Board Game Arena

Why is there no mute button in the chat?

I am currently in a game where two of the players are flaming each other. It's really toxic. I would like to just end the game but I can't without harming my own karma. There is no option to mute them or mute the chat, either. I can report them ... after the game is over. What are my options in a game like that? And why is there no mute option??

Yes & yes. How can BGA ask people to not "engage" with toxic players in chat when they don't provide a mute button. For everyone's benefit, and theirs, they should add the ability to mute all users in a game session.

yfimc wrote: ↑03 December 2023, 19:56 Why is there no mute button in the chat?

I am currently in a game where two of the players are flaming each other. It's really toxic. I would like to just end the game but I can't without harming my own karma. There is no option to mute them or mute the chat, either. I can report them ... after the game is over. What are my options in a game like that? And why is there no mute option??

There is nothing you can do with the current site functionality, other than put a Post-It over the chat so you can ignore it until the game is over and then red thumb (and report, if appropriate) those two. I think I saw someone post a plug-in that will mute the chat a while ago. So basically, only a third-party work around exists.

This has been asked for before:
"Players should be able to mute chat in all games" (2 years)
"Mute fonction" (2 years)
"allow muting of specific players in chat" (2 years)
"Possibility to hide/mute table chat to prevent provocations and cheating !" (12 months)
"Option to mute chat" (7 months)
"Mute or turn off the chat" (3 months)
"Mute button" ( 3 months)
"Mute feature in game chat" (40 days)

As for why there is no option, we cannot know what was in the mind of whoever developed the chat function. Only they know "why" it wasn't there to begin with. Why is there no mute function now? I'm not a professional developer, but I've done enough programming to know that if a feature was not part of your original design, it is not always trivial to add it, even if it seems simple to outside observers. Even worse, the original developer may not even be around, so someone else might have to do it, and it's hard enough returning to your own code years later, let alone someone else's.

This may be the reason. Or maybe they just don't care. Who knows....

I have found that while I cannot "publicly" red thumb a player in a game I am currently in, I can red thumb them for "personal reasons" while the game is still going to prevent myself getting matched with them in another game. It is my understanding that red thumbing a player should prevent you from seeing their messages, so you could try red thumbing both for personal reasons and see if that works.

puzzud wrote: ↑25 January 2024, 05:24 How can BGA ask people to not "engage" with toxic players in chat when they don't provide a mute button.

If there was a mute button, they wouldn't need to ask people not to engage, they would tell you to just use the mute button or whatever other solution they could provide. So indeed, they ask people not to engage because there's no other technical solution.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑25 January 2024, 06:30 I think I saw someone post a plug-in that will mute the chat a while ago. So basically, only a third-party work around exists.

Yes, chat can be blocked with UBlock or similar add-on in Firefox/Chrome. CSS filters also should work.