Those are the most promising users. The rest just continue along being irritatingly hard headed.
The most problematic users? They’re the ones that nuke their accounts and come back under a different handle.
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you won’t be able to stop that. adding a +whatever to their email address and a different VPN endpoint and the system won’t see them as the same user.
Further, we don’t want to prevent people from changing identities if they so choose. We’ve done that for several members who realized their existing usernames were problematic for multiple reasons (associated with negative connotation / historically bad people, too close to their real names, used in other places where their real identities could be defined). Online anonymity is an important safety issue,
And really, it just means you add someone new to your ignore list if they are still causing you issues, while the “old” persona filters off the list as they become inactive.
If a user was frequently changing usernames with an obvious intent of hiding who they were, that’s a different story, and I think the closest we’ve ever come to that was a user who changed names 4 times before being banned in the past, in part for that behaviour. It’s pretty rare.
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Yeah, that’s the best approach and pretty much how it happened with the attention-seeking man-child I mentioned above. Looking at the history, this person requested anonymisation but had already initiated a new account (no doubt using his 1337 hacker skillz to get around the one-account-at-a-time rule).
Despite his diabolically brilliant subterfuge, the obnoxious tics that made me cross enough to put the old account on Ignore soon re-asserted themselves under the new persona, so onto the list went the new one.
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This may be true, but it would be disingenuous to discount that this particular Discourse instance is highly influential. I doubt other Discourse instances have so much direct involvement from the platform’s principals and developers.
Clearly you don’t understand the frustration here, and nobody’s requiring you to continue to read this topic. (See how irritating that is?)
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Absolutely, and I devoted significant personal time well beyond any responsibilities I have at the BBS to help test and QA that feature. But that influence only goes so far (as does my free time). At some point I have to throw in the towel and say that I can do no more here and ask that others take up the mantle on meta.discourse.org rather than relying on me personally to be the advocate.
I’ve repeatedly done that, right from the OP in this topic. Those that want to advocate for change are much better served by commenting there than posting here, which was the point I was trying to make. Though it does an exellent job of making me feel guilty that I can’t correct the issue!
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Okay, admittedly I came back because I couldn’t help be amazed at this… heh.
I muted the thread for me, so I didn’t know there was more stuff. I’m going to mute it again, and will continue to not know. So no, it’s not irritating for me.
@orenwolf: What’s your virtual drink of choice?
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Now imagine this thread un-muting itself after 4 months and appearing in your notifications.
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Well, it’s more of a “why not both girl dot gif” situation, really.
Also just to clarify, I’m not a mod here and I don’t have specific insight into the situation, so nothing I’m saying should be taken as gospel or the “correct” path. I’m a tech janitor providing tools for cleanup on aisle five 
And we did add a six month option to Ignore recently.
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I take it that permanently is beyond all your vast capabilities, for some reason?
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There’s a balance to be struck between re-upping, so problematic users are continually bumped to the top of the staff’s “let’s look at this problematic user” lists. 
The deeper question to ask is, “why is this problematic user still here?”
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I know it’s more complexity and maybe not possible but what if after a couple of re-ignore submissions expire a perma-ignore option could be unlocked? I dunno… Don’t hate me if it’s a bad idea. I just kind of like the idea of calling it a day and being done with it indefinitely, since people who just don’t get along well tend to do so for reasons that are a lot of work to overcome with little reward for doing so, and so have no real motivation to keep trying to stuff the bitter gall of dealing with each other.
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The deeper question to ask is, “why is this problematic user still here? ”
It’s worthwhile to think about. I would add though that not everyone should have to spend their time thinking about it. In a given population, there are going to be people who just don’t get along, and the onus should not be on the users to carry the burden of enforcement. Being allowed and encouraged to flag is liberating, but not being able to block is the opposite, and really unacceptable in the case of people who are suffering abuse.
In UX parlance: I feel using ignore mechanics to enforce moderator behavior is overloading the function.
Even with a full ignore feature, you will still have a healthy percentage of people who will choose to flag and not ignore. I won’t ask you for stats on that, but I bet you could get some to inform your decision.
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I think some pairs of people just don’t get along. It doesn’t always mean either person is otherwise problematic.
To use a very tortured example, I have both bleach and vinegar at home. But I don’t want their bottles to disintegrate every 6 months to see if they can get along, or to encourage me to get rid of one or both of them. They are both useful and excellent additions to my home supplies as long as they don’t mix.
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Late to this, because I had muted this thread and had to go find it, but after the latest fiasco here the answer could easily be “Because the person is popular and intimidating and the target of his harassment is afraid to report it because they’d be rocking the boat.”
I’m definitely of a different opinion than I was earlier. Discourse is broken without the ability for people to block harassers permanantly. It needs to take into account the threats and intimidation women generally end up having to face on forums like this, and it needs to offer them tools for handling such things when it becomes impossible or too stressful to involve moderation staff. I’ve seen all too often that people who report a problem user get piled on, and I suspect that’s happening at a far greater rate to more vulnerable users. Those users have been trying to tell people that the system is broken and I think we’ve been ignoring them.
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The community is broken if staff is not blocking harassers permanently – which is absolutely a feature that already exists.
Yeah, yeah, yeah… “people are trash”; we are quite familiar with your defeatist opinion on human nature in general.
That doesn’t mean that a real fully functioning block feature somehow isn’t “needed” here; it absolutely is, especially as the site grows.
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I would strongly advise everyone reading this to leave any community where staff did not permanently ban serial harassers. That’s not a healthy community that anyone should be a part of.
There should be a zero tolerance policy towards serial harassers, strictly enforced by staff.
That’s not a reply to what I actually wrote.
THIS SITE NEEDS A REAL BLOCK FEATURE THAT DISALLOWS UNWANTED CONTACT.
Anything else is a mere butterfly bandage on a gaping bullet wound.
Good day.
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