Ignore feature bug reports

[orenwolf]

Except it isn’t, in the same way that some folks who get flagged will then take to whinging about that over and over, completely derailing discussions.

Users should have the power to remove a user from their experience on the BBS without having to tell the user that they’ve taken this action (and thereby giving them reason to escalate further). This was an important reason for Twitter to offer this feature, and why many other discussion platforms use concepts like shadowbanning, where a user can post, but no one sees it.

People are allowed to post here within the guidelines. Full stop. If anyone could just block responses to their posts from folks they disagree with, the BBS would very rapidly lose it’s reason to exist. If you post here, people can reply to you here. What we need is a way to ensure that the people who do not want to see the responses cannot.

[Melizmatic]

@orenwolf

People are allowed to post here within the guidelines. Full stop

That’s fine; it’s not the issue at hand, though.

What happened to a certain member recently was, in no uncertain terms, cyber-harassment. And it happened because that particular member knew how to ‘skirt around’ the edges of the rules without stepping over them completely… until now.

There’s no saying for certain that if a true block feature had been in place that it “never would have happened,” but I do believe it would have been less likely.

I don’t have any easy answers to offer, though I will say that the current ignore feature isn’t any kind of real resolution; it’s not even efficient as a temporary ‘stop-gap.’

[orenwolf]

@Melizmatic

I don’t have any easy answers to offer, though I will say that the current ignore feature isn’t any kind of real resolution; it’s not even efficient as a temporary ‘stop-gap.’

Agreed, IMHO the current feature absolutely needs to be reworked so that users on ignore simply don’t exist to the user ignoring, and it doesn’t work that way today. I just found out that’s NOT how it works, even for PMs, and I really think it should.

[d_r]

In the end the BBS is fundamentally a ‘comments’ section for a blogging site, and we are here at the bloggers’ pleasure. I would expect that whatever structure or ruleset @orenwolf applies here is chosen based on how the bloggers would like to see the board work, rather than on how I would like to see it work (though of course in my head there is no difference).

[gracchus]

@orenwolf

If anyone could just block responses to their posts from folks they disagree with, the BBS would very rapidly lose it’s reason to exist.

It’s not just about disagreeing, at least not in my experience. I agree with about half of the people on my Ignore list on the issues of the day, the others not so much. What they all have in common is some sort of extraordinarily obnoxious but rules-skirting behaviour that transcends mere disagreement.

Not being able to block them from responding creates an odd one-sided situation in the context of trying to reduce interaction from both sides, especially now that it’s against the rules to publically or privately request that a user not engage you.

There are plenty of people here who I disagree with who aren’t on my Ignore list, even ones who are disingenuous or who think everyone is too stupid to see through it. As an effect of their not being on my list, I don’t mind their being able to respond to me, if only to give me an opportunity to point out their fallacious arguments.

I’d submit that people who’d use the Ignore system with a reply-block feature in the profligate way you describe are going to be very few here, and in the process would quickly make themselves more irrelevant to the BBS than they’d prefer to be (especially since they’d see fewer and fewer comments to which they might respond).

In the end, I guess I don’t see how a direct response to a person that said person will never see adds much value to the discourse here – in practise the discussion is just left hanging, often in an odd way. Better in my mind just to prevent that reply, and in turn encourage people who truly want to participate on the board to use their Ignore list sparingly.

[Skeptic]

One hypothetical for thought is how the ignore feature should work in threads like this one where policy is decided, where it may be desirable to see what input others have on the topic, input that we may agree or disagree with and where one may wish to offer an opposing or concurring view.

To what degree is hiding comments an issue such people’s input into the discussion should become secret unless a user logs out to read the comments? And since one can logout to read the comments regardless of ignore settings, should an ignore list user be able to ghost their own comments such that they can only be seen by logged in users who are not on their ignore list? How far should the ignore feature go?

[orenwolf]

@gracchus

I’d submit that people who’d use the Ignore system with a reply-block feature in the profligate way you describe are going to be very few here

I disagree, and I’ll use my own personal experience as a mod here to do so. Despite, over and over, asking people to flag bad posts instead of responding, there are many, many folks who explicitly choose to respond anyway, or just can’t help themselves when they see someone saying something wrong on the internet (I’ll actually go further and bet that just about everyone has that one topic that when they see it misrepresented can’t help but respond, me included.

Now, imagine if your favourite debater here on the BBS realizes that “hey, if I don’t want to debate with gracchus, I can just block them, now I can make my point without having to listen to them!”. In fact, unless we restricted the size of a blocklist, folks could just block anyone with a contrary opinion in a given topic, and their otherwise-within-the-guidelines post would stand unopposed.

I have zero doubt that folks would seethe over this - that they’d call foul and demand the post be removed or that they have the right to respond to it. There are umpteen folks we’ve removed from the BBS that would have absolutely loved a feature where the people who disagree with them most simply couldn’t click reply or quote their responses!

But here’s the other thing. It wouldn’t work anyway. Because folks would find a way around it. Case in point, we’ve tried to remove certain incendiary or toxic words from the BBS, that would otherwise hold posts in moderation. Folks nearly immediately found ways to use those same words and bypass the filter. If we said users couldn’t quote or respond to comments, they’d immediately just paraphrase the comment, or blockquote it, or other form of brinksmanship (like spinning up a vpn and creating a new account to reply).

