Unsubscribe from news/posts about certain games?

Morrandir

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From the latest BG3 thread I have the idea that the Watch could implement a feature making it possible to unsubscribe from news / forum posts for certain games. The effect would be that these news / forum posts would just not be displayed.

As the news are linked to a game in the DB anyway (and I guess the forum post is linked to the newsbit) so the information is there.

Sorry if this has been suggested before. I searched the forums but couldn't find anything.
 
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I have had a similar idea as well, and think this would be a great option for the watch. There are certain games that I have no interest in (such as BG 3) that do seem to get a lot of coverage, and it would be nice to have an option to simply block news bits from the games that I'm just not interested in. (there are certain other games as well, mainly JRPGs which I don't care about) and of course this would only affect the individual user blocking news bits for that particular game… Good suggestion!

Edited to add: This also would work very well - hand in hand - with the relatively new focus on putting more "non-RPG" newsbits here.

I'm not against this, for the record, and sometimes there are games I didn't know about that are given news coverage here, which I find useful and interesting, but that said, often many of the Non-rpg games news coverage for certain non-rpg games, I very likely will not be interested in, for one reason or another. And this option would make things easy to block news bits of popular non-roleplaying games, which may receive many non-rpg news bits.

(as I'm super picky when it comes to games, in general {just to briefly explain})
 
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Thanks for being constructive and trying to find a solution, @Morrandir;. :)

A filter seems a good idea. If that's really the source of the problem.

There's already a filter but it's based on the news type and/or game genre. If the problem is about Early Access, it would be less cumbersome to add an "Early Access" flag in the DB's game rows and add a check box, rather than having a long list of game to opt in/out.

Shouldn't we first identify the problem better? There are a few simple questions nagging at me,
  • first, will that stop people who don't like EA (or whatever this is) to post in those threads? In other words, do they actually want a filter, or do they want to keep posting opinions? (see bjon045's reply)
  • for a filter, is it the Early Access that people don't want to see? Or is it more complicated?
  • the "News Watch" and "Forums Watch" below are not filtered, only the "All News" is. Is that a problem to still see the reactions/posts?
  • is the mix of posts/opinions we see for ex. in BG3 threads, a problem for many people? Because I almost had the impression I was the only one bothered by it, seeing the support given to the people who actually enjoy that mix. If that's just a few of us, we can just decide to learn to ignore that (if possible) or to skip the BG3 / Pathfinder / .. threads
  • conversely, how many people are bothered by BG3-like news? If that's only a few, maybe there are other solutions too.

The moderators of the Watch have a good experience, so maybe that they have a good advice from their perspective?
 
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Maybe I don't understand, but I am not sure how these news bits can "bother" you by simply being on the front page. I just skim over what I'm not interested in, seems like an easy fix with zero effort on the part of the site admins.
 
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This feature is already implemented:

You can hide news from every game you want if you just click on Hide on the right side of the newsbit in the blue box for this game.

You can un-hide it in the general filter settings.

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I also do not understand the issue. If you don't want to read about it, you don't.
If you do, then you should be open to differing viewpoints as that is what a forum is about.

a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.
 
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This feature is already implemented:

You can hide news from every game you want if you just click on Hide on the right site of the newsbit in the blue box for this game.

You can un-hide it in the general filter settings.
Ah, perfect!
Does it also hide the thread in the forum?

Also the question (hinted by @Redglyph;) is, if that's enough for the watchers or if we also need something for "early access news" or something.
 
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Maybe I don't understand, but I am not sure how these news bits can "bother" you by simply being on the front page. I just skim over what I'm not interested in, seems like an easy fix with zero effort on the part of the site admins.

Let me try to explain it better. It's not a super important thing, but just kind of an annoyance that is nice to have an option to get rid of.

Here is an easy way to understand it: In video games, they often - after starting the game - have annoying mini-movies involving game developer logos and ads for the graphics card targeted that they made the game for, and the company that made the game, etc.

Ok, these are brief little movies/ads, they literally take seconds to wait for, but you know what? I would prefer not to watch them every time I load my game to play it.

So I usually will go into the movie section and disable these opening movies so that when I start the game, it goes directly to the main menu. Could I just wait 5-10-20 seconds or so, and then put up with the opening game mini-movies every time?
Sure. Is it the end of the world if I couldn't get rid of them? Nope.

But as I said, I would prefer to just get rid of them in my games, and go directly to the game menu instead of watching them, and so I do. (shrug)
 
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That feature is for the front page only and only for news. It is not on the news forum, nor will it be implemented on the news forums.
The simple reasons for it not being implemented on the news forum is first, the forum software knows absolutely nothing about the game a news thread is for. Secondly the forum software has zero functionality for filtering out threads on a forum like it would be needed here.
Probably the third reason is that it needs a lot of hacking in the forum software to get this done and I simply can't be bothered to implement something like that. No fun, too much work, not seeing the point, ergo no motivation.
 
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Some of this makes me think of OCD type behaviors (of which I have some but mostly mild). There are some things that each individual finds easier to ignore or not think about than others.

The example above on game start up vids is a good one. For me it is so insignificant that going to disable the movies is way more effort than I want to invest in something that bothers me so little in most games. Yet for others its an annoying thing that probably grows in annoyance each time they start the game and soon becomes a "focus" point in their mind.

There are situations where I know I get a certain thought in my head, or something see will bother me, and it becomes very difficult to get it out of my head unless I do something about it.

Maybe people feel compelled to read things they don't want to because of the idea they might miss out on something (and instead would simply prefer not knowing it was there in the first place).

Or, on another principle, instead of being able to shrug and move on their annoyance with a particular subject, person, game, etc., grows instead of being ignored. Each time it comes up they get a bit more annoyed and have a hard time getting it out of their head.

The entire ability to ignore or focus on things is a pretty fascinating psychological subject on its own. Sometimes I can completely ignore certain sounds when trying to sleep ... and other times my mind will totally focus on the sound making it more and more annoying and making sleep impossible.

Some glitches in games I can ignore completely while other ones will drive me nuts if not fixed.

Anyhow somewhat see these news feeds, even people who post, in this regard where some things some people can easily ignore and move on and in other cases can't.

At which point hiding or ignoring something, even if short term, can be helpful.

For me I find it very easy to avoid news I am not interested in, I skip over tons of newsbits every day. I sometimes have a harder time ignoring individuals, however, and then find the ignore tool useful if needed although it's usually short term until my temper dies down.
 
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That feature is for the front page only and only for news. It is not on the news forum, nor will it be implemented on the news forums.
The simple reasons for it not being implemented on the news forum is first, the forum software knows absolutely nothing about the game a news thread is for. Secondly the forum software has zero functionality for filtering out threads on a forum like it would be needed here.
Probably the third reason is that it needs a lot of hacking in the forum software to get this done and I simply can't be bothered to implement something like that. No fun, too much work, not seeing the point, ergo no motivation.
Ah, ok... I just realized that theforum software isn't self-made, but vBulletin. :D
So yeah, I completly understand that it's not feasible then. I for sure wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.
 
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