Fine. Thank you.
What are the distinctions between ignore and mute?
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Mute blocks notifications generated by a user. Ignore will hide their posts.
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Thanks. Seems like if I wanted one, I would also want the other.
You get both with ignore.
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Ah yes, beta. For one thing we still have the issue that MalevolentPixy mentioned above, i.e., at this point a user can still see quotes of a user that they’re trying to ignore. But even now, in beta, that shouldn’t matter to AndreStmaur, because the ignoree has no control over whether they’re quoted by another user that the ignorer isn’t ignoring.
Are there actually any reasons now that AndreStmaur would need to set an “ignore” from his/her side of it? (In other words, what other wrinkle(s) am I missing, or forgetting, here?)
I am of course assuming that everyone is posting within the guidelines 
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And thank you so much for mentioning that Tampermonkey “community mute” script by GitHub user “SleepProgger” in another meta thread (found via a Google search). I’ve been using it on both Firefox and Chrome/ium for several months now. Although it’ll be nice to have this feature without having to install a browser extension, since I’m not allowed to at work.
ETA: Well now. That “ignore” feature works. Thanks.
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Rather than forum signatures, it seems that if someone wanted to do something similar here they’d just share their ignore list around by private message.
Twitter block lists are exportable as well so the result is lots of broken conversations where people cant see parts of what is being said, no way to figure out the overall conversation.
The mods can see ignore / mute counts per user in the reports section, so if this actually happens, they’d know.
That’s on top of the just-in-time notifications they get about it when a given person is simultaneously ignored by {x} different people.
We’ll see as time marches on (new feature), but IMHO this is not likely to be a problem we’re gonna see often in the real world.
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Just a bit of threat modeling on my part. Humans are really good at finding ways to circle the wagons.
I am active on other forums with an ignore function. I rarely, if ever, use it.
What happened here is that boingboing has this unique policy of requesting users to comply with an informal request of not answering a particular person. IMO, but I may be wrong, this policy has contributed to several users feeling mobbed and leaving. I hope the new policy will correct that and ease the work of the moderators.
Maybe I give a bit more info about my case. Sometimes I do not agree to what appears to be a general consensus on boing boing. Part of it is that I am not from the US, so I have a slightly different background. Part of it is that discussion is an important way for me to understand some issues better, and I have actually changed my mind on some subjects because of the exchanges here. But this implies that I will defend the other point of view, if only to understand the difference.
To make a long story short, a particular user requested no interaction on my part. I did not realise at first that this request was to be honored for as long as it was not cancelled and thought nothing of it. Some time after, I interacted again without even noticing the user (I just answered a post) and got a complain. Then I asked moderation what was going on and got no answer. I know that ignorance of the FAQ is no excuse, but frankly I had not noticed the annexes. The next day, I noticed the FAQ and have not answered any post from that user since.
What is a bit iffy is that this particular user still interracted with me in subsequent threads, not by directly answering my posts but by posting gifs on the borderline of insults below several of my posts. I ignored these gifs. Around the same time at least another user had comments that time was ticking for me. But apparently, it did not.
I cannot be sure, but I think putting the onus of not interacting on the receiving end of an exchange is what caused this situation. Would that particular user have had the capability of banning my posts, I would have ended up in a ban list, the particular user would not have seen my subsequent posts in different threads and no gifs would have been posted. That is what happens in other forums, usually. Therefore I welcome the new ban system.
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Thankfully, if you ignore or are ignored by a user, you won’t encounter the issue of being talked around. I know exactly how annoying that can be, which is why most users pushed for an official integrated ignore/block feature.
Boing users aren’t the enemy, bad faith bears are. A handful of dedicated trollies used to constantly derail threads and act as energy vampires, just baaaarely avoiding outright bannable offense.
The forum is so much better with them gone. It’s been months, and conversation is much better for it.
Maybe, just maybe, people who get blocked by multiple users are assholes.
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Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I apologize for mentioning you by name in my question to @orenwolf. I didn’t intend to put you on the spot. I was trying to learn more about the feature itself as it stands now in beta. I hope I didn’t cause you stress by referencing your particular situation and user name. I really should have worded my question in an “if a random user…” way.
I, too, welcome the new system. Although I wasn’t one who asked for it, I’m looking forward to enjoying the generalized benefits.
What I was trying to ask @orenwolf is:
At this point—even now, in beta—is there any practical reason that a user-who-previously-had-received-an-informal-request-to-disengage would need to do anything other than participate here as normal, assuming that they post within the community guidelines? In other words: It seems to me that user-to-user requests to disengage are now obviated by the ignore feature—even in beta—but is there some detail that I’m unaware of?
I thought the fact that I’d said above that the change to enforcement of those agreements would come when the feature is out of beta would have made this clear, but apparently not. Apologies for that.
There are no changes to any policy or moderation behaviour until such time as this feature is out of beta. The feature needs to meet our requirements before we change anything.
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Thank you! That gives me a much better understanding of the situation.
I really appreciate your patience with questions, and your clearly-worded, gentle, and generous responses. You are, as others have said here, a gem, and I would add, an outstanding role model. 
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No problem. I am fine with discussing the particulars of that situation.
As to the particular user who asked me not to interact, I suppose that we would have solved the situation if we had met face to face. I may sometimes defend strong opinions, but I never wanted to cause distress on anybody.
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Thank you
OK, everything should be working as designed now with the latest tweaks.
Reminders about a few things:
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You can’t ignore or mute staff. If you try to do that, expect it … uh… not to work?
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You now must be TL2 to Ignore, and TL1 to Mute.
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We will eventually get to hiding quotes from users you are ignoring, but it may take a bit.
The only thing left to implement is selectable time duration. Right now we assume all Ignores are the maximum time interval, 4 months. All ignores will always be cleared after 4 months so you’ll need to re-ignore if you still feel the same way about ignoring that particular user, 4 months from the day you originally ignored them.
Soon when you add someone to the Ignore field, you will be prompted for a duration:
- 1 day
- 1 week
- 1 month
- 4 months (max)
This way you can choose to take a briefer “time out” from someone if they are… well, let’s say “having a bad day”?
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Here’s what that looks like
In this case the tweet was marked as containing “sensitive material”. However if this person happened to be quote-tweeting someone that I had blocked, or vice versa, it’d look the same.
We should eventually be able to get to something quite similar, though I’d prefer to just remove quote content entirely:
You can of course expand the quote if you really want to see it.
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