Muting (Hiding) by Thread, Tag or even Forum (Category), or Alerts for new threads by tag or category. Also doing a linked reply

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1

#Muting a thread is really simple

Find the Bell Button in the thread. :bell:
Click that and select Muted (the last option).
That is it, you’re done.

You can also do it from the bottom of any thread. Right above “New & Unread Topics”.

Muting or Tracking a group of threads with the same Tag.

So click on the tag and it pulls up all the threads.
There should be a Bell button in the upper right corner. :bell:
Click that and select Muted (the last option).

Once this is done, all threads with that tag should be invisible to you.

Click watching first post instead of Muted, will notify you of every newly tagged thread for lets say photo

Muting a Category / Forum

So pull up the forum.
There should be a Bell button in the upper right corner. :bell:
Click that and select Muted (the last option).

Alternate way to Mute Tag or Category (Forum)

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

Prior conversation on all of this related to Trump tag.

Some tricks to tweak watching and tracking threads, tags and forums.

To Find your Muted threads:

Try this link: https://boards.straightdope.com/latest?state=muted
That should show all your muted threads.

Editing your Mute list.

Click your user icon next to the menu.
Click the last Icon for Profile
Click Preferences
Click Tracking
Now click on what you wish to edit, such as Watching First Post or Muted Tags.
Click the x for the Forum/Tag you want to remove from the list or click the Forum/Tag you want to add from the list below.

If you don’t have a shortcut to the tag you’re interested in there are several other ways to get there:

  1. On the Hamburger Menu a shortcut says Current Tags. That will pull up all tags. Find and click science-math

  2. In any post you make, type the # sign and a few letters of the tag and you’ll get suggestions, for instance, #sci will prompt science-math. This is now clickable.

  3. Go into a forum like Factual Questions and in the All Tags box following it, it will show every tag used in FQ. Click science-math and you’ll see all the thread in FQ thus far labels science-math. You can then also click on any of the science-math sublabels and pull up all science-math threads, regardless of forum.

If you are responding to something in a thread that is basically off-topic or likely to lead to a hijack, try this:

How to Reply as a linked Topic:

Click Reply, in the upper left corner of the reply window is the reply type button, looks like a curving arrow point to the right.

Choose Reply as linked topic and it starts a new thread. As an example, you can choose GD, IMHO or The Pit for it.

That is actually the best method.

June, no, NOTHING! (Monthly Mini-Rants)
If you mute a thread, are you (also) not allowed to say you have outside the Pit?
Misread thread titles
How to create a linked thread (pinned thread request)
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Continuing the discussion from Muting (Hiding) by Thread, Tag or even Forum (Category):

We already have a way to mute/ignore a poster across the board. Is there a way to mute a poster in a thread or a forum.

Let’s say someone is tired of @Pleonast in a thread about bobbins. Is there a way to mute me only in that thread?

Or, let’s say someone is tired of @Pleonast in the Thread Games category. Is there a way to mute me only in that forum?

Asking for a friend… :wink:

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That sounds occasionally useful, but no, there is no tool for that one.
I’m going to merge this question into my Pinned thread. I left it open for Q&A and comments anyway.

5

Thanks. I didn’t want to immediately hijack a mod’s thread.

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I seem to remember there being instructions on how to edit your Mute list as well. That would be good to add, if you can find it.

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You can also do it from the bottom of any thread. (it’s right above “New & Unread Topics”)

8

I’ll look for it.

Added above.

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What about unmuting a thread? When I go to the tracking section, it gives me options for tags and categories, but not threads.

Luckily I’ve never had any reason to unmute a thread, but I’m not sure I’d know how if I wanted to.

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To Find your Muted threads:

Try this link: https://boards.straightdope.com/latest?state=muted

That should show all your muted threads.

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If Discourse would implement this it would making the muting functionality a lot more useful.

At present you must open a thread and hunt around for the bell button (which is not even prominent at the top after you open a thread) to mute it. Muting is useless as a tool to curate a list of new threads to just the ones you are interested in. So at present all I use it for is a few high-activity threads like games that I’m not participating in that would pop up frequently.

It would be so much more useful if the bell were displayed next to the thread title when you are looking at a list of threads, then you could just go down them quickly without opening each thread and curate them to muted or tracking.

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I (and others) have asked about this on the discourse forum.
We were ignored !

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Maybe the answer is to post a large number of other nonsensical requests, then they will discover how difficult it is to mute them all…

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What do you mean “other” !!

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Naturally I don’t see a bell button in this thread–except in OP’s and Riemann’s posts.

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In desktop display mode, the bell icon is normally at the bottom of the scroll bar, until you scroll down to the last post, where it appears on the bottom left. I’m not sure where it is on the mobile display mode.

Also thanks to @What_Exit for these helpful tips and for implementing tagging in the first place. As per our IM discussion, I clicked on the provided link and, like magic, the tagged category in question is now muted!

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Not trying to be critical of a helpful post, but just to point out a problem with this.

Tagging is usually positively-oriented, not negatively-oriented. In other words, you tag threads that are even peripherally associated with a subject, because it helps people who do care about a subject to find threads. This is the way it should be - definitely not suggesting you change this approach.

But if you then use tags in a negative screen for muting, you mute too broadly. For example, to test this I searched for threads tagged with baseball, since I don’t follow baseball. The first three hits are:

Post your favorite sports trivia question
Things where the US is actually less capitalist than Europe
Another time travel question: how do I get rich?

…which are not threads solely or primarily about baseball that I want to mute. Two are not even primarily about sports.

So muting this way is only really going to work for the kind of tags that don’t have any overlap with anything else that you might want to follow. There are probably a few tags like that, but I’m not sure how useful this is going to be.

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It’s a thread-wide setting but isn’t associated with a particular post within that thread. On my mobile, the bell is immediately under the reply and pin buttons.

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I’m thrilled with this development; it’s going to make the boards usable during the upcoming U.S. election season madness. If I can mute all threads tagged “trump” and not even see the thread titles, the boards can be a relaxing and positive place for me. If this means I don’t see my favorite Wordle spinoff thread or whatever because somebody mentioned you-know-who, so be it – a worthwhile tradeoff.

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The mmm-song-poll tag is a good example. Both threads and flags have shown people looking for a way to easily not see them any more or to easily find them.

You can set the tag to mute or to watch for first post as an example. There are members that have looked for both.

This isn’t anything Discourse did for us. These are tools already in Discourse that I’m putting to use and explaining the ways to use them.

Muting all baseball-mlb tags, is probably not great, but setting all to tracking or notifying of first post might be useful to some posters.

Additional note: I have baseball-mlb & breaking-news news set to Watching First Post. Along with any forum I moderate and ATMB. I try to at least glance at any of these new OPs. For Cafe & Game Room it is to tag them if suitable and needed.