Purely academic question. I’m not thinking of sending a PM to anyone to that effect, I just wondered if it were within the rules.
Why bother? If you don’t want to engage with them publicly, why go to the effort of engaging with them privately? It’s like the guy at the cocktail party who goes up to another guy and says, “I’m not talking to you!” Well…isn’t that talking to him?
Ignore means ignore. Let them be dead to you.
(And I have no idea whatever what the actual answer is to your question!)
Absolutely agree. Sometimes its important to listen to uncomfortable opinions. I have never put anyone on ignore.
There are other reasons for putting someone on one’s ignore list. For example, someone whose every post is suffused with toxic anger. Not directed at me at all, just a presence with whom I have no desire to interact even so far as reading their posts.
Also I have no idea whether such a PM is permitted.
I’ve put exactly one person on ignore but not to avoid their opinions. I did it to remind myself that this was a poster I’d want to think twice about responding to because it wouldn’t be worth the bother. They did not appear to be worthwhile to engage with at the time and I wanted to remember that. I generally don’t look at usernames when I read posts and I don’t really want to actually start. If there was an option to mark posters that I want to take with a grain of salt I’d rather do that since I’m generally going to read their posts anyway if for no other reason other than that they may have just had a bad day when I read the post that made me want to ignore list them.
I’d never PM them to let them know though. If I’ve gotta think twice about dealing with them publicly why would I engage them privately?
Because there are times that it might be necessary. For instance (and this isn’t happening) say a poster were following your every post and replying to it with inconsequential and lengthy nonsense. One could of course let them write on and hurl their epithets at the empty air but I would consider it only courtesy to inform them that henceforth their time would be more usefully employed on other matters.
I had one poster send me a PM stating: “Fuck you! And welcome to my ignore list.”
I never did report the guy but he did wind up getting himself banned anyway.
Go figure.
IIRC you don’t get messages delivered from someone on your Ignore list. I haven’t checked, but perhaps it goes both ways, and you can’t send them either.
Sending someone a PM to tell them you are ignoring them seems a little pointless to me, not to say passive-aggressive, but whatever floats your boat.
Regards,
Shodan
Find out if there’s a skywriter working in their town and message them that way.
Never put anyone here on ignore, but I gather that it’s a lot less satisfying if the ignoree is unaware of his/her purgatory.
To repeat, I have no desire to send such a message, I’m simply curious as to whether it would be against the rules. And obviously if one were to send such a message one would need to do it before adding the poster to the ignore list. As to the point of sending such a message, I’ve explained in my previous post one possible reason for doing so.
As long as you don’t do it in a manner that violates the “being a jerk” rule I don’t see an issue with it. Plainly state your reasons/reasoning in a polite (or at least neutral) fashion and move on. I wouldn’t do it myself; like others I prefer totally ignoring anyone worthy of being ignored. But the act itself isn’t a clear violation in and of itself IMHO.
TBH, I would hardly consider that “necessary”. If you’ve chosen to ignore someone, it’s hard to discern why you would care what they are or are not posting.
As was quoted above, PMs are subject to the same general rules as posts.
Telling someone in a post that they are on your ignore list is not allowed here. Therefore, telling someone in a PM that they are on your ignore list is similarly not allowed.
Not me. Let them blather on and waste their time. I wouldn’t even if the rules allowed it.
I’ve never put anyone on ignore here, but on another MB, I put someone on ignore pretty much for this reason. This poster thought of herself as the devil’s advocate for the whole board, or something. No matter what anyone said, she’d come up with some obscure reason that made them wrong, at least in her universe. Either that, or she’d accuse people of overgeneralizing, and stereotyping, without a qualifying IMO, even in situations where it was clearly understood, and an IMO in every sentence would be tedious. Telling her not to do this was a waste of time, and it was good to mark her posts so I wouldn’t try to do it over and over.
I can’t say I “never” put anyone on ignore, but I do it very sparingly, applying it only to obvious trolls and those consistently contributing zero value. I find there is relatively little need for it on this board compared to many others because for some reason the worst posters seem to mysteriously disappear after a while. 
One could argue that board rules are not consistent across different fora, the most notable example being that insults are downright encouraged in the Pit, so it’s not immediately obvious what rules should apply to PMs. But it’s completely reasonable that the mainstream forum rules should apply, since private insults are particularly unproductive. It’s a credit to the board that I’ve found the PM environment to be a very gracious one, and IMHO we should strive to keep it that way.
I’ve got a few people on ignore because they’re just hate filled people and I don’t need to read their crap anymore. Or they have a proven track record of being completely disconnected from reality, spewing lies and bullshit without ever being able to back any of it up. I don’t hang out with those kind of people in real life and I don’t want to hang out with them here.
I don’t think refusing to put anyone on ignore because it somehow makes me a better person is a reasonable argument. It’s like saying I will continue speaking to my mentally ill ex-wife because that somehow makes me a better person. NO IT DOESN’T. That’s just suffering because you think it makes you morally superior.
Now there are plenty of people on this board who hold differing opinions from me and I’m happy to read cogent arguments and coherent thoughts. But the trolls and the broken assholes get written off.
Thanks, engineer_comp_geek. Curiosity satisfied.
I’m slightly surprised by that but not terribly so. I’ve been threatened with Pittings both in threads and via PM a couple times and I don’t remember any of it getting Mod attention; I basically ignored it and went on with my life. I would have thought “ignore”, at least in terms of a PM, would have been about the same.