Mark posts as offtopic?

[meepmeepmayer]

It's an idea, might be hard to implement or not be available.

A common "problem" with this forum is the frequent offtopic. It makes it hard to follow a thread without missing the stuff that's on topic, and to re-find good information that's hidden God-knows-where as a result of offtopic meandering.

But usually it's not clear-cut, it may be semi on-topic, make sense in context, who knows... (and sometimes people just use threads as their personal chat room I guess due to the social features and focus of this forum). Creating a new thread each time (manually!) would  a ton of work for the mods and, as said, may not be better in context.

So the idea is:

• People can mark their own posts as "offtopic" with a button click, just like the vote system. Of course mods can do that to any post. (One could even think about "voting" on this, enough "votes" would make someone else's post "offtopic")
• "offtopic" posts appear in dark grey text instead of black text. (Or maybe they get a smaller font? Some other visual distinction?)
• Now people can easily skip "offtopic" posts in the threads they like to read, but still have them available if they want.
• There could also be the option that each user can choose to "hide offtopic", just like you can "hide all signatures".

Inspired by the current Photo Thread discussion which isn't about the posted photos, but is justified to be there, yet people wanting to only see photos may not want to see it

[who_the]

Great idea, but here's a few pictures of my cats! (No.)

I don't know what version of Invision Community this forum is running, but the latest version (4.2) touts something called "Fluid View" which purports to:

Quote

Replace hierarchical forum views with a single sleek view that collates topics from across a selection of forums.

https://invisioncommunity.com/features/content

If it's available would love to see it perhaps as a test? Though it may very well be awful, which is why the admins haven't enabled it. 

[John Eucist]

32 minutes ago, who_the said:

Great idea, but here's a few pictures of my cats! (No.)

I don't know what version of Invision Community this forum is running, but the latest version (4.2) touts something called "Fluid View" which purports to:

https://invisioncommunity.com/features/content

If it's available would love to see it perhaps as a test? Though it may very well be awful, which is why the admins haven't enabled it. 

We are running the latest 4.2.8 as of now. I have turned on the ability for members to choose their view.

[who_the]

6 hours ago, John Eucist said:

We are running the latest 4.2.8 as of now. I have turned on the ability for members to choose their view.

Neat, thanks @John Eucist! Interesting, definitely a different way to view and group forum activity. As a frequent user I find the activity tab most useful. But for browsing prior content... I appreciate the opportunity to evaluate the option.