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[edit] Anon Post Disable Per Thread Submission

• Submitted By: Ratfucker
• Submitted On: Around July 11th.

UPDATE: This feature has been implemented with the following rules:

While in submission queue, you can submit the thread to be:

SFW with Anony,
SFW without Anony,
NSFW with Anony.

Threads that are non-Anon do not have the nickbox field. Ratfucker 07:10, 26 September 2007 (PDT)

Description

Option to disable anonymous posting in threads at time of submission to the queue.

• Expanded suggestion in one of my comments: Allow people to choose mode of thread but whether thread is anon or non-anon... won't be revealed until thread gets mainpaged to prevent vote gaming based on status of thread.

Comments

• While I believe people who post anon are chicken-shits, I don't want to take away their ability to do this. Kesshi 07:36, 11 July 2007 (PDT)
  • I am retracing my no vote, but I am reluctant to vote yes. Kesshi 14:40, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
• This might be a good compromise between the "do nothing" crowd and the "out annoying anonymous posters" crowd. Anonymous posting is cool in advice threads or ones in which you share embarrassing information, but they get annoying as hell in political threads. So I say "yea," but maybe anonymous posting should always be allowed for discussions? Elchip 06:49, 12 July 2007 (PDT)
• How about a toggle switch? Let each user decide when/if to show anon posts. roughmarble
• People can already ignore anonymous posts by using bandit. The point is to allow the submitter to decide whether or not he or she wants his or her submission to allow for anonymous posting in the first place. Ratfucker 14:50, 19 July 2007 (PDT)
• After much thought and considerable experience, I'm beginning to think that this is a good idea. Anon posting is handy for confession threads - but perhaps much less so in other threads. I enjoy tossing in the occasional non-sequitur to inject (hopefully) humorous comments into whatever thread I choose, but I'd be willing to forego that giggle if it would cut down on some of the (pseudo)anonymous garbage. Color me "on the fence." Cranky bastard 00:00, 23 July 2007 (PDT)
  • I tried to be cute and add a vote table with a "Fence" option but that didn't work. :) Ratfucker 04:48, 23 July 2007 (PDT)
    • Cranky Bastard and Grahams, please continue considering this suggestion. This has more votes than any other suggestion (IIRC), and has more vocal support in the actual threads than any other suggestion, ever. We want this. Thanks. -Andbruno 12:18, 25 July 2007 (PDT)
      • I'm in favor of the suggestion (Option to disable anonymous posting in threads at time of submission to the queue.). This is a policy decision, though - up to grahams. Cranky bastard 13:41, 30 July 2007 (PDT)
• This could be okay but if every thread had the box checked it would defeat the purpose of the idea. Besides the fact that it would be solely up to the submitter. Therefore, my vote is no then. - thebugman
  • To be fair, Bugman, you could submit something with anonymous posts enabled if you wanted to have a thread with anonymous posting. Submitters tend to submit items of interest to themselves. If someone wants an anonymous confession thread, they can submit one. If someone wants to post a politics link and doesn't want anonymous posting in that thread, they can opt to submit a non-anon thread. If someone really wanted to have anonymous posting in a political thread, it is their choice to allow it. "Submitter" is not one single person with an agenda against what you want. We are ALL submitters. Something that I would consider important to add to the idea above to prevent vote abuse (voting items down in the queue because it's anon or not anon) is to not indicate whether a thread is anonymous postable until AFTER it gets mainpaged. Ratfucker 21:04, 25 July 2007 (PDT)
• There are, believe it or not, still times I wish to post anon. We have other mechanisims to deal with anon we don't like. Or add another switch at the top to hide anon. brazil 15:18, 26 July 2007 (PDT)
• Disable for all but NSFW or discussion threads. ~token
• Anonymous posting are already tied to specific user login, so they can be back-end tracked. So first, in order to post anonymously, you must first be logged in. Then, I would say that if your "alt" is voted down enough, you lose the ability to post anonymously for a period of time. If this happen 3 times, your login is permanently banned from alting User:willywanka 18:51, 26 July 2007 (EST)
  • Willy: It might help to add that as a separate suggestion box item for folks to vote on instead. let me know if you'd like for me to make a new entry for your description/idea. Ratfucker 16:03, 26 July 2007 (PDT)