I have, as a moderator here, seen every one of these tactics employed. none of them are theoretical. It’s because of these very sorts of issues we don’t try and control who can say what to whom if it’s within the guidelines. Instead, I want folks to have the ability to choose what comments they want to spend energy on at all. If there’s a user that you do not want to waste brain cells on, they shouldn’t exist to you. Their comments, and comments that reply to that user, or quote their replies, should simply not exist to you. But the feature doesn’t work this way now. Instead it says “Oh look, the person you want to not pay attention to posted! But you can’t tell what it is!”, which in a lot of cases does the opposite of “out of site, out of mind”, instead it’s “Well, now I have to look because who knows what they said!”.

Whether or not the Discourse folk are even willing to go that far, I don’t know.

[anon3072533]

@orenwolf

Their comments, and comments that reply to that user, or quote their replies, should simply not exist to you.

?? So, if person A is blocking person B, and I happen to quote/reply to both person A and person B in one reply, then person A would never see my reply, even if person A has not blocked me? Am I understanding you right? If so, that might make it feel pointless to ever reply to more than one person at a time (even though Discourse encourages us to lump our various replies together into one comment), because who knows who someone may be blocking?

[gracchus]

@orenwolf

Now, imagine if your favourite debater here on the BBS realizes that “hey, if I don’t want to debate with gracchus, I can just block them, now I can make my point without having to listen to them!”

Ok, so person A decides “I don’t want to debate with Gracchus so I’ll block him from responding to my comments”. If I see that I can’t respond to him, I’ll also know he’s Ignoring me (if I wasn’t clear, the reply-block of a user requires an Ignore of that user, so in this scenario A has me on Ignore).

Now if I know someone is Ignoring me, I know they don’t want to engage with me in any way, so I’m not going to seethe over it. Maybe I’ll Ignore A in turn, maybe I won’t, but I definitely won’t be replying to A’s comments anymore because I can’t. Which is fine: I’d rather debate with people who disagree with me but who also want to engage by reading my comments. Someone who can’t even see my comments is not going to make my “favourite debater” list for self-evident reasons.

Perhaps an alternative is to publically label a reply to someone who’s Ignoring the commenter to that effect, just as a way of giving some closure to the sub-topic (and, one hopes, cluing in the Ignored person). That way they’re still able to respond to any comment they want (per your philosophy), but it’s also made clear that it’s a one-sided discussion, at least as far as the person they’re directly replying to is concerned.

Some people will seethe and get butthurt if their comments are labelled thus or if they’re prevented from replying, but that happens all the time anyhow with those who are here mainly to indulge in attention-seeking behaviours.

@orenwolf

It wouldn’t work anyway. Because folks would find a way around it

With all due respect, that’s never prevented you or @codinghorror from adding a feature to improve the quality of discourse here. If a clunky “workaround” is performed in obvious bad faith by a user (e.g for the purpose of tr0lling) it can be flagged and, if it happens repeatedly, let you know that you have a problem user on your hands.

[anon61833566]

I implore you to dumb this down for me because I think I agree but I got lost on turn number 8.

I might also just be super tired.

[anon85524460]

@orenwolf

I have zero doubt that folks would seethe over this - that they’d call foul and demand the post be removed or that they have the right to respond to it.

I agree with you fully, but isn’t that why we’re here now talking about this? Because some guy got upset that someone wouldn’t take the bait and engage with them, to the point that he got completely cyberstalky and full on evil?

I know of one person here who definitely has beef with me and a few probably secretly do. But if I can’t respond to them I wouldn’t lose my shit because I believe they have the best intentions at heart and are acting in good faith. The only people who really will be pissed off and angry at such a change are the ones who are sealioning / acting in bad faith from the start.

Ultimately decisions to policy are made by the staff here who makes them, and that’s currently mostly you. You take your consultations with whomever you trust and approve, but the buck stops with you on the important decisions. I think by people simply staying here indicates that we think that’s fair, even if it doesn’t end up on our side every time. Personally, as long as you’re not blocking people outright and not listening to their arguments (when they are acting in good faith) ,I don’t care that I might not be able to respond to the people who have, for whatever reason, decided to block/ignore me. I don’t hate them,I just clearly rub them the wrong way, or they rub me the wrong way, and it’s a valid and sane coping mechanism . IF I have a problem with it, that’s on ME. Not on the system, and not on them.

[anon61221983]

Harassment isn’t bait.

[anon85524460]

You’re correct, I was wrong. It’s not bait. But I think the harassers see it as an opportunity to re-engage. Or to try to. It absolutely is harassment and should be sanctioned fully.

[codinghorror]

Discussion of a new proposed block feature, ala Twitter, should really be in its own topic.

[codinghorror]

OK! Two things related to bugs in Ignore

1. It has always been the intent and design that if someone is on your Mute or Ignore list, they cannot PM you. Upon trying to send, they’ll get “Sorry, testuser is not accepting messages at the moment.”, like so:

   

   However, after extensive testing we did identify a weird edge case where, in very specific scenarios, it would be possible to PM someone even if they have you on Mute or Ignore. We will be patching this ASAP, and we apologize for making that mistake. EDIT: this is patched and live now.

2. We will be rolling out “forever” as an Ignore duration as soon as possible, perhaps even this week.

I’m also hearing you on further improvements to strengthen Ignore, and the downsides of a block feature. This is something we’ll continue to work on in the coming weeks and months.

[codinghorror]

Forever ignore duration is now deployed and selectable:

[gracchus]

Thank you. I like the choice of icon.

[SocialMaladroit]

It’s a banhammer!

[orenwolf]

FYI: the Discourse folk found and fixed an issue with the “Forever” ignore option. It should actually be forever now.

[anon61221983]

I did get it to work, but for a minute, it would not like me pick a time frame on ignore. I’d click on several different options and each time I got a message that said “pick a time frame” across the top. I was finally able to do so, so perhaps it was a momentary glitch, but just wanted folks to be aware.