No Man's Land - board suggestion

In lieu of the religious forums hiatus I done thunk up an idea for a new forum and some extra functionality for moderators.

As of now if issues escalate in a thread after a series of reminders from moderators they either get temporary locked or permanently locked. I assume there is not internal functionality that allows moderators to delegate the task of consulting on whether a thread that is temporarily locked should be re-activated. Outside of moderators being able to message each other, having hidden forums to discuss it, or simply remembering to address the issue later. Perhaps I assume wrong but I still want to posit an idea that I believe will be efficient and I dare say elegant ^_^

I started thinking about this after reading a reply from Adjensen in a related thread I made:

It's a little amusing to see threads sent to "No Man's Land" though. If I was a moderator, I'd probably move every problematic post to the "Conspiracies in Religion" forum, just to be rid of it for a while.

Here is what I am thinking. Create a new forum and call it 'Time Out', 'Time Out Corner, 'The Corner', 'No Man's Land', whathaveyou.

Have it so replies are automatically locked in all threads in this forum. *Such is the case atm with the religion forums*

Now for a bit of extra coding on ATS's part:

Allow Moderators to move it to this new forum with the added functionality of being able to select '1 Day' '3 Days' '7 Days'. Those selections will correspond to functionality added to this forum. If that moved thread was flagged with '3 Days' it will exist in the new forum for 72 hours and then automatically be added back to the originating forum.

Essentially the thread is being put in the time out corner The number of days I picked is arbitrary, I'm only suggesting a simple, quick, and more or less automated means of dealing with these threads.

One might point out that we could skip the new forum altogether and just allow moderators to select a thread and choose '3 Days' for a temp ban, poof goes the thread, and automatically goes back to the originating forum in 72 hours time. I dislike this notion. I think there is value in the ability of members to see what threads are in 'time out' so they can be in the loop. Which leads me to the last bit of added functionality.

In this new forum have it so that the suspended threads visually reflect how many days are left in time out. So for instance, in this forum replace 'Replies' 'Flags' 'Last Replies' with the column named 'Days Remaining' and have it dynamically change to reflect when it was moved and how many days were selected by the moderator.

I hope this made a shred of sense. Just an idea I wanted to throw out there. Feel free to ask for any clarification.

How about the mods actually start moderating. There are too many insults that get posted without any mod interaction. This is why they get out of hand. Closing forums is a sign of failed Mod practices. Isnt this obvious. You have let ats down here. Plesse improve as ats is getting quite a reputation yhese days regarding this.

reply to post by greavsie1971


Problem is, some people take any criticism or differing opinions as an "insult".

i don't know. sounds VERY chrisitan/catholic to me. sounds just like purgatory or maybe having a root canal and the only thing on tv is "the view", please just kill me instead. I can always come back as a zombie poster and THEN you can worry about sticking me in no-mans land. or finding a way to kill zombie posters, hint, silver coated paper clips don't work MUHAHAHAHAHha ! also, is there zombie icon, cause if there're not we need one

tencap77
i don't know. sounds VERY chrisitan/catholic to me. sounds just like purgatory or maybe having a root canal and the only thing on tv is "the view", please just kill me instead.

I cast my vote for calling it "purgatory" LOL. Great idea. You could also add multiple levels of "hell". Obviously it would be hell to have to listen to those guys talking after being cast out of purgatory.

Understand that temporarily freezing threads is already a reality. Purgatory is already a real phenomena on ATS

My idea is not new in that respect, however it does allow for more visibility of the process for the end user.

Purgatory is a cool name for this forum idea too

The Mods have a very difficult job as it is and they also have the power to shut down any thread they want to. If the Mods decided that they wanted a Purgatory Forum that's totally up to the Mods.

reply to post by SayonaraJupiter


If you understand what I am suggesting it's only making the job of moderation easier. Kinda the point of my idea..

Please explain how it is not so Any critique is appreciated.

If the Mods decided that they wanted a Purgatory Forum that's totally up to the Mods.

Well yeah. This was a suggestion. An idea. Nothing more and nothing less. ATS provides us with the ability to voice these suggestions..

I think that it's an excellent idea, being both useful, by temporarily removing problematic threads from forums and forcing a cool off period, and being educational, as people can go look at the threads in the "Purgatory Forum" and see the sorts of behaviour that will cause a discussion to go off the rails.

The difference that I see between this idea and the current "thread locked pending staff review" method is that I've never seen a thread that was so locked later being unlocked. I'm sure that it's happened, but I haven't seen it, and some very good threads have been closed permanently as a result.