Every now and then, there’s a thread that just won’t die, that is on a topic I don’t like, or has a title that just bothers me.
I love the fact that Discourse lets me mute those threads so I never see them again in my feeds.
Thanks, @codinghorror !
But, no, this thread has nothing to do with “The ability to read your loved ones’ minds”. I wasn’t aware that was an option with Discourse. Will we all be getting the upgrade soon?
Yes, threads, categories even users can all go on mute/ignore.
I log out before I leave and sometimes I go a little nuts when I log in to reply to a thread in a muted category and I no longer see it,I’ve forgotten I muted it so I spend a few minutes on where did it it go?! Is it cornfielded how dare they. Oops.
(Disclaimer: this is all assuming good intent, anybody who was intentionally attacking another person should be banned/suspended.)
Yes, muting topics was always in the mix.
Muting users, on the other hand, took some convincing… quite a lot of convincing… we started with an intermediate step, Mute, which only turns off all notifications from that user… it does not hide their posts… but eventally I was convinced that the only way to maintain harmony in some communities is to literally never see anything a certain person posts because those two people, for whatever reasons, are like oil and water: they just don’t mix. Even if they are both following all the rules to a T, the very presence of that person’s words gets both of them so riled up that they end up causing a commotion, all completely by the book and according to the rules, of course. But unpleasant for everyone else and work for the moderators.
The other caveat to this was time, it was a timeboxed thing where you could only mute or ignore someone for a maximum of four months. Idea being, again, maybe they changed? Maybe you changed? Eventually I was swayed that this, too, wasn’t enough – not only was Ignore (never see their posts) needed, a ‘forever’ option was needed, too.
I was originally opposed to this because I thought, “well, if another person gets on your nerves, scroll past their posts. They might eventually change, or you might change?” But human nature is a hell of a drug 
I have a question about the ignore/mute user function: I have one and only person on this list. They drive me bananas and by group consensus they add nothing to the community so I am missing literally nothing by quashing their content.
The board software keeps putting topics started by this person in my suggested/recommended thread list at the bottom of a discussion. Is it just me or does this seem like a major design oversight?
I’d argue something further: even if a developer personally didn’t like the feature, that’s not a reason not to develop it. It should be up to those who maintain the community to decide what features they desire or think are useful. Discourse isn’t like Stack Exchange, where there is this one company in charge and everyone else is volunteering. You’re dealing with people who are paying for your software and/or server space for their own communities and/or websites.
That’s not to say there aren’t other concerns, like developer time and support costs. That’s the beauty of allowing plugins and being open source. But if a feature is one that multiple communities want, and it would be hard to implement in a plugin, it makes sense to offer it.
I will note that ignore systems aren’t just used for hiding posts. They are used to help protect people, without having to have the mods constantly intervening. And I give you credit for implementing a silent block, as those prevent further abuse.
(I’m still not sure why Reddit doesn’t get that, if a bad actor can figure out they have been blocked, they will just bypass the block.)