with your extra interface scenario, we also need errorchecking on the "add user" side, which I was trying to avoid by only allowing you to delete a user from that page. Would that have a negative impact on the usefulness, if you had to see someone's post to block them?

My read had been that you could block a poster from a link in the psot header, and unblock them there too. Which would mean there'd need to be another link to just unhide the post. And there'd be no hiding of individual posts -- just everything by that poster -- the word "hide" is ambiguous to me that way.