"No Postings by X...," Option Removal

[Pat]

I have no idea if it is indeed possible with the current host, but I would very much like to remove the ability of a registered user to simply deselect those members he/she finds unpleasant. It seems that we have several interesting discussions going on at present, where not everyone is cognisant of all postings.

Rucker, I know this has undoubtedly been more than you originally offered to chaw, but we do need a moderated, yet totally open space to trade and dispute our various viewpoints.

I don't want to make this post a "pole," but would appreciate everyone's comment.

[1911fan]

Allow me to ask this, are you asking for an Ignore "X" button, say under the avatar of the poster? As in those who do not want to read my posts would be able to simply click "ignore 1911fan" and I would not show up in your new post queries?

I would not use it now, but perhaps there have been times when I might have, and might in the future,

[ree]

I think it's just that Pat doesn't like that certain individuals are completely ignoring other certain individuals as it leads to certain threads being a little disjoint. I say, let anyone ignore whomever they want. After all, even if the forums didn't have the options, you can always use something like greasemonkey to ignore others, if you are geeky enough and sufficiently inclined. Or apply a little discipline and simply skip reading their posts, if you're a little less of a technophile.

a moderated, yet totally open space

No offense, but that seems a little oxymoronish

[White Horseradish]

Allow me to ask this, are you asking for an Ignore "X" button, say under the avatar of the poster? As in those who do not want to read my posts would be able to simply click "ignore 1911fan" and I would not show up in your new post queries?

I would not use it now, but perhaps there have been times when I might have, and might in the future,

There is an ignore option now (just not under the avatar), and Pat would like to get rid of it.

I've been on multiple boards for years now, and I have not ever used the ignore option anywhere. I would much rather fight it out than take my toys and go home.

IMNSHO, using such things would very quickly lead to limiting the posts you see to the people you agree with. To me, that defeats the purpose of a discussion.

[Old Dude]

I simply don't read posts I don't want to read. If I don't like the drift of a thread, I'll just mark it read and go on. Maybe now and then I'll check in to see if any light has emerged from all the heat, but otherwise, I just read what interests me.

[nyffman]

Would the removal of that option result in more or less participation? Unfortunately, there will always be someone who is more interested in producing heat than light in a discussions. Rather than be tempted to add to the heat, I have employed this feature. I didn't consider it taking my toys and going home. More like preventing unneccesary and pointless stress.

[joelr]

As Ree points out, it doesn't much matter. Installing, say, greasemonkey and the appropriate ignore user script doesn't take a lot of geek points. (I should know; I've done both, and don't have a lot of geek points.)

All in all, if one wants to persuade people not to ignore one's posts, getting the site owner to make them try to pay attention is going to, at best, be unproductive. ETA: it's all part and parcel of the "Trusted User" fallacy; you simply can't force people to what you want to with a given string, and expect technology to successfully back you up. (I wish it was otherwise; the failure of the Trusted User model is what makes copy protection for, say, electronic books doomed, but all the schemes have been quickly defeated -- Sony, I think it was, came up with a gimmick that took them millions and years to put together, but a matter of days for some geek to figure out could be defeated with, literally, one stroke from a Sharpie.)

[joelr]

I simply don't read posts I don't want to read.

Me, neither; upon occasion, I use software to help me with that. It's a pity that PHPBB doesn't have a user interface as powerful as Usenet had at least twenty years ago -- between killfiles and scoring files, it's pretty easy to improve your own signal-to-noise ratio, for whatever you define as "signal" or "noise."

[Aceq2jot]

I have no idea if it is indeed possible with the current host, but I would very much like to remove the ability of a registered user to simply deselect those members he/she finds unpleasant. It seems that we have several interesting discussions going on at present, where not everyone is cognisant of all postings.

Rucker, I know this has undoubtedly been more than you originally offered to chaw, but we do need a moderated, yet totally open space to trade and dispute our various viewpoints.

I don't want to make this post a "pole," but would appreciate everyone's comment.

The secret is in the user control panel. Click on Friends and foes on the bottom right side and add them. So hence i dont see anyone of far superior inteligence It just shows up as post blocked and who the person was who wrote it
Works wondersif you aske me as i can read a post with out hearing their crap:)

[gunflint]

This is an interesting subject. On both the local gun forums (You know the forums with the gun crazy, blood thirsty, wackos) I have never had to use the option. In fact I'm not sure that I've even checked if it's available. However on my fishing forums (the ones with the much more civil participants) I've used it several times.

[ttousi]

I simply don't read posts I don't want to read. If I don't like the drift of a thread, I'll just mark it read and go on. Maybe now and then I'll check in to see if any light has emerged from all the heat, but otherwise, I just read what interests me.

old dude that is just way too simple and makes sense.......

[cmj685]

OK, I have to show my sheer ignorance on yet another subject. What the heck are we talking about here? Do I gather that somewhere and somehow the forum user can opt whether or not to "include" or "exclude" others? And how is that done--in the reading or the posting? Does this mean that if I post a topic I can exclude some others from even seeing the post so that it is virtually invisible to them? Or if I post a reply to a thread my particular post is invisible to them? Or is this in reading threads, so that others' postings are invisible to me in every thread if I choose to exclude them? Or...? I am trying to make sense of this. It would seem to me that if one wants to exclude someone else's posts from being read by himself/herself, that person truly cheats themself since the reader loses the possibility of learning something even from an "enemy"--everyone has much to teach, including those we disagree with!

[rucker]

OK, I have to show my sheer ignorance on yet another subject. What the heck are we talking about here? Do I gather that somewhere and somehow the forum user can opt whether or not to "include" or "exclude" others? And how is that done--in the reading or the posting? Does this mean that if I post a topic I can exclude some others from even seeing the post so that it is virtually invisible to them? Or if I post a reply to a thread my particular post is invisible to them? Or is this in reading threads, so that others' postings are invisible to me in every thread if I choose to exclude them? Or...? I am trying to make sense of this. It would seem to me that if one wants to exclude someone else's posts from being read by himself/herself, that person truly cheats themself since the reader loses the possibility of learning something even from an "enemy"--everyone has much to teach, including those we disagree with!

In your user control panel if you go to the "friends and foes" section you can type in a foe and it will cause their posts to be hidden to you. Click on the screenshot below to see what your reply looks like to me if I add you as a foe. Personally I think this is a somewhat dumb "feature" but, as others have pointed out, it's trivially easy to do whether the forum software supports it or not.

[rucker]

I never looked at what these options actually do until now. The "Friends" function is really quite handy. If you add someone as a friend it will add them to a list that shows up when you compose private messages so you can add them as a recipient with one click. That could be very useful!

[cmj685]

Hey Rucker,
Thanks! That was an excellent intro to the subject! I knew there was a friend and foe item somewhere that did something but had no idea...guess I figured that I don't have any way to know for sure if I have any friends and certainly don't want to go through all the trouble of listing my many foes so never bothered finding out what it did! But heck, I wouldn't want to miss what my foes are saying...sounds dangerous to me . Didn't someone famous say that it is far better to keep one's enemies close to see and hear them and thus know what they are doing?