Why not create a category called Ron Paul, which is like Investing, Health Care, Misc, etc, with a rule that all Ron Paul Threads have to be initiated there. And keep that and the rule until the election.
Anonymouse is obviously a hired operative with a mission to destruct Ron Paul's potential. All the people who read this forum who otherwise might have been open minded about him, will be permanently inoculated against getting on the dangerous RP bandwagon.
Watch
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How about the overwhelming content about republicans, democrats, housing, banks, etc? Aren't they all allowed as long as they are in the proper category? Why are you singling out Ron Paul?
It's an election year. So posts about candidates aren't relevant? And what is dangerous about Ron Paul?
Why are you resorting to false accusations? Can you prove that I am a hired operative?
Perhaps a category called Election 2012 will work so stuff about other candidates can be posted as well instead of singling out Ron Paul related content.
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we need to single out Ron Paul because the spam is so heavy that he needs his own section.
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Why not a Ron Paul news megathread?
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Hey, good idea! Except let's change your plan a little and make it so that the Fabian socialist propaganda gets put into its own little page buried somewhere on this web site. How does that sound?
Marcus, please consider moving to China. I really think you would be better socially suited for that environment. They have a grown-up version of Fabian socialism called communism.
Just Imagine! You can practice your religion out in the open and get your skull smashed in with a baton. Or maybe you might want to turn in your neighborhood oversight manager, because the one you have is raping your daughter... and then you get thrown in prison for opening your mouth. Or how about you express your desire to own your own piece of property, so you can build what you want and grown your own food.. and you get sent to a gulag 500 miles away where you will be starved and tortured, for challenging Maoist doctrine. Or maybe you want to teach truthful world history to kids at school, resulting in your organs being efficiently harvested for sale to Taiwanese businessmen, while you're visiting a mobile execution van outside your home.
Doesn't that sound like fun, fun, fun!!! ;-)
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Jason M. says
Maybe you don't understand, but it is possible for one person to clog things up a bit.
1) anonymouse (you?) posted 14 threads today alone in politics
2) about half of these were Ron Paul topics
3) If Patrick were to just put a cap on how many threads each person can do in a day, it solves nothing, because a person can have multiple identities (as I'm sure you well know).
4) This isn't some democratic experiment modeled after America. It's Patricks forum, and he get's to do what ever he chooses to make it run better. Many have complained about the Ron Paul spam. I'm just making a suggestion, as one possible solution, that PAtrick may well reject out of hand.
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21 threads all together from anonymouse just today. That must beat Shrek's old record.
Correction - I was looking at the latest date. It was less than that 21, and less than 14 today in politics - but I have several pages of unread Ron Paul threads from him.
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MAybe anonymouse is just a little OCD and has a lot of time on his hands.
I'm sure he's just trying to help.
Anonymousone says
MAybe that makes more sense. But even then, I might have to scroll through several pages to see if anyone else has posted anything. Especially after I go back to work next week.
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OK, tomorrow I will finish the blocking threads by user feature.
I promise.
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Much better solution. Cool.
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OK, it's done.
Now on these three pages, you won't see threads from ignored users:
1. http://patrick.net/
2. http://patrick.net/forum/
3. http://patrick.net/forum/real-estate/ (For example. Works the same for all forums.)
If you want to unignore someone, click "unignore" next to their name at the bottom of the edit profile page. The edit profile page link is in the upper right of the header.
One side effect is that you may not see three threads in each category on the home page anymore, if some of them are from ignored users.
If you're logged out, you'll see all threads of course, because I won't know who you are and so I won't know who you want to ignore.
Please let me know if there are bugs or if you have suggestions for improvement.
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Patrick,
I don't know if it's too complicated -- but say a thread was started by someone I'm not ignoring.
Now it becomes sticky every time a new comment is posted on the thread. If this new comment was posted by someone I've ignored, I don't see their comment but it still shows up as sticky on the forum page.
Can we avoid having the thread sticky, if the most recent comment was posted by someone we ignore?
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Patrick says
Thank you, Patrick. I hope this helps minimize silly and distorted posts. Those who prefer to limit their own access to information will surely love this.
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Ah, you don't want the threads sorted by latest comment if that latest comment was from someone you're ignoring.
Makes sense, because you'll go to that thread, but then not see that latest comment. Which would be confusing.
