[QoL] Forum needs a MUTE function

General Discussion
1

The new forums are just over a month old, and during this time we have already seen multiple career trolls come in and spam their trash on a regular basis.

They get banned for a day or week, and then they come back to pick up where they left off. OR - worse - they don’t get banned at all because the moderators are too busy watching Diablo Immortal gameplay on their phones instead of doing what they’re supposed to do, which is enforce the Code of Conduct, making us waste our precious flags in the process.

As primitive as the old forums were, they at least had an Ignore function. It automatically collapsed posts of the ignored users within threads, although it didn’t actually hide threads that the ignored made.

In other forums I’ve seen, the Block function completely hides the blocked user’s activity, posts AND threads, as if he/she doesn’t even exist. Even hides posts that have that user quoted or tagged.

So with all the fancy code at our disposal here in the new flashy forums, what is so hard about implementing a proper Block/Mute function that:

  • hides the muted user’s posts
  • hides the muted user’s threads

We already have the function that mutes notifications from specific users, why can’t we have a Mute function that mutes users, PERIOD?

The Code of Conduct is a code of conduct and should overrule everything else, including the forum makers’ desire for everyone to interact with everyone else so they can get those cool internet hits.

If the moderators were more onto it, this wouldn’t be an issue. Alas that’s where we’re at right now. If they can’t be bothered banning the trolls, then at least give us the much-needed QoL option to MUTE them ourselves.

Muting --> less arguments --> less need for moderator presence.

Win-win for everyone involved.

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2

While it would be nice to at least have an Ignore feature, I’ll never really subscribe to the logic that ignoring trolls makes them go away. They need to be shown the door, and that’s something mods have to get more aggressive on while further updating the CoC to minimize bad faith grey area tactics.

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3

Trolls get off on the attention and the reactions they provoke when they troll.

Muting them makes them invisible. It’s the equivalent of taking the toys away from an unruly child. If noone can see them trolling, they become insignificant.

And it’s much more effective than, say, waiting for the moderators to wake up on Monday while the moronic trolls from the European forum migrate here and run rampant all weekend.

If you farted in a forest and there’s noone around to smell it…did you even fart?

4

It’s a constant back-and-forth of trolls testing the limits of what’s acceptable according to the CoC. It’s really not that easy sometimes for mods to shut down troll posts, even more so in a forum like this where the mods are officials of a company and the posters are posting on accounts, many of them linked to a product they paid for. To be clear - that does not give them the right to troll, but it changes the power dynamics and make the mods more easily look like ruthless tyrants.

The ignore/mute feature is an important tool in this day and age of the internet. The entire purpose of trolls is to bait others into a pointless conversation that derails the topic, by carefully crafting a legitimate post that barely stays within the posting rules. I could easily point out threads that I’ve observed over the past few days here where this is the case, and where the “troll posts” would’ve easily been detected in the old forum due to downvotes, but now they’re indistinguishable from on-topic replies (because not every non-troll post gets an upvote - due to the upvote tracking mechanism I feel upvotes are even more scarce than before).

I totally agree with OP. I haven’t used the ignore/block function in any games, social networks, chats, forums or so for the past ~20 years of my internet usage, but recently started doing so in a few particular places to avoid getting baited by trolls, and it has increased my reading experience tremendously.

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5

If the issue is that the mods don’t work over the weekend then it’s completely irrelevant where the poster is based as to when their post gets moderated, i.e. it’s equally possible for a US-based poster to “run rampant” all weekend as it is for an EU-based poster.

I’m guessing you didn’t see the havoc that TLGamer caused on the old EU forums after he wasn’t allowed to play on the US forums any more so don’t think this is a one-way street either.

6

It would be nice to be able to mute the entitled whiners that are constantly starting threads like this one.

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7

So why can’t you go to the bottom left of the thread and change the notification to ‘muted’? That does not work?

8

Considering you only got 9 posts here but have already completely hidden your profile (toons and forum), odds are you’d be one of the first to be muted by anyone. So no wonder you wouldn’t want a Mute feature to be added.

Muting notification is nowhere near the same as muting users.

Muting notifications disables the “XXXXX liked your post/quoted you/tagged you” messages at the top.

Muting users would hide their posts and threads as if they didn’t exist. THAT is what’s needed around here.

Location is irrelevant, I was merely using your old now-banned friend as a prime example to why a Mute feature is badly needed.

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9

It’s why I figure you need people that understand the game well enough to best catch some of the nuance, and with that establish a sense of rapport with the community over time. Mods being silent entities in a forum is, imo, tantamount to letting the inmates run the asylum. Of course, there is also the issue where people see a blue post and pounce on them with completely unrelated topics or demands. While this is something I don’t think should be bannable on its own, it could warrant a brief a time out and a notification to emphasize that’s not why mods are present and to not (repeatedly) do it again.

Otherwise, the most common “grey areas” I see are a mix of anti-casual rhetoric and more sweeping insults to devs and other players alike. These usually squeak by because they’re smart enough to not name or quote a person implicitly, but when you pay attention to the flow of conversation(s), it isn’t difficult to read between the lines and see the winkwinknudgenudge. Further so, these individuals tend to be pretty consistent with it and may even occasionally let their mask slip and let out some more egregious zingers. They’re also likely the sort to complain about snowflakes, people needing to man up, improperly cite free speech, claim to not care about the feelings of others (though woe on us for not treating their words as gospel), or just outright jump to accusations of fascism when you call 'em on their sh*t.

