I ignore you, you ignore me, we're a happy family

Everything else
284

Let me start by saying I almost feel bad responding to this because I’m “playing into your game” and you’ve been pretty rude to other people here. I wish you weren’t and it makes me feel like I’m continuing your narrative about finding some magical needs for this feature when

a) people can want it without having some grand vision or desperate need for it that transcends simple preference

b) there are plenty of people here who have already described why they want it and you are dismissing them because you’ve decided their opinion isn’t relevant for whatever reason

So I don’t want to respond because I feel like you might throw me under the bus too. Although I’ve noticed you try to “give as good as you get” and don’t tend to start conversations at an 11 on the dick-o-meter, but you do tend to escalate there quickly.

I’m honestly just saying the above (and the below) to be proactive about helping this community and give you feedback about your behavior, since I know you actually do care about feedback regardless of your bluster above. If my tone below seems defensive it’s because I’ve been put on the defensive based on reading your posts upthread.

I apologize to everyone (wumpus included) for that rant.

Now, it’s actually really simple why I use ignore for people in P&R. We have a diverse set of users here, and the idea of splintering Discourse instances to cover really coherent, narrow-focused communities doesn’t apply to this forum. You’ve been repeating the idea that this is a gaming forum (you keep saying “primarily” along with your statement but the rest of your words belie that point) but it isn’t. I’ve noticed most users participate in a subset of sub-forums. For instance, to argue against your point about gaming-primary, we have @ChristienMurawski who is a very desirable and prolific member of this forum who (forum-wide) famously does not care much at all about games. You can minimize this as a single user or excuse it all you want, but he’s here and there are others like him here. So we shouldn’t say to people “this forum is gamers only, get the hell out,” unless we want to minimize the broader-scope community efforts we have here and discourage those users from joining, which would be a net negative for the forum.

So all that being said, there are some users who I am very interested in their opinions in the subforums for Games, Movies, and TV, but who show up in P&R and post shit I don’t want to see. Sometimes, it is people just plain shitposting, which moderation could solve. But I wouldn’t want to dismiss the opinions of some of the posters who I’ve blocked via ignore-lite, because it’s really me.

I apologize to all for getting political outside of P&R now, I don’t really see how I could explain this without going there. Skip if you want.

personal details P and R rant

After the 2016 election, I was super depressed and super pissed. I was in a bad way, and I’d been in P and R up to that point and was trying to be a good understanding citizen of politics etc, but just couldn’t do it anymore. So I posted along with others mourning their own views of what the country was pre-shitgibbon, and I was only getting worse and worse. So I decided to de-P&R myself for a while, and I muted the shit out of a ton of threads. But 6 months later it was weird for me to not know what was going on in politics since I’d been carefully following the news for years. Avoiding it daily was super hard because Trump is like a news story with a built in megaphone; everyone talks about what he says and does all of the time and he’s more exaggerated in the actual implementation then most anyone reasonable predicted in their doom and gloom forecasting of his presidency. Overall, it’s not a great time to stop following politics if you are into politics. It’s not quiet or easy going. Our P&R forum is an excellent resource to keep yourself up to date with what’s going on, and I missed reading it. I also let a lot of shit go. Of course, part of doing that for me was de-friending myself in real life and on social media from everyone who I knew voted for Trump.

So, back in P and R here at the forum, and most of the time I’m happy with people. As I mentioned above some people drop in and shitpost. I wish they would get banned. Honestly, I wish they were just removed from the forum altogether. This is, for me, an incredibly short list. Of the people on it who haven’t already been banned by Tom by their own fuckups, it has 2 people on it who I will not name. But this is not the entirety of my ignore list. In fact, when I said 5 people upthread, I was wrong. It’s actually about 40, but some of those are gone or don’t post (much) anymore. Because for a short time before I de-P and R’ed circa 2016/early 2017, anyone saying anything positive about Trump went on my ignore list. Because there was really nothing in my mind that was a bigger deal breaker than that which I actually dealt with. If I’d run across a self-declared racist or nazi in that time clearly it would have been worse, but as is, that’s my boogieman.

Then moreso, but even now, I don’t want to see anyone defending Trump. You mention upthread about bait. You can’t ignore it because it’s bait. Defending Trump is that for me. I DO ignore it, because it’s better for everyone if I don’t start cursing immediately at everyone who comes along to defend shitgibbon, but it’s emotionally very difficult for me to do so. I want so bad to yell at these people. Kids in fucking cages, man. I can’t help it. 2 uncle/aunt pairs, 2 friends I used to game regularly with, and an old high school friend who votes purely on abortion as an issue and I can’t speak to them anymore because of this. Someone on a forum? Yeah, I’m not going to fret over blocking them, but when I can’t it’s like when you’re at the family dinner table and you’re talking yourself out of punching your grandma (luckily my grandma is not an actual bad person, that part’s a joke).

