The Ethics of Two Way Ignore

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You can go into your settings and say which tags you don't want to see. I don't see Pathfinder threads, for instance, since I have very little interest in it.

Not quite the same as a thread-level ignore feature, but if there are topics you just don't care about, you do have the tools to pre-emptively zap a lot of them. (And the more tags that get added, the more robust that feature becomes.)

 

[Riley]

You can go into your settings and say which tags you don't want to see. I don't see Pathfinder threads, for instance, since I have very little interest in it.

Not quite the same as a thread-level ignore feature, but if there are topics you just don't care about, you do have the tools to pre-emptively zap a lot of them. (And the more tags that get added, the more robust that feature becomes.)

I like the firehose-of-everything that is the “latest posts” feed. I’m potentially interested in anything from any of the subforums, and any tag.

It’s just the occasional thread that I want to specifically kill - and thus far, ignoring the first poster of that thread is the only method I’ve found to accomplish that. And I feel a little bad about using it on a specific user.

 

[Nikosandros]

I like the firehose-of-everything that is the “latest posts” feed. I’m potentially interested in anything from any of the subforums, and no matter what tags.

It’s just the occasional thread that I want to specifically kill - and thus far, ignoring the first poster of that thread is the only method I’ve found to accomplish that. And I feel a little bad about using it on a specific user.

The capability of ignoring threads would be quite useful, I agree.

 

[cbwjm]

Yep, I'd be ignoring all of those survivor threads. I guess I already do, but imagine how much easier it would be to click on a thread, select "ignore thread", and then never have to worry about it ever again.

 

[Scribe]

Yep, I'd be ignoring all of those survivor threads. I guess I already do, but imagine how much easier it would be to click on a thread, select "ignore thread", and then never have to worry about it ever again.

I have inquired on this, I dont think its an option.

 

[cbwjm]

I have inquired on this, I dont think its an option.

Yeah, probably not. It'd be a nice to have but it's not really a must have feature.

 

[Umbran]

The capability of ignoring threads would be quite useful, I agree.

Lots of things would be useful. But we aren't in a position to implement and maintain much in the way of functionality that isn't core to Xenforo.

 

[Starfox]

I don't have a problem with it, personally. There's another option available to offset some of the perceived negatives, so that offers a bit of flexibility.

Unfortunately, "ignore" is just one of those features that's really hard to implement in a truly effective / perfectly fair way that accounts for all its legitimate use cases. Someone, somewhere is going to be "adversely" impacted by it, no matter what.

So imho, the best policy is just use it however it works best for you, and not worry to much about adversely impacting someone else's experience. That's their problem, not yours. You can always un-ignore them after a little cooling off time.


eta: Maybe it's the un-ignore side that causes some people some issues, too? It's easy to ignore someone, but also easy to forget about it. Being proactive about thinning one's own ignore list periodically might assuage some of the problems experienced by others, at least over the medium- and long-term.

On other fora there is an option to ignore someone for a limited time, one or several months. This might help those of us who easily forget to un-ignore people after a time.

 

[CapnZapp]

There is one aspect where I'm at genuinely curious about how it came to be like that, the thought process during development.

When the two way blocking removes a quote entirely, without even leaving the slightest hint content was removed.

Person A puts person B on Ignore. Person C replies to one of person A's posts. From person B's perspective, it appears as if person C is talking to ghosts, or himself, or a random previous post.

On several occasions I've witnessed confusion arising out of this. You could argue person C becomes a victim to actions taken by somebody entirely different. Even a neutral "content removed" label (with no way to learn more) would avoid that, presumably without weakening the strength or purpose of the two way block function.

I wonder if there was a reason Xenforo went with the blank slate approach, where you can't even tell a post is actually a reply to something that's gone...?

For instance, you have no way of telling if this post is replying to some earlier post, or if it starts a new train of thought.

(Of course, you could always read the thread while logged-out, and you would then see that no, I am not quoting anybody here.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There is one aspect where I'm at genuinely curious about how it came to be like that, the thought process during development.

When the two way blocking removes a quote entirely, without even leaving the slightest hint content was removed.

Person A puts person B on Ignore. Person C replies to one of person A's posts. From person B's perspective, it appears as if person C is talking to ghosts, or himself, or a random previous post.

On several occasions I've witnessed confusion arising out of this. You could argue person C becomes a victim to actions taken by somebody entirely different. Even a neutral "content removed" label (with no way to learn more) would avoid that, presumably without weakening the strength or purpose of the two way block function.

I wonder if there was a reason Xenforo went with the blank slate approach, where you can't even tell a post is actually a reply to something that's gone...?

For instance, you have no way of telling if this post is replying to some earlier post, or if it starts a new train of thought.

(Of course, you could always read the thread while logged-out, and you would then see that no, I am not quoting anybody here.)

I agree, that if one noticed then it could be disconcerting. I am not sure that I have ever noticed. Either because only a small number of people have me on ignore, I rarely interact with them or I do not pay enough attention to notice. So I have no idea how big a problem this is.
It also bugs me that I can accidentally find out that someone has me on ignore. Mostly by reading a thread to the end and clicking on the next page with only one post from someone that has me on ignore and finding that this page has no post.
I feel that if the system is designed that the person doing the ignoring can simply vanish from the notice of the person being ignored then the system should not reveal that there is ignoring going on.
Of course it bugs me a little that, given that the person being ignored gets no feedback at all there is no way to be aware of what specifically is the source of the problem.