Certainly. But I just meant that it generally adds to the site’s charming aura of outdatedness (in some ways). Not that I’m complaining — it’s basically a living institution that began in 1973!
All threads have to be in a forum (category).
The usual way I’ve seen old forums retired on other sites (but otherwise remain visible) is to make them a read-only subforum of some forum called “Archived forums” or similar.
That is what I’m used to seeing also.
Love it!
(Off-topic: I just realized this is the Dope’s 50th anniversary. Perhaps I missed some acknowledgement/celebration of this? Perhaps as part of Cecil’s recent un-retirement? Don’t need to answer here…)
I just got the Anniversary badge. Is that what you’re talking about? If I remember correctly, that badge commemorates our first post on the new Disqus board.
Though it is a bit confusing, since it also retroactively grants us badges for years past—regardless of when we made our first post on the old board. But only as far back as 2018.
Point is, I think it just means we’ve been on Discourse for 3 years now.
Thanks — but I was referring to the Dope, not to the SDMB. 
It began as a weekly newspaper column in Chicago in 1973.
By the 1980s, its motto was “Fighting ignorance since 1973 (it’s taking longer than we thought).”
(I know you know this, BigT — just reiterating for others who might see this post.)
Well, I picked up another warning for posting on a subject that a mod had forbidden earlier in the thread, by using the board software exactly as intended.
My normal practice, given that I often have many replies waiting, is to go to the list of replies, and just start clicking them and then answering them until the list is clear. Of course, if there was a mod note before that point on the subject, I’m boned. So that feature is pretty much useless to me, I guess.
As a usability thing, you probably shouldn’t offer a primary feature that may get you modded if you use it as intended. If people are getting ‘ignored mod note’ warnings at a higher rate now, I’ll bet it’s because they do the same thing.
I don’t kmow if the board has this facility, but it would be nice if there was some visual indication that a thread was under a mod note so we could take the time to check.
I don’t know any of the details, but I would suggest you might need to change your posting methods. Try reading the threads that you’re replying to.
You can do a quick search for “Mod” maybe.
ETA: Mostly ninja’ed by @What_Exit and in far fewer words.
I also work through my reply list like you do. The difference is that when I click through to the person who @-ed or quoted me, I jump back to the post they’re referring to, or the “last read” line and read forward from there before directly replying to whoever about whatever.
So in essence I treat the “reply to me” item as just another form of “unread”, where I jump to the end of what I’ve previously read and pick up from there.
I agree it’d be nice if there was a way to readily know that mod notes are lurking somewhere in a thread. One of the side effects of many people Doping on their phone is that the tiny screens encourage a very tunnel-vision approach. I know that if I find myself 20 (or 50!) posts behind on my phone I may just abandon the thread.
I wonder if there’s a way to leverage the tags feature to label a modded thread? But finding the notes themselves will be hit or miss unless we could standardize on some searchable magic word that all modnotes will reliably contain.
I’ve had a few complaints that people did see my staffnotes on the posts they replied to.
No matter what we do, someone will miss things unless they at least take a quick glance through the thread.
The staff color should help with that method and we’re all pretty good about using it.
Tagging won’t fix this, there is a group of posters that don’t look at the tags. Even if they did, tagging doesn’t take you to the modnote or warning.
I agree it’s suboptimal, @Sam_Stone. But it’s the way the software works, and there’s not much chance the mods can get it changed.
I do have to wonder if there’s some other way that Discourse expects that sort of mod direction in a thread to be handled, though. Because it is an obvious flaw.
At least if it was a hijack, the mods will go back through and hide the text sometimes. That way you know that hijack was modded.
Of course I read the theeads that I am replying to. That criticism seems a little unwarranted. But the board supports a workflow where you can cycle through your notifications and go directly to the post to reply to it.
So it goes like this: Read a thread, respond to a post or two. Come back later, click on notifications, and see that someone has asked you a direct question. So you answer the direct question. Then find out that 20 posts earlier a mod declared the subject off-limits.
This is a time management habit I have had for a long time that keeps me from forgetting to respond to mail, or letting it build up: When you read a message you have to respond to, just do it. Don’t go, “oh, I’ll have to respond to this later”. The board is designed to facilitate this workflow. But it’s not compatible with some ways of moderating.
Right, your method doesn’t work, especially in P&E or GD. Direct responses without seeing what’s going on in the thread can get you in trouble.
Sounds like a confession on their part to me! 
Of course, you meant “…did not see…”.
One thing I do like about the Discourse software is that new posts appear on the thread without me refreshing the page on my computer. When I’m making responses to multiple posts in a thread, I’ve taken to quoting the posts, typing my responses, then reviewing the thread to see if there’s something new or perhaps someone has beaten me to saying what I was going to say. It’s not perfect, but so far (when I remember to do it–I obviously forgot to do that in this thread!), it’s working.
I also do this every single time before replying, because if nothing else I might be missing some context. I never just reply, oblivious to everything that has transpired in the interim. Because that would be extremely foolish. And I might look stupid in light of something someone else posted just above me. This is in addition to whatever mod note I might have missed.
It’s like saying you couldn’t see the warning sign because you were walking down the street staring at a phone. I have zero sympathy.
The point of warnings should be that you need to stop doing whatever you’re doing. If you don’t change your behavior, that’s 100% on you and you’ll reap what you sow. The moderators and board software developers don’t owe you anything, you need to change, not them.
I might choose to say that a little more gently, but you’re barking up the same tree I am. Incautious behavior has its hazards.
@Sam_Stone does raise the valid point that an environment should promote safe behavior even in the face of less than total attention. This is, after all, a recreational activity we’re all doing here, not our jobs where aggressive diligence is the bare minimum price of admission. A smooth sidewalk is better than an obstructed one festooned with warning signs is better than an obstructed one with no warning signs.
Other than applying a warning tag to the thread meaning “Caution all posters: there are mod notes in this thread”, I can’t think of a way within the board’s standard features to do much good. And even that won’t help (much) since any of our long-running = highly popular threads will inevitably gain a note, at which point there’s no way for you to distinguish between the note from last week you already know about and the fresh one from this morning you don’t. Yet. Except by reading the whole thread.
If the thread’s got 573 posts and somebody currently posting missed a modnote on post 23, I’d think that would call for (and probably get) a note rather than a warning. But yeah – I generally check the notification to see what thread somebody’s replied to me in, and then go to the last post read in that thread and come forward from there, in order to get the reply in the context of whatever may have been said in the meantime. Even aside from the issue of possibly having missed a modnote, there may well have been something said in the meantime which will change my reply (if any) to the post replying to me. Trying to reply to it without the context of any intervening conversation doesn’t seem to me to be more efficient, rather less so, because it’s more likely to lead to my screwing up my answer.
This site is not a chat room, it’s a discussion forum. That is, the “horizon” of what a poster is aware of needs to be more than the immediate post they’re responding to. It’s the poster’s fault for missing mod notes and other important context.
Of course, the moderation needs to have a light touch. Frequent mod notes to remind posters are very helpful, while reserving the warnings to persistent and egregious problems.