But right now in the database, the "latest comment" time of each thread is a single timestamp in the threads table, which is the time of the latest comment. And I sort the threads by that timestamp.
So I'd need to have multiple timestamps for each thread? Not sure how to do that. I wish my brain were bigger, so it would be obvious how to handle this.
I could do a database join of threads and comments, sorting by latest comment for each thread where the comment is not by user X. But that would be really slow, because every time you viewed an index page I'd have to sort all the comments for each thread.
Or I could check each latest comment per thread for an ignored user, and if that latest comment is by an ignored user, just don't show that thread. But maybe that thread should be on top anyway, because the comment before that was still the latest...
I don't see a practical way to do it yet.
I could keep a separate table of reader+thread+latest unignored comment timestamp, but then I'd have to update an awful lot of stuff on each comment...
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How about this:
If the latest comment is from an ignored user, that thread won't be shown in any index.
That's pretty easy to implement, since all I have to do is check the "latest commenter" in the threads when displaying threads on an index page. Won't slow anything down.
The problem is that one case where the comment before that ignored one would also have been latest. So you might temporarily not see an active thread. But if it's an active thread, someone else will probably comment soon, and so the thread will reappear for you.
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Patrick says
Reasonable, thanks Patrick!
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GameOver says
I think they don't hate Dr. Paul. They are just against his message of liberty and the Constitution.
Although Ron Paul may be mentioned in many of the articles and videos, the contents are obviously different. Note that they are not complaining about my non Ron Paul posts but should I now be cautious too when I post real estate articles consistently?
Fortunately, Patrick and folks like you know what spam is.
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Hey Patrick, there is a guy here with a Swastica in his avatar. Certainly you are not going to permit such disgusting language...
EDIT: "GameOver" changed his avatar and removed the Swastica
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They shouldn't complain now because they can simply ignore any threads they don't like. Luckily, Patrick rules!
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GameOver says
+1
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GameOver says
I wonder what could've happened if more people came out earlier who like Ron Paul stuff.
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GameOver is probably correct. It seems to be a growing trend.
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Let's have a Ron Paul Off?
A Pauldown til the last Ron standing.
We can tie a horse up with a thread, and then beat him to death with it.
I'll start...
You know, I got a say, the news segments both Fox and CNN show of Ron Paul, when he is talking. While the news narrative, is negative about Ron Paul, the video footage shows the most populated rallies and events with the most lively crowd there. Everyone is yelling "Yeah!!! Whoo hooo!!" as the news caster's video voice over "Ron Paul still sucks and is expected to lose..."
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GameOver says
Cool! Thanks and Welcome Aboard!
In a way, it's good that those who complain will now be able to ignore threads. The beauty of this is they won't be able to post their comments too. Readers who don't restrict information will benefit more especially the non-members and future members.
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@TheGOP,
Be careful. Watch out for HousingWatcher. He might complain to Patrick about your username thinking that you're heavily promoting the GOP.
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GameOver says
I think that lazy preference to see and hear only the things you want to hear is just part of human nature. So it's a natural exclusion.
The trick is how to get past that innate predisposition to ignore unpleasant truths.
GameOver says
Right! Fear and misunderstanding are not going to unify us or solve any problems. Fear and misunderstanding are useful for dividing us and preventing real change.
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Patrick says
True. That's why the establishment media is pretending to care about us but they seem to forget the power of that little thing called the internet.
See how Michael Savage spread his lies and claims that he understands the American public more than we do:
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1206885
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Patrick says
I've got this one guy ignored, and on the main forum page (/forum), I'm only seeing one Politics thread and two investing threads, instread of the normal three. When I go to /forum/politics/, I only see six threads on the first page. (I think the normal there is ten.)
Apologies if that's a known- or non-issue. I didn't see any comments making that clear either way.
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That's the correct behavior at the moment. The ignored threads are suppressed, but nothing is put in their place.
I should rework things to fill it in more nicely, but that's more complicated that mere suppression.
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Thanks, Patrick. FYI, the potential to starve out other content is not just theoretical:
http://imgur.com/9nZRm (I still only have one person ignored.)
I don't want to come off as griping by saying/posting that. The improvement is vast. Thank you for making the necessary tradeoffs to get it out quickly.
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Holy cow, I didn't realize it was quite that bad.
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To be fair: it's bursty.