In real life, you get to leave the room or close your door at the office or whatever when some person you vehemently disagree with is bloviating in the hall/at the next table over at the restaurant. But in the forum you either block them or you stop going to the forum. Kick them out for it in a forum made for just one political side/party? Absolutely. Kick them out when a) many people want to have their opinions challenged and b) they are a good resource/forum member over in Games/TV/Movies/EE? No, you don’t boot them then. But that leaves them there in P&R (and also the gamergate/games journalism threads that go P&R), where you don’t want to listen to them.

I apologize, again, this time for this second rant. :)

285

I want people to ask harder questions of themselves. If that makes people uncomfortable, well, that’s the point.

I feel like personal vendettas between users are where this will mostly* get used, and encouraging vendettas by adding Ronco Spray-On Vendetta Juice™ … is not ultimately in the best interest of most communities.

I’m actually very supportive of the “ignore in P&R” and “ignore in this topic” and “ignore for the next week” use cases. But that nuance is lost on the “just gimme what I want, because fuck you, that’s why” crowd.

(Besides all that, you can already mute topics, mute categories, and mute users.)

* but not always, it’s true

286

You could never ignore us, Tom.
*Dances seductively*

287

May I say your second point about how you feel re: current politics is very well said. You articulated better than me my own feelings.

288

Agreed. Nicely put @arrendek

289

There is someone on this board whom I believe considers me subhuman, less than others, and there is no amount of oh well this really didn’t mean that, or maybe that’s just not what the context meant.that will change that perception. I have personal experience with this sort of thing, and most here do not. I would prefer to never engage with this person again. I was close to leaving the board because this person being here says to me I’m not an important enough member to matter. The fact that situation is now not in my face every damn day, is the only reason I decided to stay.

That has nothing to do with being uncomfortable or different points of views. Is that a good enough reason for you?

Now during my time here, this has happened, one time. Most the other times I would prefer a timeout. For this one, I would go permanent. I don’t care what part of the board they’re in.

I mean seriously wumpus do you want diaries or something? I hate ignore features. I do. I am mostly on the other side of the line with you with this, but what you’re asking for is just unreasonable.

290

@Rod_Humble And @Misguided. Thanks, guys, I appreciate it. Writing, just generally, is hard for me. It’s like my grandma using a computer. I can do it (not terribly well), but I don’t like it. Lol

291

@Nesrie this probably isn’t the time or the place, but please allow me to say that I value your presence here precisely because your experience differs so strongly from my own. I don’t always agree with you, but I think I’ve learned a lot from you, and greatly value your opinion even in those times I don’t agree with it. I’m grateful you chose to stay.

292

I appreciate that misguided. I know my activity in P&R has probably gone up 500% or so since this last election cycle, but… that wasn’t always the case. There are… reasons for that. I do try to reign myself in. This last one really took me for a loop. I just didn’t expect that here.

293

Er what? He plays boardgames. That’s gaming under the charter of the site. The specific case much earlier in the topic is someone who effectively never posted about gaming. What’s interesting is that the person in question was given plenty of opportunity to post in other categories (which would be any and all of them, including Everything Else), but… didn’t, strangely.

I appreciate the detail you provided and I fully support “ignore in this category”, as described. But note that for That One Guy, this solution would be identical to “ignore everywhere”, because of the way he posts.

For protected classes of people, I completely support ignore. It’s the “these two cranky white guys just can’t find a way to get along” case that I find less supportable.

I also just wrote to the person who posted the original multi-year opinion I quoted earlier and he had this to add, years later:

But your first bullet point about abuse has me curious - what kind of content would be ok to have on the forum generally but would be abusive to an individual? If the content is abusive it probably shouldn’t be allowed at all, even if it targets only one person in the entire forum. I suppose if a forum is large and moderation light you might be forced to leave abusive posts up, letting users individually mute others until moderators are alerted that an individual is being heavily muted, but that seems like the wrong solution to a bad problem.

That said, I think the second point is key. This is an action initiated by a user for their own personal reasons. It enables them to continue to participate in a forum they otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

If you could apply granularity that would be great. I might enjoy technical conversations with one person, but be unable to stand their political posts. Muting them in one topic but not the other would allow us to converse in areas we can get along, and politely ignore each other in areas we have difficulty being nice.

The further I get in life the more important human connection appears to be. Shunning people and excluding them from communities is not good for anyone in the long run. Being able to mute someone for a period of time, or within a topic is probably a healthier thing overall than the alternatives, which usually include derailing threads, attacks, or people leaving a community, each with a lot of moderator overhead. And, quite frankly, the fringe communities around the Internet who don’t turn away the abusive don’t need to continue to grow their numbers. People are searching for connection, and providing them and others the tools that allow connections which otherwise would be untenable might be good for some.

I suppose I’d have to say I still don’t like the feature, but it’s better than the alternatives. There’s no forum based solution to make people get along, but people leaving forums over personal feuds is too common and generally a loss for the individuals and the community.

I agree with the last paragraph. I don’t like the feature, but if properly and carefully implemented – notably with automatic and naggy escalation to the moderators – it could allow some self-medication in rare cases.

