I have noticed, on both my tablet (iPad with safari) and PC (using chrome) that when the ignore list reaches about 50 there is a soft limit of sorts. By soft limit, I mean that I can’t add people to it “the usual way.” By which I mean I can’t simply click on the user name, go to their profile, and where it says “Normal,” select that and choose “Ignore” followed by a time period (“Forever,” of course). Or rather, I can do that, but when I do, even though the user status does in fact change to read “Ignored” in place of “Normal,” I still see their posts, even after navigating away and reloading a thread with their posts in it.
I have, however, still been successful at adding people to my ignore list “the long way.” By “the long way” I mean going to my profile and navigating to “preferences,” then “users” and–below the list of ignored–selecting “+Add…” and manually entering in the user’s name and selecting the usual “Forever” for the time period.
This problem first appeared right after I noted (counting one day just out of curiosity) that I had 49 people on my ignore list. It was only one or two more additions to the list before this problem cropped up. While it might just be a coincidence–maybe everyone is having this problem now–I wonder if maybe there is some bit of code or a table size limit that effectively prevents adding people to the ignore list “the usual way” after the list reaches 50? Not by design, necessarily, but because it simply was not contemplated that a user’s ignore list would ever exceed 50.
Perfectly understandable if so–after all, who could have anticipated there’d be 50+ people worth ignoring in just a couple years on the dope–but it sure would be nice if I could continue to make regular/appropriate use of my ignore list without having to do it “the long way.” I’d also rather not have to periodically curate my ignore list to remove banned posters to stay under the cap because (1) that would be tedious, and (2) just because they’re banned doesn’t mean I’m necessarily comfortable seeing their old posts that haven’t been cornfielded.
Anyway, that’s just a thought/observation. I appreciate the improved functionality of this board over… whatever platform it was hosted on before the move.
Or leave it on the person with the list to do the pruning. Every time my list gets close to 10 I remove those who have either been banned or who have stormed off in a huff. Keeps things neat.
Yep. A couple years ago I decided I wanted to be able to enjoy social media without having to sift through a bunch of… stuff I don’t want to sift through. I’ll leave it at that.
Even if the philosophy has merits, which I won’t debate since I don’t think you’re promoting it, there’s a flaw in the thesis. 50 user names does not equate to ignoring 50 people you could potentially have a meaningful interaction with that you’re blithely choosing not to hear the valuable words of. Many of them are frequent flyer trocks. So I think there are actually more like 3 or 4 of these people, or even fewer these days, because it never seems that there are more than a handful active at any given moment.
But still, over the course of years, it can add up to dozens of people on my ignore list even though they only represent a few people. Which isn’t to say I don’t have a healthy number of - I wouldn’t call them “regular posters” necessarily, I guess I’d say “people that are currently logged in with a non-trock account” - people on ignore, it’s just that I’m ignoring a far smaller percentage of the community than my ignore list would imply.
Unfortunately, trocking (and this community’s susceptibility to it) is probably also outside of the initial vision of community Discourse had in mind. This board is palpably different from other Discourse boards I’ve experienced, so our needs go outside the design parameters.
Dunno what to tell you, other than the Discourse poobahs would have to become convinced that ignoring more posters more easily is an important requirement for an online community.
I tried to block someone three times using the Profile>>Ignore method. Didn’t take. Had to go into my own preferences to get it to work. I’m ignoring like six people, so it doesn’t seem to be a soft limit or anything.
Hmmm, in which case maybe it was just a coincidence and something is up with the board software. I will also note—thinking about curating my ignore list—I recently tried to remove a now-banned user from the list, but encountered the same problem: I had to go into my own profile preferences to do it. Could not remove them via the link in their own profile.