We’re pulling the cover off a new feature for the LGF Blog — a “timeout” block, instead of a permanent block. It’s a temporary block on a registered lizard’s account that expires in 24 hours.

Intense consultation, lengthy meetings, and heinously expensive focus-grouping resulted in the consensus that we need more flexibility in handling the situation when discussions turn into flame wars. The idea is to let lizards have a chance to cool down and think about whether they want to push it to the point of losing their account, before it gets to that point.

The focus groups couldn’t tell us (or even estimate — what are we paying them for?) how many meltdowns will be avoided by this feature, and if someone comes back even madder and more abusive after a timeout, Stinky Beaumont and crew will be merciless. But more options for managing the irascible lizardoid community are always good.

If your account gets a timeout, this is what you’ll see when you try to log in:

This account is temporarily blocked - please try again later.

This means you have to sit in the corner and be quiet. It’s your quiet, alone time, just for you.

When you settle down and start to get tired, you may want to have a meal. Go ahead, have dessert too. Brush your teeth, get some sleep, and check back in tomorrow, when that SOB who had you ready to throw a shoe at your monitor doesn’t seem quite as important any more.

Meanwhile, the Lizard Lounge is now open for a surreal Sunday evening.

If you have an LGF account, log in and then click the green magnifying glass in the row of icons at bottom right of this post to enter LGF Spy in Lounge Mode. This is a private thread; comments are only visible to registered, logged in users.

And registration is now open for a limited time. The short version of the rules:

• Don’t register with a proxy.
• Don’t register with a throwaway email address.
• Don’t register more than one account at a time.
• Don’t be a jerk.
• Don’t be a troll.
• Don’t be a sock puppet. Stinky hates sock puppets.
• Do play nice.

And then everything will be groovy.

UPDATE at 7/26/09 7:34:11 pm:

The registration door slams shut, with 31 hatchlings.