294

I don’t think that’s a fair bar to hold. I mean I understand old white guys might not be the target of most of the isms, but on this board, these a largely reasonable members. You gotta trust their judgment on some level. But I am not being naive here. I am fairly certain someone has blocked me in the past, when the could, for a variety of reasons and on a number of topics. I’m not going to pretend I don’t know that. I’m a strong personality who has had her posts and her positions dissected under a microscope here, multiple times; and I keep coming back. I am flawed just like everyone else, but it’s just not a fair to say a tool is only available for one group and not another.

The most toxic places on the Internet, didn’t show up overnight. People experimented with boundaries, pushed a little and then a little more, recruited even to get more on their side. There’s a reason tech and gaming struggles in this area, and while I won’t rehash all that again, it’s not just the minority groups that need an escape from some of this stuff. It does affect everyone who engages with it on any level, whether they want to admit it or not, and it doesn’t have to lead to angry outbursts in defense or against it; it can just raise a tolerance level they didn’t even know they had.

I largely identified here because I felt relatively safe, after years of sticking around. I don’t do that on other sites, like at all, outside one social media presence. For me, that was mostly taken away. So this person you wrote to is mostly right, ignoring tools doesn’t fix the problem, but it might make it more… tolerable. Only time can say if that is enough.

295

I’m thinking an ignore tool is more useful for people in protected classes, is all. I’m not really advocating it only be available to people in protected classes.

For me personally this is very much a per-topic thing, and if a topic is going weird I just mute the whole topic. It’s rare that I “need” to participate in a topic and stop seeing only certain posts in that topic; I usually throw the whole topic in the mute memory hole, and find another topic that works more to my liking.

We’ve had mute topic / category support for a loooong time though. I do think it accounts for 99% of what people might need ignore for.

296

Yep. i’ve used it. Just a few a times.

297

That’s my thinking as well, but I have no desire to second guess how people use tools or why they want them. Because, really, I think most people use ignore tools because they want to be able to shape the direction a conversation takes by cutting out certain voices. I can understand that desire, but that’s not how conversations work. That’s not how interaction or the exchange of opinions and perspectives work. Rather than apply a filter to help you do something you could already do – not read certain posts – you can just bail on the conversation. If you find a conversation stressful, or if you don’t like the direction it’s going, or if someone is saying things that bother you, just leave the conversation.

But like I said, I think it’s ultimately best to let users have and use whatever tools they want. The ignore feature is mechanically no different than just not reading a post. Why not help users do that if that’s what they want?

-Tom

298

This forum needs a like button.

-Tom

299

I think we all agree on what I’m about to write, but I just want to reiterate this: That’s fine when we’re discussing games and some jerk keeps saying that Deus Ex isn’t good, but for someone who is finding the conversation stressful because someone else is saying that they are less than human (any given minority in certain conversations, for instance), or less deserving of compassion (Jeff P defending his own health care as affected by policy, for instance). These usually aren’t as obvious as straight ad hominem attacks (especially to privileged people) and we need to listen carefully to those people who see them clear as day (because they live and breathe the thing and we can hardly understand it.) (I like parentheses apparently.)

Then the person who is being stressed shouldn’t be the one leaving. The one doing the stressing should be forced to leave. I would like it if this forum was more proactive about this, even though the sample size of these problems is indeed very small, so maybe I’m sounding the alarm a little prematurely.

300

Since Tom contacted me about this, and I believe in the smiting hammer gentle hand of moderator intervention, let me say that I was wr… wro… wru… wruuuuu…

wrong to be so aggressive in this topic, particularly toward @malkav11 and @RichVR. I apologize for my excessively aggressive rhetoric, which was unnecessary, and I will endeavor to do better in the future.

p.s. YOUD BE PISSED OFF TOO IF PEOPLE KEPT FIRING ARROWS AT YOU IN YOUR DODECAHEDRON MAZE ALL DAY

301

I actually use a custom user script to ignore all bow-using member classes on Discourse sites netwide. Sure, I miss the rangers’ cute selfies with their animal companions, but I really enjoy not getting shot repeatedly by Multiarrow Volley.

302

At the risk of sounding like I disagree with your overall point, I want to say that this falls under the rubric of moderation. If there’s a situation where someone is doing something so abhorrent they should leave a thread, then it’s time for me or @telefrog to get involved and moderate that person or close the account. That’s obvious, right? So I should have been more clear that I was talking about conversations that are within the parameters of what’s acceptable in the community.

That said, I’m all for an ignore feature. It’s just that I think they’re weird and borderline redundant with just not reading someone’s posts. I also understand that @wumpus feels they’re not a priority based on what most people expect from Discourse. So it doesn’t seem like it’s a feature in our immediate future. But, yes, when people ruin threads, pointlessly antagonize others, or resort to blatant racism, anti-Semitism, etc., we’ve gone beyond the functionality of an ignore feature into issues of moderation. I agree on that point.

-Tom

303

+1 for the Fonzarelli reference.