Ok, I've brought this up before, but we apparently have a new form of trolling going around, and I think it's a good solution.
If the Bungie.net site had two tiers of accounts, verified and unverified, it could prevent individual (or small groups of) users from being able to take advantage of the global mute/hide features.
A verified account would be an account that's uniquely identifiable to an individual person. An easy way to do this, would be to send a text containing a code to the user's phone number.
It's much harder, and much less cost effective to sign up for additional cell phone lines than free email accounts. You'd need a way to filter out things like Google voice or other "fake" numbers.
A more robust system would be to use a credit card. You wouldn't have to actually charge anything, it would just be used to verify a unique person.
However it happens, only mutes/hides from verified accounts would be used to calculate whether or not a thread gets globally hidden/muted. Unverified accounts could still mute and hide like they do now, so nothing changes for the users who can't verify for whatever reason.
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Great idea on papervbut I'm not too sure how well application would go. Not every B.net user has a credit card, and I'm sure there is at least one or two without a phone. It's a very good idea and here's what I'd like to add to it. What if to become a verified account, Bungie sent you a physical letter in the mail? I know it's exspensive and a bit old fashioned but it could be a great piece of advertisement.