# How to segregate a noisy class of users?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [September 16, 2019, 2:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694 "2019-09-16T14:40:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [September 20, 2019, 3:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/21 "2019-09-20T03:46:01Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> and that if someone complains why they can’t see stuff we can tell em to see if the topic appears when they go to “all”
That seems like a great solution! And “all” didn’t need to show up until you have muted categories or tags.
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### Author:  [@Heather\_Dudley](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heather_Dudley)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2019, 3:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/22 "2019-09-21T03:33:54Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I think we should heavily prioritize the “mute a category for a bunch of people” UI in Discourse, as something staff can easily do.
This is a critically important for my community right now. We have a… very large number of subcategories for a particular category. (Hundreds.) They’re all local communities, so individual categories are irrelevant for the vast majority of users but are of vital importance to those who need them. They’re the cornerstone of our community in many ways. It’s an interesting structure. On our previous software they were “opt in” so they were never displayed unless you specifically subscribed to them. With Discourse, we have to force an opt-out on them and then they have to go hunting for their particular subcategory to unmute it.
I have them all auto-muted by default but that doesn’t do a damn bit of good for people who joined before I did so. (And yes, I entered them one at a time.)
As a side note, it’s also causing some traffic stress on the entire installation itself. We don’t have a better solution for it right now. Discourse wasn’t designed for the number of muted categories we need right now. I’m not sure if the slowness we’re seeing is caused by that entirely, the sudden influx of new users, or a combination of the two. That’s a different issue.
Anyway, all of that to say yes, PLEASE I need to be able to mute categories for a bunch of people.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2019, 3:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/23 "2019-09-21T03:58:00Z")
> [@Heather\_Dudley](#):
>
> We have a… very large number of subcategories for a particular category. (Hundreds.) They’re all local communities, so individual categories are irrelevant for the vast majority of users but are of vital importance to those who need them
Why make them all public, then? Why not have group permissions on them from the get-go then add people to the relevant groups?
Also is this being done speculatively? That is, create a thousand subcategories assuming they will all eventually be active.. even when the reality is that only a handful will ever have meaningful participation levels?
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### Author:  [@Heather\_Dudley](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heather_Dudley)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2019, 4:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/24 "2019-09-21T04:15:50Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Why make them all public, then? Why not have group permissions on them from the get-go then add people to the relevant groups?
That’s a definite possibility for the future. Would it handle that many groups better than the the way we have it set up? I know we broke the About page when we added the managers of these groups to them as moderators. I can discuss this with fellow staff to see if that might be a more viable solution.
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Also is this being done speculatively? That is, create a thousand subcategories assuming they will all eventually be active… even when the reality is that only a handful will ever have meaningful participation levels?
Nope. Most of these regions are years old and have substantial participation rates. We create them as locals volunteer to manage them. While no doubt some have fallen more inactive over the last decade or so, the vast majority are quite active. Memberships for regional subcategories can range anywhere from a dozen or so people to thousands. We have areas for these on the main half of the site but we don’t have the forum side linked yet.
It’s a weirdly structured thing. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Mevo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mevo)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2019, 10:12am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/25 "2019-09-21T10:12:29Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> The equivalent feature for users is called “ignore”. You must attain trust level 2 to have the ignore privilege
I’m not sure that was an answer to my post, but I guess so. If I understood correctly, “ignore” is to not show the posts of the ignored user, even if you read a topic where he posted, whereas “mute” is only to not show notifications and not have the topic appear on the front page when there is a new post from that user (but still be able to read posts when you read the topic). Or did I get that wrong ? If not, my interest is indeed about muting, not ignoring.
@Heather_Dudley Your situation is similar to what I want to do (previous post) on some level. But your problem is about subcategories, mine is about posts from a specific user. Your solution is pretty interesting. I could use that by creating a different user for each topic, then I would be able to do like you, but with the slowing down things you’re mentioning I guess.
In your case, if you mute the whole category, and people start tracking a subcategory in it, wouldn’t that work ? (that was the “priority” thing I was asking about when muting and tracking at the same time)
The solution CodingHorror is proposing seems to have one flaw for you: This would be good for actual users, but wouldn’t it prevent people not part of the group from viewing the topic (visitors, and especially potential new users wanting to join such a group) ? I mean, it’s usually because you had the chance to read that you then want to join …
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### Author:  [@Remah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Remah)
#### Post date: [September 21, 2019, 11:25am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/26 "2019-09-21T11:25:48Z")
> [@Heather\_Dudley](#):
>
> > Why make them all public, then? Why not have group permissions on them from the get-go then add people to the relevant groups?
>
> That’s a definite possibility for the future. Would it handle that many groups better than the the way we have it set up?
You could ask some of the sites that use groups instead of muting categories, as discussed here:
> [@Cross discourse category hosting?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cross-discourse-category-hosting/111417):
>
> Does discourse have the capability to host categories from other instances? Use case is a number of regional discourse instances for my cycling group with a central one that hosts all the regional content in their own categories. Or ability to tag topics for the central site.
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### Author:  [@Mevo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mevo)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2019, 8:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-segregate-a-noisy-class-of-users/128694/27 "2019-09-26T20:27:18Z")
> [@Heather\_Dudley](#):
>
> it’s also causing some traffic stress on the entire installation itself. We don’t have a better solution for it right now
There may be an easy solution you may want to look into (what I am also going to do for me): Hide what you want to with a theme (using CSS). This would remove everything you don’t want from the front page but wouldn’t affect the “unread” page of all users who track one or some of the categories.
If what I mentioned earlier doesn’t work (I would be interested to know btw):
> [@Mevo](#):
>
> In your case, if you mute the whole category, and people start tracking a subcategory in it, wouldn’t that work ?
One guy did some interesting stuff on that front, probably worth some digging (his problem isn’t with subcategories or a user like you or me, but with groups. In the end it’s also quite the same base problem):
> [@Hide categories according to user group membership](https://meta.discourse.org/t/theme-component-hide-categories-according-to-user-group-membership/123497):
>
> Continuing the discussion from [How to split the forum into two main parts (general/groups) and how to display only subcategories I can create a new post in?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-split-the-forum-into-two-main-parts-general-groups-and-how-to-display-only-subcategories-i-can-create-a-new-post-in/108923): Hey everyone, Here is a theme component that does a thing I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but I’d like your comments on the code to improve it, or your suggestions. I don’t believe the code is very good so I don’t want to recommend it before it has been checked by someone else. What it does Hide with CSS all the topics for whic…
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