[hackuser]

dang:

(I don't need answers directly, but perhaps a FAQ would help. ...)

1) It's good to see threads managed more agressively; thanks. I can think of another benefit from higher quality discussions: I see a few Mozillians here and of course they aren't the only vendors to participate; perhaps more would come and be more engaged if there was less nonsense. And that would attract more people who are interested in valuable, informative interaction, which would attract more vendors, which would ... etc.

2) "marked it off-topic": What does this mean in practice?

3) While the issue with Eich is off-topic, so is the issue with Pocket and many other threads and subthreads. I don't understand the distinction, unless that the former is more inflamatory, more outdated, and more tired. Yawn.

[dang]

Re #2: "marking off-topic" penalizes the subthread so it falls lower on the page. That's the purpose of detaching it as well.

Re #3: we marked that subthread off-topic because a user emailed to complain about it. Didn't see the other ones.

General note: we started doing this as an experiment and it's clear by now that it has improved thread quality, so we're probably going to write code to support it, and let the community mostly manage it, probably by generalizing the flagging mechanism.