An emoji for off topic might be a good idea. That would allow people to remind someone they've gone astray.
Would it be a positive, negative or neutral rating? Would you suggest any repercussions, account restrictions, moderator post approvals for a user collecting a bunch of these ratings? If there was a way to have posts automatically moved to an off-topic thread after receiving a certain number that would be my preference but I don't think that is possible. Other than that I'm not sure what good it would do and would certainly cause issues.
i like a joke as much as anyone but i don't follow a thread to see it turn into an off topic joke. in fact i find it annoying, when i click on a thread only to see that the original post has been taken over by jokes or gone off topic. i'm on discussion forums where members go off topic by posting the topic title with a 'was' before it which opens a new thread leaving the original thread intact. on this forum, a person that wanted to stray from the original post could open a new tab/window in the off topic forum, joke forum or whatever forum applies and open a new topic and label it; joke was; (post original thread title here w/o the brackets) and post their reply there. does that make sense??? ideas???
Well, count me in. I hate this off-topic straying thing. I think Jimeve does it occasionally but blames his 'friend'. Btw, anywhere to buy cheese locally?
As someone rarely led astray into dark pastures by other members (one of whom is no longer on the Forum and shall remain shabbilyunnamed) I am all for this. If people cannot control themselves then it requires external forces. It would make the Forum more serious and less funny - although, being devil's advocate, in these grave times, perhaps a little humour is not such a bad thing.
Seems for the most part members have been doing good at policing ourselves. If sparks start to fly, a moderator is quickly onboard with a fire hose. Folks, it is not like we have to be at work early in the morning or late at night. Peace and amping.
I added an Off-Topic rating. It is currently a neutral rating. If I can find a way to move posts automatically I will do that but I don't think that is possible without coding a custom add-on for the forum software. (I'm not going to do.) I'm thinking about making them a negative rating so that the posts are "soft-hidden". This would mean (I think) they wouldn't show up on the new posts page once they have a certain number of off-topic ratings but you could still see them if you were in the thread and opted to see them by pushing a button. This would hold true for other negative ratings as well. If I go this route I will remove public negative rating visibility and all account restrictions that come along with accumulating them. I will make a test run on this to see how it works out. I think this will limit the visibility of off-topic posts (and the frequency of replies to off-topic posts) without restricting posters ability to have a bit of fun in thread if users actually use the rating as it is intended. As always, abusers of post ratings will have their ability to leave ratings removed. Now, let's see how many people this pisses off. I give it a week before someone is crying about their posts getting suppressed.
This is live. Let's see how it works. I marked one post here as off-topic so you can see how that will look. (NMRN, since you are the king of off-topic postings I selected one of yours.) Please remember that this is not a true negative rating the same as an abhorrent or trolling rating. People should not take offense to receiving one. Please report your post if you feel you have been given one you did not deserve.