h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

my guess is that it's going to continue for a long time yet,but it does raise some interesting points.

Traveller in Time still working on some parts of the backlog
"I think it is a valuable part of the Guide, as many discussions are "

Agree with both of you. I think a debate like this brings up useful issues, as well as committing us to the progress of the Guide.

My only fear is that this type of exclusionary practice will lead to elitism.

I doubt it...but maybe I'm being too trusting.

I don't, providing it's only applied to Personal Spaces. I'd be more worried about this kind of attitude: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/F125052?thread=280685

I don't think that the researcher was necessarily being prejudiced against men though....

Could have fooled me.

There's a relatively simply way around most of these fears of elitism and discrimination -- simply limit the number of accounts someone can put on ignore. I use a site that limits it to 10 or 15, I believe.

Even without any such limit, it's seems unlikely that reasonable people would go to the effort of putting 'all men' on ignore, or all 'fluffy types' on ignore, or all non-EG contributors on ignore, etc. And if there is someone out there unreasonable enough to put me on ignore because they're under the delusion that I'm a man, or because they don't like the smileys I use or whatever, in what way is the community missing out here? The person who put me on ignore in this hypothetical situation clearly feels better having been able to do so -- and I can't really see that I've lost anything by having my interactions with such a person limited in such a non-intrusive way.

Personally, though, I'm not sure that I'd agree with the idea of limiting it to personal spaces -- the majority of cases where I can see this being used, some hecklers have showed up to continue the argument in every thread an individual posts in, regardless of the apparent topic of the thread. If someone starts a me-bashing thread in my PS, I just unsubscribe - yes, the thread is still there, but so it would be if I put the poster on ignore. An ignore function only stops me from seeing the post - it doesn't stop the post from being posted, or other people from reading it. But if I'm involved in interesting conversations all across the Forum, PR, Ask, etc., and someone decides to follow my convo listing to all of those threads to post more pokes and prods, unsubscribing from them all just isn't a very productive option.

I dont see the oint on putting a number on it. I think we should perhaps make it a little tedious to ignore someone. I might suggest having to go to that particular person's personal space and clicking an 'Ignore this Person' button. That way people wont just ignore people on a whim and will mean that you cant just ignore a load of people all at once, and easily. If there is a lot of ganging up on one person in particular, then that should be reported as well.

Also, perhaps there could be a log of how many people have ignore particular users. That way people who are ignored by a large number of users will be flagged up and their actions could be investigated.

for me it goes against the spirit of the guide...a bit petty really

I agree, but...

...well... one the one hand it's just for conversations on the personal space, right?

HELL

I think it should definitely just be for PS. However...is the conventional yikes button method really failing us that mcuh?

"for me it goes against the spirit of the guide"

As does the kind of behaviour that people are saying they want to use this proposed feature against - trolling, intimidation, threats etc. But on balance I still think I prefer not to have it.

If it were just for the PS, how long would it be before Ask was clogged up with 'Posting this diatribe here because Poohead won't listen to me'?

I'm against it too, though I do think the discussion is useful.

It seems to me there's a kind of informal netiquette surrounding researchers' PSes anyway, which most people follow and some clearly don't. Would it help to have a page to link to which expresses that in the form of some guidelines?

"But on balance I still think I prefer not to have it."

Well, why not provide it anyway? Those who would welcome it can use it, those who wouldn't can...well...ignore it.

(warning, somewhat long post)

I guess I'm confused about why people are assuming any such function would be limited to someone's personal space -- that's not how the idea was initially presented at the beginning of this thread, it's not how 'ignore' functions are used on other websites, and it wouldn't do a thing to help with the problem it is being proposed as a partial solution for -- that of individuals who are 'stalked' across all of their forum threads by those who somehow think it's a good idea to bring up old arguments or taunts in absolutely every thread in which their target ever posts, regardless of how irrelevant.

Just using the 'yikes' button isn't sufficient in such situations, because --
1. Often the posts don't violate the House Rules, they are just incredibly rude and annoying.
2. The person who feels harassed isn't really protected in any way -- they still *see* and read the posts before they press the yikes button, the yikesing (if successful) only affects whether other people get to read them.
3. An 'ignore' function can help stop the cycle of thread wars, while yikesing can often exacerbate it - the idea is to stop the escalation, and often the only way of doing that is to encourage the involved parties to ignore each other. The 'ignore' function simply makes such ignoring a lot easier, especially for those with... ahem... issues regarding restraint.

Say Joe and Frank have been involved in an ongoing spat, which at this point has disintegrated into naught but namecalling. Frank tries to leave the issue alone and ignore Frank, but Joe follows him across every thread Frank posts to on hootoo, leaving various taunts and pokes to try and provoke Frank into resuming the argument. Frank, lacking somewhat in the aforementioned restraint, or perhaps just getting really sick of Joe, often takes the bait sooner or later, and matters escalate.

Right now, people are told to use the yikes button, and that this is all they can do. Frank is still seeing post after post of Joe, in every thread he's involved on. Sometimes the yikesings are upheld, sometimes not - when they are, it doesn't go back and erase the agitation Frank experienced from seeing them, it just prevents *other* hootooers from seeing them, who might have actually liked to read such a post. Either way, Joe has proof that his postings 'got to' Frank, and so continues on.

With an ignore function (and *not* one limited to PS only), Frank could put Joe on 'ignore', and just not see any of his posts, making it a lot easier to hold to his vow of ignoring Joe. Everyone else on hootoo, however, can still see the posts -- that's right, *less* censorship, because only the individual who is hurt by the posts is blocked from seeing them, the rest of us who couldn't care either way can still read the posts. If someone else reads one of Joe's posts and feels that it truly violates the House Rules, it can still be yikesed. If time goes by and Frank isn't as stressed out by Joe any longer, Frank can choose to toggle off the 'ignore' function.

I guess I fail to see how any of this harms the community. Frank is better off because the escalation has slowed down, he's been able to exert some control over the situation, and can focus on enjoying the threads he participates in. Joe may be peeved that he isn't able to provoke a response any longer, but I really don't see how that is a harmful thing. If things had continued to escalate, it's entirely possible that both Frank and Joe would eventually have been disciplined by the staff -- and all of the complaints leading up to that would have eaten up precious staff time. If the staff saves time by not having to deal with piddly like this, they can use that time to focus on things we'll all benefit from like improvements to the site. And we, the community, can still read all the posts that were made if we choose to do so, but have one less thread war interrupting our conversations across the site. It's possible that Frank has lost out by not seeing the valuable insights in Joe's posts, but that's Frank's call, and is even without an 'ignore' button.

Where's the big downside? All I can see is that potentially some people would rather not acknowledge that there *are* such people here on hootoo that would make such a function desirable. But I don't see any actual harm to the h2g2 community of such a function - rather, I see a small but very useful net gain.

"Often the posts don't violate the House Rules, they are just incredibly rude and annoying."

Indeed. One aspect of this kind of post is that the moderators tend to regard every posting solely on its own merits. It could, in fact, appear to be quite anodyne, but if it's the most recent in a series of postings, it could equally the the last straw.

Ultimately, the Researcher is better placed than anyone else to distinguish an unwelcome posting from a welcome one. And Researchers who end up ignoring everyone will just be cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

"I guess I'm confused about why people are assuming any such function would be limited to someone's personal space"

No-one assumed that Mikey - it was suggested in the course of the discussion and a good number of people seemed to like it as a compromise of sorts.

when you limit the debaie everyone losesIMHO