• I'm thinking about some constraint here, to stop people just tagging everything as non-anonymous. What about letting a submitter post a "non-anonymous" thread each time they get three stories onto the front page? Grahams 17:00, 31 July 2007 (PDT)
  • Given the amount of votes this has gotten in favor of the idea of letting the submitter decide if their thread should allow for anonymous posts or not... imposing a 25% ratio seems a bit harsh. If anything, it should be at least 1 for 1. Grahams' suggestion would force other people to deal with at least 3 threads of possible anonshitting before they're allowed to have one non-anon thread. Ultimately, my preference is to allow the submitter to choose whether or not they want their thread to be anon-enabled. I would not indicate the submissions' anon status in the queue to keep people from voting items down because it is or is not anon. If someone wants an anon thread, they can submit it and hope it goes through. If someone wants a non-anon thread, ditto. Now, considering what anonymous has been abused for, if you were to reverse it to say that a submitter could have a choice of having an anonymous thread after 3 non-anon threads, then yes, it would actually alleviate the issue that this suggestion was created to directly address. I think it's safe to say that a LOT of people have grown tried of anonshitting given the number of votes this item has gotten and the number of threads that got submitted in response to this kind of behaviour. Ratfucker 20:39, 31 July 2007 (PDT)
  • We could always just give this a shot and see what happens. If we provided the option of flagging threads to not allow anon posting at the time of submission (which would not be the default - you'd have to explicity check a box to disallow anons, I'm guessing), threw the threads into the queue without disclosing the anon-posting flag, and then sat back and watched for a while, we'd get a solid read on whether everybody submitted stuff with anon posting disabled. After reviewing the data, we could decide if constraints are warranted. At that point, we would have solid data to guide an analysis of how to do constraints - or, we could always declare the whole thing a bust and go back to the model we have today. I frankly don't know what would happen if we tried this - but it certainly does seem to be an item of interest, and it piques my curiosity. Cranky bastard 23:12, 31 July 2007 (PDT)
  • My concern is that most of those who enjoy submitting articles are/have a greater probability of getting starred and are the same people that do not want anonymous posts. Make it more competitive, e.g allow alternative headline posters to decide whether the thread should entertain anonymous posts. If the initial submitter flags the thread as a non-anon thread and an alternative headline with a pro-anon flag makes it through, introduce a zero-tolerance stfu-metric for that thread where inflammatory anon-posts that get zapped disable the user from using the feature in that particular thread. ONE anon-post, -6 votes, no anon posts for you. Let the headlines, whether they are anti-anon or pro-anon go unannounced in the queue. Allow this for "pretagged political" threads/headlines only. Not for the entertainment and other non news category.~Klumthefark
• I'm afraid I have to vote nay to this suggestion. Anonymous posting is one of the things that sets this site apart. I don't even post anonymously that often. However, I don't want to see this site turning into a de facto non-anon site (because, given the number of yea votes, that's a distinct possibility) because a few bad eggs threadshit anonymously. It's very easy for me to imagine a hypothetical where someone submits a thread flagged anonymous which ends up getting no posts once its state is revealed, creating a site where nobody dares submit anonymous threads because they want people to post in them. I know anonshitting is annoying, but I can't, in good conscience, support a suggestion that may result in the end of anonymous posting on bN. I am open to debate, however, so I will reserve my vote and consider any arguments to my comment. Wushupork 08:34, 31 August 2007 (PDT)
  • As I've said before, nothing stops anyone from submitting an anonymous enabled thread if they desire. Including yourself. Ratfucker 04:13, 3 September 2007 (PDT)
    • That doesn't address my concern at all, however. It's easy to say "nothing stops anyone from submitting an anon-enabled thread if they desire". I'm more concerned about the effect of saying something like that in the first place. If nobody will enter or post in a thread because it's anonymous, then there is a de facto ban on anonymous posting. That is what I'm concerned about. Voting Nay. Wushupork 11:26, 4 September 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Better time zone for scheduled topics

