Apologies if this has been asked before, a search didn’t turn anything up.
Say a contentious topichas a couple people essentially saying the same thing over and over again without actually discussing anything, talking over the top of each other. They’re not doing anything ban-worthy, and moderator posts trying to steer things in a more productive direction aren’t helping.
Is there a way or a plugin to prevent just those users from replying further to just that topic?
Slow mode helps when a lot of people are getting heated, but when it’s just a couple people saying “I’m right and you’re wrong” repeatedly, slow mode is unfair to everyone else participating in the thread productively.
What I want, as a moderator, is a way to say “ok, you’ve made your point and this conversation is not productive, it’s time for you to move on from this thread” but actually give that statement enforcement. I can say that, but if my only option for enforcement is a ban, it’s toothless, and so it usually gets ignored
Yeah absolutely, you’ve got to give it some teeth, perhaps if they ignore it silence them for a day and ramp up actions from there.
But to answer the general question, there’s currently not a way to apply user or group based restrictions on a topic level. You could create a group, add them to it, and then prevent the group from replying to topics in the whole category… but understandable if that’s too broad.
There’s a related request here: Restrict Topic to Specific Users — but note it would be a fairly complex feature to implement, so it’s unlikely something we’ll be able to prioritize unless we get many requests for it.
Are you sure? As I understand it, slow mode only hurts people saying a lot. It only imposes a delay between one person’s post and their own previous post. Other people can post unhindered, if they only post once or if they are not posting rapidly.
