EN World Privacy Controls: Two-Way Blocking

[Umbran]

Really? This is insulting and petty of you, Umbran.

You do realize that I'm merely restating what the ignore system is designed for, don't you?

It isn't about you, personally. The statement holds of the generic "you", not "you, Ovinomancer, in specific".

 

[Ovinomancer]

You do realize that I'm merely restating what the ignore system is designed for, don't you?

It isn't about you, personally. The statement holds of the generic "you", not "you, Ovinomancer, in specific".

What is it designed for? Intentionally abusing it so that I can continue to respond to a poster while preventing them from even ever seeing it? Or from my ignoring someone and causing their ability to follow a thread to degrade because I've cut context from other posters' responses?

Again, NO PROBLEM with ignore. Or even a block that removes the blocker's posts. The on-the-fly editing of people who are neither the blocker or the blockee to remove context from their posts is, at the very least, frustrating and does not seem to be what a discussion forum intends. Of course, if the intent is to allow others to disrupt the posting of people not blocked, then, sure, I suppose, but this is verging into punishment rather than just muting someone you don't want to hear anymore.

I mean, I have people on my ignore list, so I don't have a problem with the feature. Just this hacked implementation of it.

EDIT: so far, none of the responses have managed to engage the issue I'm trying to bring up, and instead assume I'm complaining about being blocked. This is NOT IT. If this is your initial assumption, try again, you've missed it.

 

[TheSword]

What is it designed for? Intentionally abusing it so that I can continue to respond to a poster while preventing them from even ever seeing it? Or from my ignoring someone and causing their ability to follow a thread to degrade because I've cut context from other posters' responses?

Again, NO PROBLEM with ignore. Or even a block that removes the blocker's posts. The on-the-fly editing of people who are neither the blocker or the blockee to remove context from their posts is, at the very least, frustrating and does not seem to be what a discussion forum intends. Of course, if the intent is to allow others to disrupt the posting of people not blocked, then, sure, I suppose, but this is verging into punishment rather than just muting someone you don't want to hear anymore.

I mean, I have people on my ignore list, so I don't have a problem with the feature. Just this hacked implementation of it.

EDIT: so far, none of the responses have managed to engage the issue I'm trying to bring up, and instead assume I'm complaining about being blocked. This is NOT IT. If this is your initial assumption, try again, you've missed it.

I think where you lost me was when you were claiming it damages the integrity of the thread. Where in fact the only people it affects are the person blocked and the blocker. Both of whom are presumably aware of the fact and can therefore compensate, and neither of which probably garner a lot of sympathy.

 

[Umbran]

Intentionally abusing it so that I can continue to respond to a poster while preventing them from even ever seeing it?

Can anyone find us a verified instance of this happening? Morrus has already noted that third-party applications like Tapatalk may not respect this, and that we cannot help. But otherwise, the point of two-way blocking is to prevent that.

Again, NO PROBLEM with ignore. Or even a block that removes the blocker's posts. The on-the-fly editing of people who are neither the blocker or the blockee to remove context from their posts is, at the very least, frustrating and does not seem to be what a discussion forum intends.

So, you have Poster A and Poster B. They have a spat. A blocks B.

Poster C comes along, and quotes A. Poster B can see the post by C, but cannot see the quote, and doesn't understand what C is talking about.

That's the situation you've observed? Presumably, you are B in this scenario?

I think that's as intended. If B does see the quote from A, then we get into the possibility of passive-aggressive posting at each other through proxies, which is seven different kinds of nonsense.

I will note that A does not put in the block for the purpose of making reading C difficult. It isn't like anyone using this is twirling their mustache saying, "Bwahahaha! Now, I will annoy a person blocking them, and then having a bunch of people quote me! My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity!" The intent is for A to be invisible to B. Sometimes, you experience the "negative space" of A, and maybe that's annoying. But it is unavoidable. I'm sorry if you find it a problem, but it comes from allowing people to protect themselves.

You may not believe in allowing folks to protect themselves. However, it is an often-requested feature, and Morrus believes in it. So, you may have to just live with being outvoted on this one.

 

[Morrus]

Interstingly, I can, with these settings, use block in a way that let's me continue to see and respond to a poster, but they cannot see any of this. That seems like very unintended operation.

