# Muting by tag isn't working for me {A bug, being bumped up to Discourse Tech Support} **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [October 26, 2024, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259 "2024-10-26T14:13:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/1 "2024-10-26T14:13:14Z")
I’m trying to take a break from a certain stressful subject, so I followed the instructions for muting the tag, but threads tagged that way still show up in the “Unread” list and under “Suggested” at the bottom of threads. Bug, or am I doing something wrong, or misunderstanding the feature? ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/2 "2024-10-26T14:28:04Z")
This is my canned reply, I’ll come back later if that doesn’t help. **Steps to Mute a Tag or Category** (Forum) Click your user icon next to the menu. Click the last Icon for Profile Click Preferences Click Tracking _The lower right hand box is for Muted Tags._ Enter _ **tru** _ and you’ll be prompted for trump. Click trump. Click Save Changes . . **To Ignore a user from Preferences** Click your **Profile** Avatar in the upper right hand corner Click the **Profile** icon (at the bottom of the icons) Click the ![⚙️](https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/e/notoemoji/15.0/2699_fe0f/32.png) Gear icon for **Preferences** Click the **Users** menu item Click Add button under Ignored **Type in the username** Select a **Timeframe** , which is a pain on a phone. Click **Ignore** ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/3 "2024-10-26T14:57:45Z")
That’s exactly what I did, and the notifications page shows that it’s muted, but I’m still seeing posts with the fucking “Trump” tag all over the place. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/4 "2024-10-26T15:19:39Z")
You appear to have everything setup correctly. You might need to clear your cache for the SDMB, but it shouldn’t be needed. I’m going to moved this thread to #Site Feedback as it appears to be a bug. I’ll also do some testing. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/5 "2024-10-26T15:23:35Z")
So I just selected “trump” under the Muted Tags and then selected #Politics & Elections to check. No threads tagged as Trump. But if I click [Top](https://boards.straightdope.com/top) I see Trump tagged threads. **This is a bug.** I asked **Ed Zotti** to bump this up to Discourse Tech Support. * * * * * * I verified the #trump I saw on the list aren’t ones I’m tracking or watching. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/6 "2024-10-26T15:33:31Z")
In my experience those thread recommendations at the bottom are entirely their own thing, divorced from other site settings and preferences. If you ignore a poster, for example, their threads are still featured down below. It doesn’t surprise me at all that muting would be similarly disregarded. Discourse seems to have a basic design bias of “come on, engage, it’s not healthy to avoid stuff, everybody just get along okay?” ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2024, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/7 "2024-10-26T17:37:14Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Discourse seems to have a basic design bias of “come on, engage, it’s not healthy to avoid stuff, everybody just get along okay?” It took forever for them to accept the utility and value of ignoring at all. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/8 "2024-10-27T03:35:51Z")
Now I’m being shown that there are 2 Unread threads, and when I click on that link I see 8 threads, all but one of which are tagged as Trump, which is still muted. This seems like a bug, too. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/9 "2024-10-27T11:27:15Z")
Given that “Unread” consists precisely of those threads you have set to “tracking” or “watching” status, it’s unclear to me that muting a tag that applies to some of those tracked/watched threads _should_ be effective. On one hand, you’ve told Discourse: “I am directly especially interested in this particular thread”. On the other hand you’ve also told Discourse: “I’m explicitly _dis_interested in this kind of thread.” Faced with those inputs If I was designing the system I would say the thread-specific expression of interest _should_ override the generalized expression of _dis_interest. Which is exactly what Discourse does. My proposed remedy: Go to your unread list, click the check/check/dot icon at upper left near the word "Topic, then check the box next to each want-to-ignore thread. Then click the [Dismiss [#]] button at upper or lower right. In the "are you sure?pop-up, check the box that says “Stop tracking these topics so they never show up as unread for me again”. Then click [Dismiss] on the popup. That will kill your following on all those threads and allow mute to take over from there. You’ll have to do this a few times, like every couple of days until every offensive thread that you’ve previously followed gets revived by somebody. But I’ll be that’ll be pretty easy. You might have to un-follow 100 threads the first time, but probably only 3 the second time and their may not even be a third time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/10 "2024-10-27T11:45:08Z")
ETA sorta … After the first bulk killing of tracked/watched-but-also-muted threads as described above you can go to the advanced search page and do a search for your undesired tag and also for “I’m watching”. From that list there’s no way to do a mass checkbox selection, but if there are few enough such threads you can click each one then unfollow it. Then repeat the search for the offensive tag and “I’m tracking”. At least from those two lists you could identify the ones you suspect are in danger of being revived (and thereby enter your unread list again) and kill just them. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2024, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/11 "2024-10-27T14:57:27Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Given that “Unread” consists precisely of those threads you have set to “tracking” or “watching” status, it’s unclear to me that muting a tag that applies to some of those tracked/watched threads _should_ be effective. > > On one hand, you’ve told Discourse: “I am directly especially interested in this particular thread”. On the other hand you’ve also told Discourse: “I’m explicitly _dis_interested in this kind of thread.” This is a good point that I hadn’t considered, although conceivably the software could allow one to choose which – mute or tracking – would override the other. [Pedantic nitpick: _dis_interested means impartial, _un_interested means not interested. One of my pet peeves, but it’s pretty much a lost battle for most of the public.] As for your suggestions for how to fix it, thanks for taking the trouble. But I only wanted to block noticing TFG for a day, not forever (would that I could!). In an attempt to maintain some level of sanity, my wife and I try to avoid seeing or hearing anything about politics on Shabbat. Yesterday we took a nice 2.5 hour ride up to North Conway, NH, to ride on the [Conway Scenic Railroad](https://www.conwayscenic.com/). Unfortunately, New Hampshirites are very politically active, and there were tons of yard signs of every stripe all along the way. It was tough to focus on the beautiful fall foliage and completely ignore the signs. But we had a good time. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2024, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/12 "2024-10-28T12:18:09Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > [Pedantic nitpick: _dis_interested means impartial, _un_interested means not interested. One of my pet peeves, but it’s pretty much a lost battle for most of the public.] Damn. I even know of that difference and try to use it correctly. IIRC you (or somebody) was fussing about that in a rant / pet peeve thread recently. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2024, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/13 "2024-11-06T22:55:09Z")
Can someone confirm that this bug has been corrected? I just tried again, and it seems that the tag in question is blocked in places I had been seeing it before. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2024, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/14 "2024-11-07T02:34:11Z")
Woohoo this works! I just muted a certain word seen in too many places today and those threads (if they are tagged correctly) are now gone. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2024, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/15 "2024-11-07T12:55:25Z")
That is excellent news. Thank you for updating the thread. Also thanks to whoever at Discourse noted and fixed the bug. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/16 "2024-12-10T04:52:45Z")
Okay, now all Trump-tagged threads seem to be muted, _except_ “Is Trump Confused?” which shows up with unread threads at the bottom of whatever thread I’m reading. No others, though. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2024, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/muting-by-tag-isnt-working-for-me-a-bug-being-bumped-up-to-discourse-tech-support/1009259/17 "2024-12-10T11:45:04Z")
Did you check what your following status on that thread is? If it’s showing up in the unread list, your following status isn’t [Normal].