MoonlightDreams
New Member
Greetings.
I've had this viewpoint for awhile but haven't actually written out a proper thing for it.
Context for the problem:
The ignore feature currently works to block/hide messages from the user based on who the messages were posted by (by username). It does not block any messages that address the 'blocked' user from other people, nor messages that contain the blocked user's name. This renders the ignore feature quite useless, when over half the room is @'ing said ignored person or even directly quoting them in their replies such as; "@BlockedUser wow how could you say that about ______, they're not a _____ at all" etc etc. This is often all you see on your screen when you block someone, especially a 'troll' account trying to bait people into an arguement, etc. While the official stance is usually "just block people you don't like", it's often not actually helpful in reality as you still see the entire conversation regardless, rendering the feature useless. I believe that a lot more people would be active and regular users, if conflicts were much easier to resolve this way and the ignore function did actually hide users from each other fully (or at least mostly).
Suggested solution:
Instead of only blocking direct messages from the blocked user, the ignore function should also block any messages that at least directly @/tag the blocked user. So messages such as "@BlockedUser - no you're wrong about ____ topic, etc" simply won't show up for you so you can truly ignore that person. This could even be made a toggle-able option for users, so that if they still wanted to see the tagged messages towards ignored users, they can do so at their own discretion. If the policies/official attitude is going to be aimed towards "just ignore", which we have seen many times from staff/mods (which is fine), I believe the ignore function should be expanded to make that actually possible, instead of just hiding 1/10 messages relating to that person. Obviously you can't catch all messages, but, at least the messages directly @ing the blocked person should be hidden.
On a technical standpoint I don't know if this is difficult to implement or not but, I believe it would go a long way to improving the chat space for everyone and make the "if you don't like them, ignore them" actually a viable solution for conflict resolution, instead of "just leave if you don't like them", which is the only actual solution at the moment and only hampers longterm chat numbers/engagement for the site.
Thanks for listening to my tedtalk.
Moon.
I've had this viewpoint for awhile but haven't actually written out a proper thing for it.
Context for the problem:
The ignore feature currently works to block/hide messages from the user based on who the messages were posted by (by username). It does not block any messages that address the 'blocked' user from other people, nor messages that contain the blocked user's name. This renders the ignore feature quite useless, when over half the room is @'ing said ignored person or even directly quoting them in their replies such as; "@BlockedUser wow how could you say that about ______, they're not a _____ at all" etc etc. This is often all you see on your screen when you block someone, especially a 'troll' account trying to bait people into an arguement, etc. While the official stance is usually "just block people you don't like", it's often not actually helpful in reality as you still see the entire conversation regardless, rendering the feature useless. I believe that a lot more people would be active and regular users, if conflicts were much easier to resolve this way and the ignore function did actually hide users from each other fully (or at least mostly).
Suggested solution:
Instead of only blocking direct messages from the blocked user, the ignore function should also block any messages that at least directly @/tag the blocked user. So messages such as "@BlockedUser - no you're wrong about ____ topic, etc" simply won't show up for you so you can truly ignore that person. This could even be made a toggle-able option for users, so that if they still wanted to see the tagged messages towards ignored users, they can do so at their own discretion. If the policies/official attitude is going to be aimed towards "just ignore", which we have seen many times from staff/mods (which is fine), I believe the ignore function should be expanded to make that actually possible, instead of just hiding 1/10 messages relating to that person. Obviously you can't catch all messages, but, at least the messages directly @ing the blocked person should be hidden.
On a technical standpoint I don't know if this is difficult to implement or not but, I believe it would go a long way to improving the chat space for everyone and make the "if you don't like them, ignore them" actually a viable solution for conflict resolution, instead of "just leave if you don't like them", which is the only actual solution at the moment and only hampers longterm chat numbers/engagement for the site.
Thanks for listening to my tedtalk.
Moon.
