Administration > Suggestions

Off-topic buttons?

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pi:
On one of the other forums I kinda frequent (and other users from here do too), they have "off-topic" buttons that seem to work quite well.

Basically all of the off-topic material (which inevitably always appears on AN, despite max moderation and clear-cut forum rules) is only view-able to those who click the button (which opens the off-topic content). 

Example: http://www.medstudentsonline.com.au/f48/should-you-prepare-umat-9664/index4.html#post238777

Okay, that example isn't great because that post has 0% on-topic material, but at least users don't have to go through reading a massive post (I could link a few recent ones here if needs be - but I'd rather not bring them up again) to realise that it's of topic. They can see the button on the post and skip it if they want. It looks cleaner (organisation and length of page) and it's easier to tell what is and isn't on topic.

One argument that came up on IRC when I proposed this idea was that it would encourage more off-topic posts. Rather, I think it would help mods find WHO are the off-topic posters are more easily (to issue warnings/whatever, or to just leave things as they are). But as mentioned above, as off-topic discussion is always going to happen (and tbh, some of it is pretty funny/interesting), having such an option just makes everything look better :)

Another point is that "who will mark their own comments as off-topic", well with this button in place, obviously off-topic convo NOT marked as so by the user will be far more harshly dealt by than such comments marked as off-topic (ideally, comments marked as offtopic by the user would have NO penalties, but this is just my opinion haha).

Dunno, just something I thought was cool from another forum that might work here :) Thoughts?

N.B. it is the users who insert info into the off-topic boxes using something like [offtopic]...[/offtopic] or even something shorter like [off]...[/off] when they make their post (it would be one of those posting options like the latex, bold, underline, etc options when posting), not the mods :) Should have made that clearer

EDIT: ADDED BENEFIT AS DESCRIBED BY LASEREDD:

--- Quote from: laseredd on June 26, 2012, 10:12:14 pm ---oh, I just remembered, an off-topic button could also double up to be a spoiler tag - which would be handy for those general discussion threads about movies, anime etc. and also could come in use when you have people writing using really small to hide answers etc.

--- End quote ---
ie. use for spoilers and quizzes too!

Starlight:
Agree 100%

anonymous1:
I think it's a great idea and should have already been implemented

Lasercookie:
Keeping aside the arguments against implementing it for now, I don't like the idea of a button. I think having to click to read would be annoying. For some kind of off-topic tag, I think it'd easier to have it apply a background to the text or something. Something similar to how the quote button looks, but perhaps without the indentation, border and the 'quote' text etc. just that blue colour (or maybe just exactly the same thing, but different colour and instead of saying 'Quote' it says 'Offtopic'.


--- Quote ---aaa
--- End quote ---

That does mean that off-topic comments wouldn't be nested away, but it saves clicking and does the job of separating the text.

That said, why a specific tag over just the user typing 'off-topic'? (well the answer to that is that the coloured 'off-topic' text would be more easily seperated)  e.g.
 
Off-topic:
Vegemite is cool.

On-topic:
What if entire posts are off-topic? To be honest, to me this only seems good for short off-topic sentences/paragraphs in the middle of a largely on-topic post.

pi:
Well one of the outlined benefits was to reduce the "length" of posts, by shoving all of that off-topic into something that you have to click to open. I like that because personally, I don't want to read random stuff that I'm not interested in that's not on the topic of a matter I am interested in, and therefore, I don't even want to see it.

Those who do, can click away. One click is far from annoying imo, it's just one click!

As for whole posts that are off-topic:
1) They *shouldn't* be happening
2) If the user realises their whole post if off-topic they may realise they're being stupid
3) It still shortens the length down for everyone else, leaving that little box to click on

Win-win imo

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