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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 8032233" data-attributes="member: 2525">Right, I guess some background is lacking.'Sorry about that. [Edit - and I see you already got plenty of answers which I hadn't read when I replied...whoops].We're not referring to this current proposal for blocking. We're talking about a version which used to exist here which had unexpected technical ramifications which resulted in something more than "keeps the two people from communicating or seeing each other". Umbran was saying (I am paraphrasing) that he didn't know why it was so bad but it was very unpopular. And I was responding it was so unpopular because it did so many weird things other than just keep two people from communicating, and people knew about those unintended things, and were using it to mess with other people's abilities to use the system.So for example, if someone blocked you under the old blocking system, you could no longer click the "jump to first unread comment in a thread" icon in any thread where the person who blocked you had any posts, or the "view unread threads" icon in any forum here where the blocker had any threads they had started, or the "view post where you were quoted" notification in any thread where the blocker had posted even if they had not started that thread. All of those technical systems broke when someone blocked you. And people knew it had those effects, and could use that knowledge to mess with you. And it was hard for the mods to detect that was being done - it was even difficult to explain the effect sometimes because mods could not be blocked and so had never even seen it in use and how it impacted navigating the message board.My view on the new proposed blocking is that as long as it does not hamper any other navigational board features, then it's fine. But if it makes navigating the message board more difficult for anyone because it can hamper the use of those tools I mentioned above, then we should not enact that blocking feature because no new feature should hamper old features that people use which have nothing to do with blocking. Nobody should be "punished" by blocking in a manner which has nothing to do with communicating with that particular blocking person. Whatever underlying system which counts threads and posts to allow you to jump to a point in the system which identifies new threads, new posts, or posts where you are quoted or called out with an @ symbol should still function as intended after the new blocking feature is added. If those counting systems start to function poorly after the blocking feature is added, then I don't want that new blocking feature.</blockquote>

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