• Submitted By: Meta
• Submitted On: 11:13, 30 July 2007 (PDT)

Description

The form for creating a new scheduled topic says times are in PST. This isn't very useful, as right now there aren't any places in the US observing PST, and nobody outside the US is likely to know what PST is to start with. Suggest that topic times be specified in UTC, or that the numeric offset of the time zone be supplied on the form. --Meta 11:13, 30 July 2007 (PDT)

Comments

• Fair point. Especially since the server is actually in PDT. Is UTC-9 the preferred way to represent that? Grahams 16:51, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

• • Not really, because PDT is UTC-7, usually represented on the net as -0700. Meta 09:36, 4 August 2007 (PDT)

• All right, dudes (or 'duderinos,' if you're not into the whole brevity thing) - agree on the preferred nomenclature, and we can change the little blurb on the bottom of the 'scheduled threads' page. This is a simple text edit. The blurb currently says "All times as PDT (UTC-9) [Los Angeles]". Don't ask for my opinion - I never know whether it's tomorrow, yesterday, or three weeks from Tuesday in Beijing or Bangalore or Tel Aviv these days. Let's get this sorted and clear this item - it's easily the simplest thing in all the various Suggestion Box pages. Cranky bastard 23:23, 5 August 2007 (PDT)

• Should be fixed Grahams 21:35, 8 August 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Rotating site slogans on the front page

• Submitted By: Vin Diesel?
• Submitted On: July 31st (First Comment)

Description

Right now the front page always says "Welcome to banniNation.com: the site you'll probably never get banned from." As an alternative, we could allow users to submit slogans, and the front page could rotate among the user submitted slogans on a daily basis. It would look like this (time-lapse photography used for dramatic purposes):

There could be a page where users can submit and vote on slogans, and see all of the ones that have been submitted already. Ones that reach -5 are zapped automatically. If necessary (per cranky's request), include a hidden flag that allows the site librarian to mark a slogan as "approved" so that it becomes included in the lottery.

The lottery occurs at midnight (or whenever) and the system picks one of the slogans at random, where it has odds proportionate to its vote, so the ones voted 5 will be pretty rare, anything under a 5 isn't in the lottery, and some awesome slogan with 20+ votes would show up repeatedly to reflect its popularity. (Or whatever, those particular numbers are arbitrary.)

Personally I'd like to see the slogans picked nightly and stay up for the day, rather than a new one every time you refresh the page, cause I think it adds a little more fun to see what the new slogan for the day is, especially when it's one you submitted. --Vin diesel 01:44, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

Comments

• This could be a little tricky since I think we'd probably want to vet the slogans that appear on the main page. It's not clear that they are user generated and someone could easily believe that something offensive or libelous that ended up in there represented the views of "the management" Grahams 16:48, 31 July 2007 (PDT)
  • Cranky mentioned that right away and it's referenced up there, about the site librarian (that's how he referred to himself) approving the slogans before they could be used. I'm thinking something like this: every so often, you and/or cranky can go through the list, and invisibly (to others) click off a bunch of them as "approved/not approved". When the lottery picks a slogan at random, if the slogan hasn't been approved, it rejects it and picks another one randomly--until it selects one that was approved. (Or you could segregate the approved/unapproved ones, but I thought it might be slightly simpler to code this way.) --Vin diesel 17:36, 31 July 2007 (PDT)
  • Initially, I would imagine this would be a matter of harvesting slogans by hand, creating a SFW and NSFW version of the master slogans list, you and I agreeing on those lists, and then doing a little razzle-dazzle with a cron script to pick one SFW and one NSFW slogan per day to be stuck in a file and picked up by the index page code. A decidedly low-tech approach, sure, but it's a way to get some of TEH PHUNNAY on the front page. I got a huge kick out of the "Today is ______ a ______ day - do ______" text on the mainpage back in the day, but I know you had to do that by hand. I'd defer complex discussions about voting and odds and checks and balances for later, just to give this concept a shot and see if it makes people giggle. I hear you on the 'vetting' concern, and I think we're on the same page (HA!) there - these slogans would carry the gloss of at least tacit approval by The Management, so it can't turn into a free-for-all right off the bat. I hope we've earned enough trust by now to be able to vet and select slogans without provoking widespread panic and screams of OMG HAXX MODMIN!!11!!1!1!!eleventy!!1! Cranky bastard 22:46, 31 July 2007 (PDT)

