Invisible or semi-invisible posts :)

[Former Member]

I mentioned this in an unrelated thread but several responses down so doubt any/many saw it.

Don't know if this is practical or desirable, but what if there was a way to mark a post as invisible.

What do I mean by that you ask?

What if I could reply to a post and mark it as invisible. An e-mail notification with my response would go out to anyone that is watching the topic, but would not result in a visible post to the forum.

Might be useful for something where I just wanted to seek a clarification about someone else's response, suggest a change/correction to their response. Sometimes I make a mistake (don't mean a typo, but bad/incomplete answer - rare but does happen, or maybe I just misinterpreted the original question)) and this way someone could let me know to clarify/correct/expand my earlier response with out having to add more posts to the thread.

Maybe instead of calling this an invisible post, maybe it should be considered a "Notify Topic Watchers".

Anyone else think of a way to use something like this?

One problem might be that some folks would mark something invisible that really should be part of the visible thread. Now what do you do?

[Former Member]

Hi Pizzaman + others,

What if those invisible/semi-invisible posts would be comments instead of posts. So that while viewing the thread users could chose to view the thread with or without comments? Those comments/(invisible/semi-invisible posts) could have for example other color theme as a normal post in a thread so it would be easier for users to see which posts is a comment and which is a normal post..

Maybe this could be used as a way to remind users to give points??

errr.. is it making any sense??

Would these comments,invisible/semi-invisible posts increase the amount of posts for user? And what about points?? Is it getting too complicated to make it work and same time user friendly? Would it make the forum more easy or hard to read? hmm..

Regards,

Ville

[Former Member]

Ville -

Designating a posted response as comment is another idea. Think if it was available, a color scheme as you describe would be desirable. Default would probably be need to be to NOT display comments. I think you're right, that displaying comments might start to make things confusing. What is or is not a comment? I really envisioned it is a mechanism to communicate more directly with folks specifically watching the thread.

Here's another possible use, and I'm not sure if it doesn't go against the purpose of sharing information:

Often you see a post where someone offers to email something to someone, and then the next thing you know 18 other people respond that they want the document too. The next thing you know, you are running a customer fufillment operation trying to keep up with requests for documents. An invisible post could be used to limit the visibility of such an offer to e-mail something, by restricting it to those that either participated in the topic, or thought it worthwhile enough to "Watch" it.