Killfiling

[zumbruk]

One of the (many*) things I dislike about web forums as opposed to Usenet news is the inability to killfile posters (for those who are unfamiliar with killfiling, this is the ability to automatically ignore postings from certain users).

I suspect that it would be a huge amount of effort, but what's the chance of having such functionality on PH?

(* Indeed, PH is the only web forum I use regularly...)

[docevi1]

we've just had this discussion, see the results : www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=140521&f=24&h=0

[agent006]

I think moving PH towards usenet in any way would be a fatal mistake.

[zumbruk]

Nonsense.

What's wrong with being able to read offline, being able to choose my own UI, being able to killfile posters whose droolings I want to ignore, having the data distributed so we're not dependent on Ted's servers and bandwidth?

Technically, Usenet is superior to web forums in just about every respect.

[PetrolTed]

It's not a feature in great demand so maybe at some point but it's not a priority.

[GreenV8S]

If you do kill the original post what do you do about subsequent replies from other people? I imagine it would make it rather difficult to follow the thread.

[agent006]

zumbruk said:

Nonsense. What's wrong with being able to read offline, being able to choose my own UI, being able to killfile posters whose droolings I want to ignore, having the data distributed so we're not dependent on Ted's servers and bandwidth? Technically, Usenet is superior to web forums in just about every respect.

I was referring to the content rather than the features. If i want a fight, i'll go and punch someone in the high street, not hide behind my keyboard and do it as the majority of usenet users seem to.

[zumbruk]

Oh, I see. I mostly only read technical newsgroups, which are generally quite civilised.

And PH gets quite heated on occasion, at least in the PSL section, which is where I'd like to be able to killfile certain individuals.

[agent006]

Yes, i just killfile the whole SP+L forum. There is some good content on usenet, but there's so much crap to wade through to get to it.

Don't get me starting on my human right to "top post" if i want to.

[Tripps]

zumbruk said:

Nonsense. What's wrong with being able to read offline, being able to choose my own UI, being able to killfile posters whose droolings I want to ignore, having the data distributed so we're not dependent on Ted's servers and bandwidth? Technically, Usenet is superior to web forums in just about every respect.

Having written a UseNet reader (a few years back) its apparent it is not actually technically superior, the software allowing you to read it is, while not familiar with kilfiling my impression is it is simply a filter, similar to the Outlook Junk E-mail filter that simply ignores content from a kilfiled user being seen.

Thats fine on a desktop where you have your own dedicated CPU to add features, but PH would have to share that filtering resource for every message opened between every user, and the longer your killfile list is the longer it would take to process each message shown, we're only talking millseconds, but they add up very quickly and put further strain on database and web servers.

Besides which RSS feeds seem to be the way to go these days to exchange and interact.

Me, I like PH as it is, simple and easy to use