Can you block/ignore users?

[Norilinde]

@Spire

I’ll take it up with Discourse I guess.

It seems like this entire thread is a discussion about something that no one reading this thread has the power to change regardless of whether or not a consensus could be reached.

@IvoryOwl

This is something I’ve asked before and it seems the answer is the same as before: You can’t. Plain and simple. You either tough it up and chose to ignore them of your own accord or report them if they crossed the line. Other than that you can’t do anything. I know it’s a Discord philosophy and all that but it’s one I don’t agree with and never will.

I don’t block people nilly-willy or just because I felt like it. A few isolated arguments and disagrements aren’t enough of a justification for me to block someone, in fact, I can probably count with both hands the number of people I blocked in the past 10 years, that weren’t bots and or spammers. Still, that’s my decision to make and no one else’s. Honestly sometimes I think this “philosophy” was made by those like to talk horse-raddish all day and want others to listen to them with no means to fight back.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean I have to deal with other’s BS. I don’t care if you think I could learn something from it, if a conversation escalates to the levels it usually does (which tends to happen a few times), there’s rarely something to be learned from it at that point (or those interested in listening). Whoever came up with the idea that blocking only serves to “protect one’s bubble” IMO has a very narrow-minded view.

I too agree with the need for the ability by individuals to mute or ignore other individuals.

@dfabulich

At that point, we should close the topic, or split posts off to a new topic; we do that in many cases.

I agree with the Discourse philosophy against muting users in public threads.

Imagine going to a park full of litter, but each time you pick up a piece of litter, it only gets cleaned up for you; everybody else has to clean up the litter for themselves to have a clean park. All new visitors to the park see a park covered in trash.

Our goal is to clean up the park for everyone, so no one has to clean it up for themselves.

@dfabulich In my opinion, this does not address that there are things which do not qualify as against the rules as they are now but still negatively impact the forum environment for many users.

@IvoryOwl

Besides, if you’re really worried about “cleaning the park for everyone” then peraphs that could be solved with a simple “Report + Block” attitude. It’s a middle-road.

I think the forum as it stands now alternates between extremes. In the time I have been reading these forums, there has only been one person that I seriously wanted to mute or ignore. Being unable to find such an option, I considered suppressing notifications of that person’s activity but the problem is that the reason I see that person’s posts in the first place is that the person would comment on threads that I found worth reading. I refuse to stop reading an entire thread merely because someone other than the author made abhorrent or unintelligible comments. Apparently, I was not the only one to feel that way as that person ended up banned. However, banning is an overly extreme reaction that effectively mutes that user for every other user regardless of whether or not they wished such. I also know a few authors commented about valuing that user’s comments as being a viewpoint the author would not otherwise have seen. I must admit that on very rare occasions I found myself agreeing with an insightful comment by this person or grateful for some bit of information I would never otherwise have learned. Currently, users effectively get ignored by the entire community regardless of individual wishes or entire intelligent discussions get closed down rather than merely allowing anyone who feels offended to opt out. If an ignore option had been present, that user and similar others might still be contributing today.