Otherwise, there are occasionally issues when it comes to other game comparisons that more keenly come off as shilling or advertising for other products, and maybe even streamers or news articles. To some extent, I would agree that comparisons are good, and that knowing what other games have and haven’t done can lead to a better product, but when one extracts the meat of some commentary and inevitably gleans “Such and such is superior, D3 sucks!” then I’d say it’s fairly obvious they’re not here in good faith. Those who have further taken such stances and admitted to having not played this game much or for a long while are just exacerbating that. Put simply, I imagine most here just want to talk D3, figure things out about it, maybe make some friends to play with, and ideally convey a reasonable message of what they want from the devs in future patches. Those hoping to completely reinvent the wheel or saying things like “D4 should be the complete opposite of D3!” are very much missing the point of the board.

The old board was also plagued with thread necromancy from a few select individuals who would simply not refuse to let their topics die despite weeks passing without reply. Some would also regurgitate the same content in some different packaging hoping to catch a new wave of non-regulars in their bologna. Downvotes obviously did nothing about this. Very rarely did reporting maybe get the threads locked, moved, or removed. The common themes were usually a disdain for D3 and its players. There’s no sugar coating it. That’s what they were. These aren’t just typical “The game is boring me, I quit!” posts, either. They don’t want discussion, they just want to be right. We’re nearing the point in this new board where we’ll see if those same people keep it up, but I also expect business as usual from moderator inaction.

10

This isn’t a small community where users just flipping a switch on a few problem posters will make them go away. You will have people coming and going who don’t know better consistently being caught up in their wake or draw the erroneous conclusion that most other regulars must be like them since the people who have them on ignore aren’t refuting their commentary.

You don’t ignore a cancer and hope it just goes away. You have to treat it. You have to excise it. Otherwise, its influence spreads and the whole system starts to fail. And while gaming at large certainly has a problem with its toxic elements, I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that this whole “Do nothing!” defense has changed nothing.

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11

So is what said here considered troll behavior and against the code of conduct with your constant abuse of people and not having a civil tongue
and the way you like to carry on all over the place I am sure you would be one of the first to be ignored by everyone

You do not need an ignore function in the forums for you to ignore people and posts and not engage them

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12

The forum software is called Discourse and, for some reason, it does not have the Ignore function. Blizzard is aware of that and I think they have looked into getting that added. I don’t know what the current status of the issue is though.

As for moderators vs trolls - the Mods are a team who cover every single Blizzard game, not specifically one title. They react to reports and review them vs the code of conduct. Trolls can be very good at skirting that grey line between causing drama and still following the rules. The old forum had the option to comment when reporting so you could point out a pattern of behavior to a mod. The new forums don’t :frowning:

I had only one person on Ignore on the old forums. One. I do agree that it really is a useful feature though. There are some people who are just not worth even reading. Being able to ignore them limits drama.

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13

Hmnnn…Now you’ve got me wondering who… (Not asking you to name, just wondering…) Two or three names come to mind… :thinking:

14

I would likely get in trouble if I called out a name or discussed the current forum status of said person. We are not allowed to discuss moderation.

15

To make things worse, spamming the forums is actually encouraged and made beneficial by the Trust Level requirements.

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16

Oh, I know. That is why I specifically said I was not asking you to name…

But I was curious… There were a lot of “eligible candidates” on the old forums, and you have very thick skin (‘troll armour’)… So it just kind of begged the question…which one…was sooooo out of line.

So yea, wasn’t laying a trap–let’s not have curiousity kill any cats (cheetahs) today… :smile:

17

Making a ton of posts to get to TL3 is not true in consideration of how trust levels are determined.

  1. Must have replied to at least 10 different topics
  2. Must have received 20 likes, assuming that they have given 30 likes (really easy to give a like) :+1::hearts:

So if a person made 10 and only 10 posts and received 20 likes, they would have met their posting/like criteria.

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18

When quantity is favored over quality, it’s absolutely true.

Edit: I see now that I’m wrong on this. Thank you.

19

The minimum quantity is 10 replies. In terms of quality, the main thing for TL3 is to obey the CoC in Blizzards eyes and never be suspended. It is not a high bar until you get to the 100 day rolling average requirements. As Meteorblade noted , these are reading/viewing 500 topics and 20,000 posts which is quite high and in EU forum impossible.

The second point is about quality. Is it quality from your viewpoint, Blizzard’s viewpoint, or the forum as aa whole? Should we set the requirement to likes to make it a populairity contest? Is receipt of 500 likes enough?

It is my opinion that the TL3 requirements should be lower for the items that are 100 day rolling averages, most notably the number of topics/posts viewed.

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20

You are mistaken. The Trust levels encourage READING, the forums, not spamming posts. Posting a ton does not benefit you at all.

This :arrow_up::arrow_up::arrow_up::arrow_up::arrow_up:

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