Crickets

[another_mage]

Here's an idea to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done when cleaning up threads.

Beneath or next to the [+] symbol to mark a post as favorite, add a symbol of a cricket with a number.

If someone sees a troll post, they can click the cricket to add +1 to the number. (i.e. It's the sound of crickets chirping, because the post doesn't really merit any response.)

The catch is, if the person posts to the thread after they click the cricket, their +1 is removed from the cricket score. (i.e.: They responded, so they don't get to be a part of "crickets chirping")

I think part of the drive to respond to a troll post is the "free marketplace of ideas"; if someone says something inflammatory and there are no responses, it looks like the troll's ideas are unchallenged.
This can be especially unnerving when reading something racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.

A visual indicator like [Cricket] (30) shows that thirty people saw it and consciously decided the content of the post didn't merit a response.
It might convince others who would post (and later need to be cleaned up) that clicking on the cricket is better than making work for a Postmonster.

A friend of mine is a musician. He said the worst response from a crowd is nothing. If they cheer, it's great. If they boo or hiss, that's fine too.
But silence and crickets is absolutely the worst. This idea is the forum analog of a silent crowd.

[Enlight_Bystand]

There's already the flag option, which is designed to alert the moderators that something is wrong with the post. Maybe adding a count to that might work, but normally it should be alright to just flag it and leave until they get there and remove the post IMO.

[Laithoron]

The only issue I see with this suggestion is if there are posters who get a kick out of seeing how many people they can irk. If one was incapable of seeing how many crickets they had on their own posts, that would be one thing, but you could easily get around that by logging out or viewing the forums with another browser that's not logged in.

Of course, I can only think of a few people on these forums who seem to fit that bill, so maybe there's something to it.

[Bobson]

The other issue with the suggestion is that you might want to cricket a bad post, and still respond to the original post that the bad post was in response to. Since that would clear the cricket, you're now discouraging trying to continue the thread.