I can't really think of a use-case for replying to somebody with the intention that they not know you've replied. But you can do that anyway by just logging out. If people abuse the system, we'll have words with them and take that specific feature away from them if we have to. I can't imagine it becoming a widespread problem.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Can anyone find us a verified instance of this happening? Morrus has already noted that third-party applications like Tapatalk may not respect this, and that we cannot help. But otherwise, the point of two-way blocking is to prevent that.

As a test, I've ignored Sword, but set the settings so that I can still see their posts. You can ask them if they can see me.

So, you have Poster A and Poster B. They have a spat. A blocks B.

Poster C comes along, and quotes A. Poster B can see the post by C, but cannot see the quote, and doesn't understand what C is talking about.

That's the situation you've observed? Presumably, you are B in this scenario?

Yes.

I think that's as intended. If B does see the quote from A, then we get into the possibility of passive-aggressive posting at each other through proxies, which is seven different kinds of nonsense.

And this isn't already addressed by the mods? Or, for instance, ignoring someone and then continuing to respond to the last point? Ignore has been used passive aggressively for ages -- it's a little late in the game to sudden be concerned about that. Plus, there's nothing stopping this from happening, just now you get to make up the positions, which, to me, seems a tad worse.

But, that aside, why should me making a unilateral choice include you having to do more work to understand a thread that you haven't been moderated in?

I will note that A does not put in the block for the purpose of making reading C difficult. It isn't like anyone using this is twirling their mustache saying, "Bwahahaha! Now, I will annoy a person blocking them, and then having a bunch of people quote me! My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity!" The intent is for A to be invisible to B. Sometimes, you experience the "negative space" of A, and maybe that's annoying. But it is unavoidable. I'm sorry if you find it a problem, but it comes from allowing people to protect themselves.

You may not believe in allowing folks to protect themselves. However, it is an often-requested feature, and Morrus believes in it. So, you may have to just live with being outvoted on this one.

You'd be surprised. The person that has blocked me has expressed explicitly in the past that they like block because it does include a punishment factor in making threads more difficult to read. This was under the old system, where post counts got thrown off and made threads show many more pages than could be read can so caused some navigation issues, but they were very happy about that at that time because they enjoyed the idea that blocking caused some small misery. I can't imagine they've changed their opinion here.

And, again, to be perfectly clear, I have no real issue with a block feature -- I mean, so long as it doesn't break board functionality (like the last one) or as long as it doesn't create issued for the blocked person in being able to follow a thread (as this one does). The idea, to me, is that blocking should be a one to one engagement -- it should not, ever, impact my ability to have conversations with others.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I can't really think of a use-case for replying to somebody with the intention that they not know you've replied. But you can do that anyway by just logging out. If people abuse the system, we'll have words with them and take that specific feature away from them if we have to. I can't imagine it becoming a widespread problem.

Really? All of the stupid, passive-aggressive bad behavior you've dealt with for years and you can't see a use case for someone doing this? And it's hard to detect -- if I note it happening from someone that's blocked me, it's not like I can report their post -- I can't see it!

I'll agree it's not a serious concern, though, outside of those interested in bad behavior already. However, I'm not sure that the functionality here is useful -- is there a strong enough case for disrupting posts of others just to prevent someone from even seeing quoted text? To me, this is the issue -- my posts are being edited by the software without my knowledge. If I happen to quote someone, and another poster has been blocked by them, then my posts are then edited for that person and I'm not aware of that.

Again, the old block system was better than this, and it broke functionality to a small degree. I'd rather have that feature. Or, alternatively, a block feature (since it appears this is a necessary thing) that doesn't edit people's posts without their knowledge.

 

[Umbran]

And this isn't already addressed by the mods?

We recognize that the site rules don't cover everything. A person can bug the crumbs out of you, without that person violating the site rules in an actionable way. It is often based on individual approaches to conversations, such that two people can rub each other the wrong way, but no third party has much of an issue with either of them. Blocking covers this space in ways that moderation can't.

 

[Ovinomancer]

We recognize that the site rules don't cover everything. A person can bug the crumbs out of you, without that person violating the site rules in an actionable way. It is often based on individual approaches to conversations, such that two people can rub each other the wrong way, but no third party has much of an issue with either of them. Blocking covers this space in ways that moderation can't.

No, I meant acting in a passive-aggressive way sufficient to disturb board functionality. I'm all for an ignore feature -- as I've noted, I use it.

 

[Gradine]

I mean, I'm just happy that I can set it so that people who would deny my humanity will no longer be graced with my incredible content