It always seemed to me that if a forum was full of major contributors whose posts you were totally unable or unwilling to read, such that you felt compelled to Ignore / Mute / Killfile their posts… that forum had a busted and improperly moderated community.
In other words, heavy use of that particular feature is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
Am I wrong? Is use of the ignore / mute / killfile function in forum software a regular thing for a lot of you, on many forums you participate on? Would it be crippling if you had to use a forum without it?
Ignore, Mute, Killfile: how often do you use it on fellow forum members?
Lots: 5 (5%)
Rarely: 52 (49%)
Never used it: 48 (45%)
Don’t care about this poll: 2 (2%)
I only ever mute Reemul, but thats because he once said a bad word.
Otherwise I never put anyone on ignore, even though I’m sorely tempted at times. I do in MMO’s though, but on forums its pretty easy to just laugh at the idiotic ramblings of others ;-)
If I want to keep reading a thread but someones posts are just above and beyond my tolerance threshold, I’ll give them a “temp ban” by putting them on ignore. Once the thread in question is done I’ll go back and give back their posting privileges.
I’ve only ever put one person on these forums on ignore, and that happened a couple months ago. Pretty good track record for ten+ years, but this poster was out of control crazy.
I’ve only ever put a couple of people on ignore. I’m pretty good at just scrolling past people’s posts once I see them starting to slide into nutso territory on a subject, but I have had to formally ignore a couple of people because they proved themselves to be simply unbearable overall.
Yep. I’ve got one person who was just so consistently a negative, demeaning asshole in every post regardless of content or context that I just got depressed reading what they had to say. . . and then another one who devolved into what-the-fuck crazy-town so often that it stopped being endearingly funny and started becoming rote.
Sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me…but please, don’t hit me with a stick or stone. I don’t see a reason to put anyone on ignore. Of course only about half of you can read this.
Wait, there’s an ignore feature? NOW I know why nobody ever replies to my posts!
I haven’t had a reason yet to use ignore. Usually on forums that aren’t well moderated you need the feature for racists, spambots and severe asshats, but those folks tend to get weeded out quickly around here. In fact, one of the nicest bits about QT3 is that we’re all here because we love games, so we have common ground right from the start, and even though we don’t always see eye to eye it’s usually kept fairly civil, and when it isn’t it’s moderated effectively.
What we really need is an “Adore” feature. Choose to “Adore” someone and their posts will be highlighted with rainbows and unicorns in the margins for easy location within threads. ;-)
It’s easy - there’s only a need for ignore on the P&R forum. Everywhere else is fine. Don’t go to the P&R forum. Since - like an idiot - I don’t follow my own advice, I have put about four people on temporary ignore. Half of those eventually got the boot (a second time - after they returned the first time I didn’t have a problem with them, but I don’t see everything on the forum so don’t pretend to pass judgment on the rebanning).
I’d never use it. It’s too close to living life with blinders on. Seriously, how hard is it to read a few words and realize “this post isn’t something I need to read” and move on?
Depends on the forum. Generally, I use it to mute high volume posters who are net negative to the signal/noise ratio. On some forums, those posters don’t last long, either through social pressure or being kicked out. Other forums seem to attract them.
Basically, I use ‘ignore’ as a poor substitute for what my preferred moderation policies would be.
It might be over-designing, but if you’re going to be providing ignore functionality, it seems like an explicit built-in “ignore in this thread” and “ignore for X time” function might be used by some people, given how frequently I’ve heard them mentioned here and elsewhere.
