In a recent P& E thread, I observed a person announce that they were “muting” or ignoring someone, which was followed by an admonition that that was not allowed outside of the pit. Why is this?
You can put someone on ignore outside the Pit. You just don’t talk about it, just like you don’t insult other posters outside the Pit. The Pit is the place for general nastiness directed to other posters, and that shouldn’t be allowed to spread outside the Pit.
Is there a way to know if someone at all has put you on ignore and if so, how many? Not one particular user, but the number.
You can ignore someone in any forum. What you can’t do is tell someone they’re on your ignore list. It’s considered insulting, and therefore not allowed - except in the Pit, where the rules against insulting people are lifted.
That way lies Madness. Knowing Dopers, it would quickly escalate into a contest.
That is precisely my point. I want to know my score.
Yeah, so far as I know, there’s no way to tell if someone’s ignoring you. However, the mods do get a notification if a bunch of people are ignoring the same poster. I think it’s something like every five or ten “ignores” kicks off a notification to us. A couple posters have triggered two or three of those notices.
I’m not going to ask for specific names, but I wonder how helpful this feature has been for you guys. Has it resulted in drawing your attention to problematic posters? Did you see massive numbers of such reports for posters who were only here a short time, who later got banned?
I actually might use my ignore list more often now that I know about this. For the types who I didn’t expect would last long, I’ve often not gone to the trouble.
Problematic posters are almost invariably the subject of multiple user reports before, or pretty much simultaneously with, the 5-ignore notice. So really it doesn’t help.
What about the converse? Does something happen if one poster starts ignoring dozens and dozens of other posters? What if I put half this board on my ignore list?
Yeah, my experience is that it’s mostly posters who engage in controversial, usually political, topics a lot who get ignored - folks who don’t break rules for the most part, but are willing to engage in the same arguments over and over. Both sides of the political aisle, too, although conservatives are over-represented just because of the lopsided politics of the board.
Actual trolls tend not to last long enough to generate the “multiple people are ignoring this user” thing.
Thank you all for your replies! I considered telling you I’d put you all on my “ignore” list as a joke, but I figured it wasn’t worth the risk. 
There doesn’t seem to be a function for that. I mean, if someone wanted to just look at blank screens, have at it!
The one limitation is you cannot ignore a mod or admin.
No matter how much we try.
I see people do it all the time though!
Usually it’s followed by a warning.
I assume there’s no problem with mentioning if you’ve put a particular forum on ignore?
What happens if someone already on your ignore list gets hired as a mod? Not that I’m likely to ignore the kind of people who are well suited to become mods here, but, you know, just asking on behalf of the obtuse sort who would want to ignore them. 
Interesting question. I’d assume they are removed from your list, but I don’t know.
As far as reports being generated when a group of people ignore one person, would that happen if, say, I put @Love_Rhombus on “ignore,” then removed him, then re-ignored him, then removed him, then kept doing that ad infinitum? Would that generate a report?
I have no plan on doing that, and I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone on ignore, and I only picked @Love_Rhombus because he was the OP. But now my curiosity is aroused.
Hopefully it would be smart enough to use a net increase of people who had ignored them.
That said, if you’d like to try it with me, I wouldn’t mind. (Well, I would prefer the final state being me not on ignore, of course…)