RSS feeds for individual threads.

It's barbaric that in this day and age I have to actually come to the site and manually scroll to the end of a thread to see new comments.

That is all.

Wait - and an "ignore" function for posters!

I know all the arguments against - but I think it would really raise the tone of the some of the threads.

Right. Neither of those are what you asked for in your post. But... there you are.

Like the idea of a UK Politics section. Perhaps separate out US domestic and International politics as well?

Do you think separating out US domestic and International politics might lead to too much balkanisation?

Good point.

What I was looking for was simply a way of separating discussion of US domestic politics from more emotive topics like Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan... (Although, obviously, there is considerable overlap). A Conflicts/Security section would probably work just as well.

If an ignore option is added then ideally it should be reversible as well - so that if a couple of posters are bogging down a thread with uninteresting bickering (or just spamming the forum) we can block them out for a while and avoid missing out on the more interesting posts.

While we're discussing ideas - maybe a "recommended" section, where the mods/technical boffins/whoever can put threads they think reflect well on the forums? As a way of enticing newbies?

Good luck with the whole relaunch.

It’s a bit difficult to imagine how the “new features, a new structure, a new look” will actually look, perhaps that’s why you get so few answers. I’d rather first have a look, and complain, no applaud of course, later. Can you give us a bit more of an idea?

Not too much balkanisation, please. Now we have almost all discussions in 2 categories, conflicts and democracy&power, and we are digressing anyway whenever we can, so what’s the use of categories?

Matt, just curious: how long is your list of candidates for the ignore button?

Momo - the suggestions which would be most helpful now concern the new structure for the forums. We can certainly create the new structure first and then get your opinion - and of course, seeing how it works in practice will be important - but it's not ideal to then have to change it again, as it's then not clear where old threads should go.

Commenting on the new look and features only once you can see them certainly makes sense - they'll be visible on the main site from Monday, and it would be possible for us to hold off on upgrading the forums 'til after you've seen them there.

I think that's sensible owly (and ties in to Momo's point about most discussion currently occurring in conflicts and democracy&power). What minimal set of forums would you imagine? I think there's a good case for having a forum for 'US Politics' as that's the subject of so much discussion and is a less vague description than 'democracy & power'.

I shouldn’t have called it “digressing” (we do that too).

The recent thread on neo-liberal attacks on all sorts of social security is a good example. Matt calls it thread on health care, though it was started as a “American citizens scaring socialist president” thing.

Which category fits? Do we want to sort the threads along geographical terms (which would have been US politics) or thematically? The more I think about it: we should leave geography out of it.

Why would you need an ignore function ? This is a discussion forum, not a bloody chat room. If you don't want to read what someone has written, don't read it. Such a function (ignore) is against the spirit of the forums and smacks of being anti-democratic.

I do not see the traffic in these forums to warrant very much chopping up. The traffic is not a fraction of what it use to be - and I speak as possibly the longest contributor. I would think about no more than 4 general headings. Anything more and it will become a bother to find things.

As to your traffic as opposed to Guido look at the amount of comment he gets. He has the most widely read political blog. Other big blogs are Ian Dale and ConservativeHome, possibly also CoffeeHouse at the Spectator. From what I can see, while this is a different site, it isn't in their league.

Actually I was one of the more frequent posters; I have not been around (at home with net access) of late that's all. And there has been little worth commenting upon.

The ability to filter posts is a different matter to being able to ignore a poster. That is actually what you want.

As this is a 'left of centre' site one is not surprised at 'undemocratic' activities. After all it is the left which have just foisted upon us all the Lisbon Treaty having promised a referendum which was promised in 2005.

If you are looking for a healthy forum community environment here and not the dysfunctional one you see here today you might want to look at having the moderators be more involved in discussions that they think are getting out of hand - and that intervening should be done through pm's. They should also be united not argue with each other.
An ignore tab is fine but that doesn't replace what moderators can do. If you only rely on ignore tabs it wont encourage new people to visit this site because if you lurk here you wont see anything that suggests you won't be ignored or attacked if you decided to post.

I wonder what would happen to the complaints about not reading the entire thread before commenting?
With so few people posting here it will be obvious and that will most likely cause the few remaining people here to leave.

Isnt the idea is to encourage discussion not to shield one person from a brief moment that disrupts his comfort zone? I object to the effort to inject more dyfunction into the forums although that will probably add to the surreal entertainment this place occasionally provides.

It would also be nice if opendemocracy didnt allow someone to flood the forums with posts that that person never intends to comment on. It presents the forums as a storage facility for one persons suggested reading material. Not a place for discussion.

It would also be helpful to be able to change the color of the forums in your account settings. Like to have the option of for instance a black background and white words? Other forums have that.
Since I had optic neuritis 8 years ago, I need to highlight everything I read to avoid having the white be a distraction.

How about our recent comments be on the front page along with the others?

Now, I'm just about certain what I've said will be ignored like every other suggestion I've made about this If so, in the future opendemocracy can say who they aren't requesting an input from and I won't have to waste my time on this. Thanks.