Idea: "This thread/post contains..."

[WinterEdit]

So yeah. Since my latest suggestion about a 'Trusted' icon didn't get resonated by anyone, I've decided to try to have another way to protect one's eyes from whatever the people may discover from the depths of the Internet.

 

Idea:

Add icons or short sentences in the little thread box (which shows the title, user, and the time it's posted) to see what the Opening Post contains. It wouldn't have to be specific, but something along the lines of "This thread contains a .gif/.jpg/.png/etc. image.". One could then think what the image might contain before going to the thread.

 

This similar way could be used against other types of spam. For example, since many bots/people seem to spam links to (malicious) sites, it could show that "This thread contains a link directed outside of GTA Forums." if the link in the post does not have the address of "gtaforums.com".

 

A simply majestic idea, am I right?

[Girish]

One could then think what the image might contain before going to the thread.

What purpose would this serve? You're just guessing what the image might be and you will have to open the topic to know for sure. People are not going to waste time wondering what it might be as opposed to opening the topic and finding out, which is much quicker and conclusive. Why not use the little down arrow besides every topic that pops up the first and the last post in a topic so you know what the topic is about and what's currently going on in it without having to open it?

[WinterEdit]

 

One could then think what the image might contain before going to the thread.

What purpose would this serve? You're just guessing what the image might be and you will have to open the topic to know for sure. People are not going to waste time wondering what it might be as opposed to opening the topic and finding out, which is much quicker and conclusive. Why not use the little down arrow besides every topic that pops up the first and the last post in a topic so you know what the topic is about and what's currently going on in it without having to open it?

 

Could be & you are mostly right.

But then again; there is nothing bad that can happen from this idea. For one person that might not care about the idea and never looks at the possible "warning" of a thread's contents, there might be 10 that do look at it.

 

Take it this way - if it was created, everyone could continue on with their merry life. The people who created the feature could continue their life knowing they did something worthwhile to the masses that enter GTA Forums daily and the people who visit GTA Forums could continue their life knowing that they have yet another method to combat the fools who spam.

 

Wouldn't this idea help you jolly mods too?

It could somewhat drop the amount of rage when you deleted a response thread (to someone's spam) before the spam thread itself, since they wouldn't go to a thread which is shown to be peculiar. Too many times I've seen this on the GTA: Online forum.

 

For example, if the thread had multiple images (as do many spam threads... on GTA: Online forum, at least), it could have two warnings like "This thread contains spam." and "This thread contains .gif/.jpg./png/etc. image.". This way people know that the thread is spam, without having to open anything.

 

It's the little things that improve the site. Sure, you could click the green arrow. But let's be honest - how many do it before going to an unknown thread? The more ways to show the contents of the thread, the better. Even if some of the ways were a bit obscure.

With 50% of the people who would click the little arrow to see the exact things, you have all 100% of the people seeing the less accurate version, aka. my idea here.

Edited November 28, 2013 by WinterEdit

[Girish]

What you're suggesting is based on an ideal scenario where every member is mature enough to realize that they have clicked on a spam topic and decide to leave without spamming it up further. Unfortunately, the general populace here isn't like that. People end up posting in topics like that just for the heck of it no matter how many times we tell them not to reply to spam topics.

 

To me, it seems that the pros of this outweigh the effort required to implement the feature. I'll admit, I have little to no knowledge of coding but a feature like this would be resource intensive. Considering that we had to disable a few useful features to improve performance, I doubt something like this has any potential of getting implemented in the near or far future.

[WinterEdit]

What you're suggesting is based on an ideal scenario where every member is mature enough to realize that they have clicked on a spam topic and decide to leave without spamming it up further. Unfortunately, the general populace here isn't like that. People end up posting in topics like that just for the heck of it no matter how many times we tell them not to reply to spam topics.

 

To me, it seems that the pros of this outweigh the effort required to implement the feature. I'll admit, I have little to no knowledge of coding but a feature like this would be resource intensive. Considering that we had to disable a few useful features to improve performance, I doubt something like this has any potential of getting implemented in the near or far future.

Frankly, I got the idea from the official PlayStation forum. The threads show if there are links/images in the opening post. I don't have any manner of coding experience either but the loading time wasn't really slow due to that, mostly it was slow because of peak times or such.

 

I don't know if the PlayStation forum has more resources available in order to make it happen without huge lag, though. It probably has. Never really thought about it, however.