Some new site features for your consideration!

How to DiS
1

Hi all,

our pals over at Discourse are always releasing new updates, bug fixes, and new features for all the sites they power. Here are some recent ones that I think are relevant for us. Your input is needed on one of them.

1. Do Not Disturb

First, there is this one that each user can use for themselves (copypasted from Discourse):

Do not disturb is here :tada:
Discourse now allows users to enter do not disturb mode (DND). While in DND, desktop notifications, push notifications, and emails are not sent until the user leaves DND mode. Notification bubbles are also hidden from the user avatar in the site header.
You can enter do not disturb for a specific time period of 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or until the end of the day. You can also go to your notification preferences and set a daily notification schedule, and be automatically placed in DND mode during times outside of your notification schedule.
There is a button under the profile tab in the user menu which opens a modal.

Skjermbilde 2021-03-16 kl. 11.51.43

2. Slow Mode for topics/threads

This is one for “staff” (ie. @moderators) to administer, and I want us as a community to discuss if and how it should be used here. The option is there, should we use it? What are some good examples of when it would be good to use it, and how? What are potential pitfalls of using this setting, that you can think of, and what would be possible negative outcomes?

Text & image examples grabbed from Discourse:

Topic slow mode
We added a new slow mode for topics that are heating up. Staff can enable slow mode [for any given topic]. When enabled, users will have to wait for a staff configured period of time before being able to post again.

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3. Automated e-mails

Also, just as a quick update as we have had lengthy discussions about e-mail newsletters and privacy issues before: The default option across Discourse forums afaik has been for the mailing list mode to be enabled for each user, which has meant that each user has had to individually and manually find the correct opt-out setting in their site preferences. This has now changed, so that the default is that mailing list mode is disabled. Meaning the automated digest emails will go out to even fewer users than before.

I think that’s it for now. I’ve posted it directly here on the social board rather than first having a closed discussion within the moderating team, so this’ll be news to the rest of those guys as well. If we are to use Slow Mode on here, we need a community consensus on some ground rules, so please do share your thoughts on that one.

Thanks!

wr / admin

Editing in a little PS: I’m working on a deadline so not continuously online here, but will check in to see your replies every now and again!

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Not sure slow mode is ever really necessary, but might be handy to have the option, dunno.

Would be interested in a fast mode where you have to post every 30 seconds or be banned.

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Is ‘slow mode’ applied to a thread per user, or to a whole thread?

(eg, will users end up in a race to see who gets to post the one contribution per 15 minutes?)

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Sorry, misread your question. 15 minutes (or whatever) for each user, as far as I understand.

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sounds like it could be useful to me

as well as potentially diffusing ongoing arguments, it could maybe serve as a reminder to others to think before wading in

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:partying_face:

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Ah, so it’s a bit like the blue pop-up you get if you’re replying a fair bit, only it’s an enforced pause?

And is it applied by a mod to an individual user, or to every user in a thread?

Does it affect edits that someone may want to make for clarification purposes?

Either way, I don’t think that it’s a particularly good way on managing things, as it could leave a user on the end of an inadvertent pile-on without a right of reply. I think that’ll leave people feeling more, not less, powerless.

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the way i read it, it gets applied to a thread. anyone can still post in the thread at any time, but once you post, you specifically can’t post again for x amount of time.

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That’s how I think it should be, too, if it was going to be a feature.

(I still am not convinced that it’ll help though)

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Every user, the whole thread. The feature is called “Topic Slow Mode” so it’s applied to one whole topic.

Don’t think it affects edits, it doesn’t say anything about it.

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Imagining DiS Top Cities with slow mode applied!

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I’ve seen slow mode in operation on another forum. Think the key thing is making everyone aware when and why it’s being applied

On the other forum the mods just turned it on in a thread without saying anything, which just led to users feeling it was being applied to only them, getting very upset that they felt they were being persecuted and “shadow-banned”

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Won’t it make it feel like people are wading in because by design they’ll be the only people who can reply?

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i’m assuming you’ll get notified before you post that the thread has gone into slow mode and you might be switched on enough to wonder why and think twice about posting

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Yeah that makes sense.

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I think if you enable slow mode it needs to be switched on for a topic from the start. I think you could have a whole sub category of threads called Slow Threads (SSP by default) which encourage really thoughtful and significant interactions on difficult, weighty or existential topics. I think that would be really cool actually.

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I have an inbuilt slow mode

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quite keen to have a read of that example thread where it all kicked off over I, Frankenstein (2014)

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I’m gonna try doing it here now just to see if it’s visible in any way

ATTEMPT AT SLOW MODE IN PROGRESS, PEOPLE!!!

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I would say you were ahead of your time, but…

1 Like