A couple of changes made after a discussion with the mod team regarding the forum:

You can now mute a thread by clicking the mute icon, and it'll stop showing up. (Things can be unmuted on your settings page)

There is also a "like" button on the right. For now it doesn't do anything except show up in your profile, but we might be able to use the data collected this way to improve the quality of the forum. For now it's just a data collection thing.

If you spot any problems let me know.

Good point dDST, should be fixed now

Excellent additions! Great stuff kestas. The fact that we can mute single threads is fantastic.

Do you think we could put the mute button discretely next to the "like" button. It's a little large and obnoxious at the moment.

abgemacht +1

(or put the mute button before the title.
It's a bit hard to read the titles, if they have the "new message" icon to the left, and the mute-icon to the right.

Also, I'm a little confused. Does muting the thread mute just that thread or the player? Because if you hover over the mute icon, it says "mute player"

We could experiment with threads being arranged by likes, not by posts. This would prevent us from having to "bump" threads with useless posts and prevent one person from deciding the order of the threads on the forum.

I've changed it from appearing in the title bar. I think it'd be best to keep all the actions to the right, in the user/time area, but we may put small icons in instead of the text..
I'm not sure though, it could become a bit of a jumble if we keep adding icons.

I like it much better this way. I think it's much clearer.

Is it going to be like facebook where you can "unlike" something after you "liked" it?

Yes, now I'm the only person to have liked my own post!

Hi, how about some work on getting rid of the cheaters on this site?

For example, Chester and gustoso97 have been cheating together in games for MONTHS now! This puts me off playing here.

E.g:
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=45065#gamePanel
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=62764#gamePanel
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=66116#gamePanel
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=59140#gamePanel
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=41018#gamePanel
etc..

How about sticking threads? As in, I choose a couple of threads, which stay at the top of my list, until they are dead. Each user can select his own threads, that he or she is interested in.

I think this would be useful. For example, I am constantly searching up the SOW thread, only to find nothing new has been added.

Please don't post cheating accusations in the forum. E-mail the mods instead:
[email protected]

Excellent Feature!

Maybe you could make an "Unlike" button too, and the system would prevent users to play with people they don't like.
If I create a game all people that I marked with "unlike" couldn't join.
If I join a game and someone I don't like joins too, I get a message, so I can leave the game, or the system drops me out automatic. (Should work for anon-games too)

Did you check if it's ok to call the button "Like"? It might cause legal troubles.

It didn't work. Muted threads do not disappear from your forum page view.

Good to hear the site continues to improve.

That brings me to a option i would enjoy big time should it be implemented.
Is it possible to create the opportunity to push one button (next to a players name, or in his profile) to see if you have any shared history together? Somethimes, i recognize a name, and i have to scroll through his or mine entire history to look for it.

I'm confused. I just muted the thread "If You HAD To Choose A GOP Nominee From The Debate...Who'd It Be?" and I refreshed the page but it still appears on the forum to me. When I clicked it the thread opened normally just with the option to unmute it there as the only difference.

I'm also going to take this opportunity to ask for a link on the bottom or top of the page called "contact us" that leads to the part of the rules holding the mods email address. It would end so many unnecessary "these people cheat" threads from people who are too lazy/untech savvy to find the mod email on their own.

Well it works for me. But does unmuting the thread require ninja-like clicking skills before the website spirits the thread away? Or is there something I'm missing?

mute is not working for me either.

Funny though. I chose the same obi-twerp thread to mute as jmo.

How about just banning all of the americans instead?

JMO, same result here.
If you want a thread to disappear you have to do it the old-fashioned way, mute the author of the thread.

this is cool, but it's too bad it will be the death knell of the +1 system.

looks good though

+1 Thucy!

Interesting. I've always thought long lists of people each replying to a thread simply with a +1 to show their favour of an ever further away comment just messed up threads and disjointed good debates. At least with the like system, people can show their favour without needlessly stretching the valuable worthwhile posts apart from each other with pointless posts simply containing a '+1'.

-1 Sarg.

i like this thread :)

Is there a way to see who's liked it, for example on Facebook, you can click the "See who likes this" you can see the people, who've, well, liked it.

Is there not a unlike?

Dislike would also probably be appropriate, given the vitriol on this site...

one thing thats a tiny bit annoying is how a one line post has the empty line underneath, its not ideal aesthetically but... whatever

following on from discussions on vdip, should muting a thread also remove it from your home page?

I've made thread mutes enforced server-side. Before they would have taken a moment to hide (depending on your connection) because JavaScript hid them after the page loaded. Now the server won't serve them to you

(The home page displays cached HTML; muted posts will still be hidden using JavaScript)

Does that mean that the HTML anchors will be fixed now too? I think it does, given my knowledge of HTML, but I'm not sure.

just a suggestion, but if it is easier, can you not have the Javascript unhide non-muted threads after the page is loaded... (downloading the html as something like css display:none) - if you prefer doing the work on the client-side.

that way you get the reverse effect on the client's browser... which may also be more asthetically appealing.

infact, while you're at it, the 'close thread' button could hide that part of a page, and the 'open thread' button could make an ajax call to the server and only download the new information (instead of making new calls to each of the 15 files served up for each page...)

In the HP it does not hide the thread completely. It just deletes some content...

it seems that when a thread is muted, it still appears on the home screen, but the post and replies are blank

The home page thing issue should now be resolved, and now it's "+1" instead of "Like" by popular demand

@orathaic; we were more constrained regarding making sure things were done on the client-side back when we were on shared hosting. We still need to keep a close eye on performance but we're no longer limited to basically not increasing our footprint at all, so server-side mutes are no problem. :)
(Plus having the default be to not display means clients which aren't fully Javascript enabled, e.g. simpler mobile phone browsers, can't see anything)

Any chance of getting a -1 as well? : )

That's the way they do it on Digg abge, and although it's a possibility I think being able to mod down posts can lead to group-think pretty quickly (especially if generally unliked posts are hidden). The way slashdot does it, where modding up is encouraged over modding down, gives a better result I think

(But who knows, we'll see)

Perhaps you're right, but 2 pieces of information may be better than 1 piece of information.

I like the "shared history" suggestion.

I do understand it's off-topic, but, in the same line I would like to suggest two more things: the possibility to identify less or more talkative people (possibly a 4-step scale, representing game messages divided by number of games) and frequent NMRs or CDers (a 3-step scale would work here). Then you could limit the possibility of people to join a game you create based on these criteria.

I think the biggest problem with common CD players is when you go to join anon games. Yes I know you can always make password's for a game and invite good players, but sometimes I like just jumping into an anon game. The biggest deterent is knowing if you will be in a game with a bunch of n00bs and if they have a record of CD's. So I propose that anyone with an account older then 6? months be given a green check next to the word anonymous in any new anon games, and anyone with more then 3?% of their games as CD's is given a red check. This would not hurt anonymity since some many people fall into every category and it would help deter people from CD'ing in games.

Big fan of the shared history suggestion. Good way to see who's playing with whom as well. Yes, i say, bring that in.

@Kestas: I like the new features, but could you make the "+1" larger please? Or perhaps put a targeting box (WhateverTheHellThey'reCalled) around it. I have a small screen and an inaccurate/wobbly laptop mouse.

@jmo: I like your idea about a generalised CD% indication.

@Kestas as well: Although the "+1" has taken the throne here on the forum, on the profile it still says "Likes".