I'd really, really, really like an "ignore this thread" option. Please.

[Chuckles the Clone]

It's depressing every time I log in to chowhound to find the pathetic "Things I ate/drank in college that I will never eat again" thread once again at the top of my "my chow" listing. Yes, it was a mistake for me to have, once, a long long time ago, posted something to it. But now I cannot make it go away.

There are about 10 equivalent threads that, every time I log in, are there at the top of the list. It's bad enough that, frankly, I've stopped logging on very much lately. Go ahead, Ms. CH Admin, check my login history. See if it isn't in a prefect inverse relation to the frequency of posts to the now-hopelessly-banal "What did your Mom always have on hand, that you NEVER do?" thread that I mistakenly touched a couple of years ago.

Yes, I'm aware of the different sorting options. This is not a suitable alternative. "Sort by latest post" is almost precisely the right thing except it needs an option to prevent the turds from floating to the top. Which they constantly do.

Alternatively, returning to the old habit of deleting pointless, rambling, negative threads might also suffice. Unless what you're trying to cultivate here is pointless, rambling negativity. Which is what is happening. I couldn't be the only one driven away by this.

[Chuckles the Clone]

I have clicked the "report" button on the following posts. Moderators, please delete all of them immediately. Thank you!

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/549898#3993280
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/579935#4315233
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/579935#4320385
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/405198#2602832
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/601130#4485145
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/601130#4489715
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/438895#2925876
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/438895#2934052
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/438895#2964625
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/438895#2967352
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/5512...

[The Chowhound Team]

Hi:

We're sorry, but we just can't do that.  If we did it for one poster, we'd have to do it for everyone who then might ask, and we don't have the resources to deal with that.

Even if we had unlimited resources, we wouldn't do it.  Deleting posts by one poster affects every poster in the thread who responded or otherwise referred to the deleted post.  Those responses would then make no sense, and would each have to be evaluated to see if it could stand alone, or if it would have to be deleted too. The latter would be unfair to the posters who had taken the time to respond in the first place. Those posters would (understandably) be upset for being deleted for no reason.  

We all have threads we wish we hadn't responded to in our My CHOW lists, and perhaps those threads help us all refrain from wading into new threads that we know we'll one day regret popping up again and again.

[Chuckles the Clone]

You're missing the point.

The point is, "mistakes" (and I did not think they were mistakes at the time) made long in the past should not be allowed to accumulate and, collectively, render your site useless to users. But that's precisely what is happening.

Until this is fixed, I'm out. Your choices in designing the sort feature were poorly thought through. And your decision to not implement some form of "ignore" button was stupid (for lots of reasons, including that it would give you all sorts of extra info on site usage).

Assuming you actually do want to increase usage and readership, I'd suggest looking at actual problems being encountered by users and fixing those actual problems. And doing so at a slightly higher priority than work on goofy 5-star rating systems and half-completed "mobile" sub-sites.

Or maybe I'm wrong and everything is going great. In which case, carry on.

Bye.

[MMRuth]

I use the option to sort my My Chow list by "my post date", which means that threads that I posted on ages ago don't show up on the first page. Hope that helps.

[Melanie Wong]

On a couple occasions I've used "report" for my post in a pile on thread to ask the moderators to delete me. That stops the evergreen thread from taking over mychow.

[Chuckles the Clone]

When I suggested that over on this thread here: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/6494... there was a collective "aghast!" from the moderators.

The old system where ancient threads would bubble to the top of not the first page but the second and subsequent pages of "my chow" worked well, even though it was never clear precisely what the sorting criteria were.