I wouldn't exclude them by tags but by category and maybe by keywords (titles and subtitles). there is still no complete concept for that. I don't get the point. Excluding Sci-fi would exclude all Sci-fi. Maybe you would still see some stories from categories you dislike but no story from a category you like would disappear.
What I meant was that because some stories with themes people dislike are classified as Sci-fi or fantasy due to their setting, the only way to be sure not to see them would be to cut a really huge chunk of the site by excluding this category too. It was a lot clearer in my head. You didn't propose to restrict it by tag but I'm pretty sure someone did, here or in another post where it is proposed. And it will inevitably be requested if we install this block feature. And it is in my opinion à bad idea. The thing about these big stories I was talking about is that they often don't fit well in any category and end up in some that few people would block, even if a lot of them contain at least a few threads that à lot of people do not like. I think the system would be ineffective based on categories and detrimental if based on tags. But it's just my opinion and I'm a firm believer that no one ever died from seeing something they don't like.
no disadvantage to the compared to the current behavior. Readers should only exclude categories they dislike. You probably mean this. Well, story tags (predefined) could be used for that purpose. It would be the other way round. These stories could have a few chapters not related to the category which could be enjoyable for the reader but if the reader doesn't even read the introduction page, they surely won't jump to chapter 10. No, though finding needles in a haystack is much easier if you can hide the hay.
Who would want to start a story mid-way through? If one branch is what they enjoy and there are several branches to get to that chapter 10 that could send the reader to sections they do not like. How do you propose to make sure that doesn't happen?
The linked suggestion is for active search (and only has one vote so far). Excluding content from the front page is rather a passive filtering. You can't. If that happens, the reader would probably stop reading when reaching a theme they dislike or accept that the theme is necessary due to the decisions they made at previous branching points and live with it. (To completely avoid chapters with disliked themes, this suggestion might be useful) If some way of filtering is used, it should only cut out stories which are definitely unwanted. You will always have "like", "dislike" and "maybe". Stories which could "maybe" include a disliked theme should be visible.
Explain... If someone downloads a story then the author pumps out 1 to 100 chapters do they have to download the whole story again every single time?
How would that even work? How would you decide when a story is "Finished"? Would you work on it on a by thread basis or what? TBH I think a more useful ability would be to be able to mark a thread a "finished" from the side of the author.
I think that is a little problem with the way of handling the reader suggestions as there is no good way to discuss them or get more information. Even comments aren't reaching the suggesting reader, so you have to write a personal message or answer directly to the suggester's comment which results in about 70 users getting a notification about a new comment to their comment
It is currently not possible to mark chapters as branch ends and you neither can block adding chapters, so this subsequent suggestion wouldn't even possible to implement. In my opinion, on-site image hosting is a horrible idea because you would have to handle both legal and copyright issues without real benefits.
