I know it was an update to Discourse, but I truly hope someone contacts Discourse and gets this “feature” reverted.
This is silencing posts with no way to see them and a big huge red warning box when replying if it’s a thread that was hidden. This fosters toxicity as people will use it to silence others.
Thanks.
I think having flagged posts permanently hidden with no option to unhide will encourage abuse and is likely to be used to silence people and create a more toxic environment.
I’m looking at the other side of the spectrum, it will certainly curtail blatant troll threads, especially on Sundays. Can’t feed the trolls if you cannot read it.
From the looks of things, the moderators are taking care of stuff. They’ll either unflag or 404 the post or thread.
Why’d they 404 your thread?
People were flagging it to “test” the changes and I’m guessing a mod didn’t read the thread itself, only saw the flags.
We’ll just wind up with multiboxers who use many accounts to bully others.
I don’t think it will have the effect you think it will. One issue I see is that this isn’t a change made by Blizzard this was done by Discourse.
I don’t know of ANY software company that will allow an outside company to make a major change to something so integral without vetting the changes first.
Discourse rolled out an update to the software and there are already posts about how it cannot be changed by admins.
They didn’t have a choice. The forum software is provided by Discourse and this was an update apparently pushed to all Discourse users.
This is one reason why software is versioned, and quite often only minor versions get pushed as automatic updates. Also is why more than one version is supported, in case downstream consumers need adjustment or older features.
Some COBOL programmer out there still making bank on supporting banking software from half a decade ago. Large corps often don’t like getting rug pulled either.
I disagree. I have seen a many systems admin lose their jobs because they did not vet an update, breaking thing in the process, even if it’s required. Any business worth it’s salt will not allow anybody push a buggy(?) update with out testing first. Even Microsoft has learned this the hard way.
I used to maintain a POS system for a business that still ran on DOS, the owners just didn’t want to update when they said it was working fine for them. It was hell to find legacy hardware.
There are also still ATMs using OS/2 from the early 90s, with updates provided by some third party company.
We get game updates that are buggy and hardly tested I doubt very much testing is done on Discourse updates.
Except, it won’t 
The bait trolls and pot-stirrers will continue to get a rise out of GD’ers…GD’ers simply can’t resist bait threads and keep them going with hundreds/thousands of replies even long after the OP disappears/ghosts the thread - so the OP getting “flagged by the community” in said bait threads doesn’t “stop” anything
This change ONLY harms innocent posters that have done nothing wrong, while simultaneously “empowering” or “emboldening” all the bad actors/false flaggers/multi-alt sockpuppet posters
It’s basically the equivalent of a school principal (Blizzard) randomly patting into the schoolyard and stumbling upon a fight-in-progress with a bully (the troll/
-stirrer/multi-alt sockpuppet’er) beating up a random nerd (rule-abiding forum’er)… but instead of busting the bully he actively tries to cover it up and/or helps the bully (…like, huh?? Wtf? 
). In other words, it makes no sense lmao
LFR Wing 1 of Siege of Orgrimmar, go notice how the skip is there and functional when wing 1 doesn’t have a garrosh in it.
confused_travolta.gif
Okay, how many posts right now are flagged to oblivion on General Discussion right now? Compared to the other non flagged posts? I say wait and see, maybe they will revert the changes.
Didn’t know that. Then yes…
Give it time for people to catch on. It’s only been like this for what… less than a day? And not everyone has noticed it.
Also: this is a feedback thread for the website devs, not a GD thread for arguments. That’s not specifically to you, but to all.
Oh yeah, and recent changes to how computers boot the past 2 years or so have made that even harder for anything older than win 8. New PCs are coming with UEFI firmware without CSM, aka IBM PC BIOS emulation.