Please join us in welcoming BeechTalk's new moderator….

YOU!

For some time now, we have wanted to give the BeechTalk users more control over the content of the site. As such we needed a way for you to encourage the good posts, and discourage those that don't meet BeechTalk standards. From that stemmed our latest feature, unique to BeechTalk: Post Flagging.

Here's how it works...

If you hover your mouse pointer (or tap the button on tablets and smartphones) over the , you will get a menu like the following:



From there, simply click one of the choices shown and, viola, you have flagged that post!

Here are the meaning of the choices you will see:

Like - Use this to let us all know you like the post. When a post accumulates enough "Like" points, all sorts of special things happen to the post and thread. For now, suffice to say, the more like flags, the better for the post, thread, and author!

Dislike - This flag means you disagree with the poster, or the way in which they express their thoughts. This kind of post is not abusive, however, and does not violate BeechTalk terms of service.

Report Abuse - You can now report an abusive post or user using the flag menu. This will send an email to the administrators to review the post for violations of BeechTalk terms of service. In general, you should use this flag to report things such as: Spam, personal attacks, lewd content, etc.

Once you choose a flag for a post, if there are sufficient Likes for the post, you will see the flag count appear in the lower right corner of the post like so:



We should note that all users get exactly one flag per post, and you cannot flag your own posts.

So what is the point of all of this? What benefit is provided to you, the BeechTalk users?

For starters, the posts and threads which receive the most Like flags, will appear in a new search labelled "Best of BT" at the top left of each forum page. The results are sorted by the most liked posts in descending order. Over time, we expect this to allow the cream of all the threads on BeechTalk to rise to the top, making it easier for our users to find great content.

Another benefit is that threads which receive a sufficient number of Likes will appear in italic letters in the forum list and search results. This makes them easy to spot in a long list of threads.



Finally, the threads which are most-Liked will help provide content for the BeechTalk newsletter and other distinctive content publishing.

Thanks for helping make BeechTalk even better by flagging your favorite posts!

The Jeffs