• • For cranky's reference: thread full of user-submitted site slogans which inspired this suggestion
    • Slogans harvested from thread. Cranky bastard 09:38, 7 August 2007 (PDT)

• Feature implemented. Utterly half-assed, but functional. The slogan of the day is picked at midnight server time. Cranky bastard 13:04, 9 August 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Automatically tag NSFW threads

• Submitted By: Ratfucker
• Submitted On: Pre-date/time stamping methods.
• Moved to QA by/on: Ratfucker 01:04, 7 August 2007 (PDT)

Description

Auto tag NSFW threads with a NSFW tag to facilitate in tag priority options in profile.

Comments

• I'm not seeing the point of this, I guess. It's obviously a popular suggestion and it would be utterly trivial to code, but why? If you're viewing the site SFW, the NSFW threads don't show up anyway, so tagging is not an issue. If you're viewing NSFW, the NSFW threads are there for you. Could somebody clarify what benefit auto-tagging NSFW threads as NSFW would provide? The only thing I can think of is that this could make the NSFW threads appear higher on the mainpage if you view the site as NSFW and have NSFW in the 'tags I love' field - is that what this is about? Cranky bastard 22:52, 4 August 2007 (PDT)
  • The popularity of the idea might also stem from another item in the suggestion box: Having a set number of automatic tags for certain uses, case in point: Finding a way to auto-tag with politics when those kinds of threads come up... (queue tagging with a set number of nouns available, etc). Most people have to wait until the thread is tagged as such until they drop out of view. Ratfucker 15:36, 5 August 2007 (PDT)
    • I still don't see the point of this, but, as I said, it should be fairly simple to code up. Certainly not much more difficult than the 'auto tag long headlines' function - I should be able to steal some of that code and do this without undue effort. When I get some time, I'll have a look. Cranky bastard 23:11, 5 August 2007 (PDT)
• All right, it's done. NSFW items get tagged 'nsfw' when they promote to the main page. Cranky bastard 10:30, 6 August 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Remove the Long Headline Auto Tag

• Submitted by: bboy
  
• Moved to QA: brazil 20:46, 1 August 2007 (PDT)

Description

The Long Headline tag is annoying and unnecessary.

Comments

• grahams I've changed the tag cloud to not include that tag. It'll still be applied to stories and affect those users who've put "-long headline" in their tags, but it wont show up in the cloud.

Voting

[edit] Broken Link Reporting

• Submitted by: Unknown.
• Submitted on: Unknown.

Description

Re-introduce the "Broken Link" option.

Comments

• No Comments yet.

Voting

[edit] Change to the link approval algorithm

• Submitted by:
• Submitted on:

Description

Articles in the queue with the highest link score should be frontpaged, not the highest combined score; when an article goes to the front page, it should just use the headline with the highest vote.

Comments

• I think it does this already.
• This one is moderately high on my development list. Expect to see it in the next 2 weeks. Grahams 13:33, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Queue tweak

• Submitted by:
• Submitted on:

Description

In the queue, the main headline shouldn't show up twice until someone else enters a better headline. This would reduce clutter and make the queue easier to navigate.

Comments

• Could it also be tweaked so that when you vote a headline up, it automatically votes the link up if you haven't already done so? Some people are still confused by that and don't realize they can vote in both places on a single link, and as time goes on I think new people will continue to be confused by that.

• I disagree with this notion--you may wish to vote up the article itself, but have no particular attachment to any given headline, or you may think a headline is clever, but be unsure about the merit of the article. Having people read through a short FAQ on how voting works when they register for a handle would take care of most of the problem with people not knowing where to vote. MuninsFire
• Something needs to be done, but I'm not entirely sure what. Maybe instead of having the headline twice, have the actual link to the article display the website the story came from (i.e. news.yahoo.com) rather than the headline... and put all of the headlines tabbed below it. That's probably not a very good idea, but something along those lines might work.

