I also think an ignore feature would discourage people from making the effort to get along. If you don't like someone... just ignore them.
Personally, I'd rather they were ignored. What I see occasionally on threads is a huge waste of time spent by people fighting it out, and after it gets completely out of hand several people try to get those involved to kiss and make up or they try to get one or more of them thrown off SI.
Not good, and something I don't want to encourage. It's a waste of time for most readers, though some may find it humorous, or sick but just can't look away. I've seen this behavior ruin excellent threads and it's a shame.
Ignore, on the other hand allows for everyone to say what they want, and peace to continue to reign. Much the better solution, I'd say. Unless your goal is partly to improve people.
Will people who are ignored know who is ignoring them?
No, not unless the ignorer tells them, but as I said before, that behavior is hypocritical.
If an ignored person tries to post a public or private message to someone who is ignoring them, will SI notify the ignored person not to waste their time composing and sending a message.
If you allow a message directed to a person to over-ride the ignore feature, then this problem goes away.
There are lots of complexities. We would want to implement an ignore feature in a much better way than other discussion sites have.
I don't know what other sites do. I would be interested in hearing what they do, and why you don't like it. Presumably that experience is affecting your viewpoint and I don't have that experience. Maybe you're right and widespread ignore capability is a blackhole. I don't think so but am open to your argument.
And speaking of ignore, you seem to be fixated on the idea that people will use ignore to drown out negative posters. I use it (lightly) to ignore people whose only contributions are of the type "hey, XYZ is up 2, isn't that great" or people who go on and on about option strategies. Nothing wrong with options, I'm just not interested. And how about the head and shoulders, stochastics, tea leaf readers? I ignore them too. I think technical analysis is crap. I don't want to spend valuable time reading all about how XYZ will go up tomorrow because two moving averages crossed today. I don't have any interest in discussing the merits of TA with an adherent anymore than I'd want to argue with a drunk. Waste of time. But you don't hear me yapping at them to get off the thread. Many people find that stuff interesting. Fine. But I'd like to ignore it.
Just to explain further, I don't ignore people for one or two posts I find of no value, it takes a pattern of such posts. And some people who spend time blathering on about what the stock price will be in 10 days or whatever may also frequently post good stuff and I won't ignore him either, unless the ratio gets too bad.
Does this sound elitist? I don't think so. I'm not saying anything about the people I read being better in some way than the people I don't, just more interesting to me. More likely to teach me things I'm interested in learning, and best of all, more likely to make me money.
Don't let a narrow view of how you fear some people might use ignore keep you from making available a feature which could enhance the value of your site to many.
You'll understand this better after I help you understand the meaning of value<g>.
Be a sport, give ignore a test drive on this beta and see what you think. |