• And how about some little markers to remind yourself which ones you've voted up/down?

• This, I like. MuninsFire

• This one is moderately high on my development list. Expect to see it in the next 3 weeks, after the previous item. Grahams 13:33, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Thread Speed and Efficiency on Sever and Client Side

• Submitted by: Unknown
• Submitted on: Unknown

Description

After you open a thread, every subsequent refresh just shows the last 30 or so comments. Or just have a refresh last 30 link at the bottom next to the refresh thread view link. This will make threads of any length equally responsive. Lessens load on server and any client side scripts like bandit.

Comments

• This was implemented as a Show All when there are more than 100 posts. Otherwise, you just see the last 100. Great work guys!!! brazil 14:24, 27 July 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] STFU Index

• Submitted by: Elchip
• Submitted on: 09:12, 20 July 2007 (PDT)

Description

Apply the STFU index to submissions of yours that get zapped. Or is this done already? Elchip 09:12, 20 July 2007 (PDT)

Comments

• • Queueshitting affects STFU now. Ratfucker 18:22, 21 July 2007 (PDT)

Voting

[edit] Yet still another variation: Sections rather than tags

• Submitted by: Meta
• Submitted on: 09:33, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

Description

I proposed an idea a while back that got lost in the past threads: Instead of one-word tags, the queue/front page should have sections, like a newspaper. They'd be current memes, famous quotes, etc. People could suggest new sections and/or renamings of existing ones, and votes could be held; in effect, you'd have something like a second queue for sections, or like the keyword thing but with drop-down section lists.

Each new item would go into exactly one section, which could be chosen by consensus like the subject is. This would solve the problem of too many politics items filling the front page, as new politics items would just push off older items from the politics section, rather than items from every section.

It would also hopefully reduce the need to incorporate the same cliché/joke into every other title.

Here's the kinds of things I was imagining for the section titles:

* Math is hard, let's go shopping
* Stone throwing Olympics, live from the Glass House
* Great moments in science
* Time to ponder the misfortunes of others, and have a good laugh
* The best democracy money can buy
* Cheese and whine party
* Celebrating four years of military victory
* Your 15 minutes start now
* I'm terrible with names, but I never forget a pair of tits

- Meta 09:33, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

Comments

• This would probably require extensive redesign of the front page, with numerous columns (in order to make it viewable without scrolling things off quickly). I strenuously disagree, because such a design is not practical in any real sense with the format of this site. MuninsFire 09:48, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

• Columns? No. Just 1 more line for each section. Look at how Yahoo News does it, scroll down to the section starting "Top Stories". And it wouldn't need anything like as much space as they've used either. - Meta 15:09, 14 July 2007 (PDT)

• This isn't likely, breaking down the main page into sections will also serve to dilute the discussion and reduce the attractiveness of the site to new users. Grahams 13:33, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

• So why do newspapers, magazines and practically every other site have sections? Seemed to me people were being put off by politics pushing everything else off the current single-section front page. - Meta 15:09, 14 July 2007 (PDT)

• Some sites need sections because they have so much content/traffic that it's un-navigable otherwise. Other sites start out with sections just because everyone else has them, so you get a new site with 15 comments and 30 different sections. Rather than become easier to navigate it becomes harder, and much uglier. Sections aren't always appropriate, and while they might be appropriate here, "lots of other places use it" is no kind of argument in their favor. Might as well tell grahams to use frames and have huge ads taking up a third of the front page, with that reasoning. --Vin diesel 00:45, 15 July 2007 (PDT)

• So we don't actually have a problem with too many politics items pushing other stuff off? Good to know. And I wasn't saying we should have sections because other sites had them; I was saying that the fact that other sites have sections suggests that they are not a problem to have. Way to miss the point.Meta 11:56, 18 July 2007 (PDT)

• I don't think it's nearly as adaptive or spontaneous as the cloud tag, which I personally dislike -ignoramus

Voting

[edit] Navigation Box

Suggestion Box for banniNation Improvements

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