Topic: So, You Can Now Ignore Users

@Ryu_Niiyama The issue isn't with having a general block function on the site. The issue is just that by having it executed to where you can't see the other person's posts, you are basically blacklisted from multiple conversations. Logging in and out to view a post is practically circumventing, which I feel like is possibly against the rules in some shape or form.

I feel like if these forums are going to have a block function, the best way to execute it is by having it be one-way. Where the person who blocks you just doesn't see your messages. That's better, since it doesn't outright punish a person for reasons beyond them. They can still participate in a conversation without feeling as if they're mentioning stuff which the person who blocked them already mentioned ahead of time.

@VoidofLight That is what a block is, that you have no contact with the other user, just like other social media. So I don't see the point you are making over a feature that is used in other social media, other than you don't want people to have the ability to remove themselves from the purview of potential bad actors. I'm not going to go in circles about it as I don't see the point but again if you have to see someone that blocked you, you can, but again for some ignoring them isn't enough. And either way it's no different than ignore from the other side. I can't see the people I ignore, but I am still able to participate in conversations. Now that being said, I already know that you are going to disagree and that's fine. I simply weighted in because a lot of times this thread gets full of people that hate the feature in an echo chamber and I wanted to make sure that someone that uses the feature is heard as well. So I will simply agree to disagree, and you can keep directing your comments at Ant and see if he decides to change it.

As an interesting thought experiment... imagine if one of the staff could block you if they didn't like your comments so that you couldn't see their articles anymore but could see other articles. That would be bizarre. Clearly a more normal approach would be to temporarily ban/mute the person so they couldn't respond to articles rather than couldn't see just some of them (assuming it was an actual problem and not just the author disagreeing with the comment).

So ironically someone who's posting in this very thread has me blocked so yeah I had to log out to see what they said. And they brought up so it's like other social media sites, but this is not a social media site. It's not Facebook, it's not Twitter or Tik Tok or Instagram it's a video game news site. If you are expecting a site like this to have features like Facebook or Twitter then maybe you should go there. That would be like me asking why doesn't this site have a streaming plan, all the other streaming sites have a streaming plan.

Also let me bring up the fact that I am a paid supporter of this site, which kind of makes me think, if I am being blocked by other users from seeing contant that I am paying for, then what's the point have being a supporter?

@Ryu_Niiyama I mean, I personally feel as if a forum having a feature that blocks you from seeing others posts isn't a great idea. Its a board meant for discussion. I've had situations where I was blocked by others and I couldn't weigh in on specific topics due to being blocked, as I could not follow what was being said. It alienates people from conversation just because the person who decides to block you ends up talking within said conversation. If used too much, you effectively get blocked out of entire topics.

Forums and Social Media sites are two different beasts. With Social Media, you can still engage with discussions without being able to see other's posts. If someone comments on a thread, I can still comment on that same thread and know what that thread is saying despite being blocked by the person who also commented on that thread. In a forum, most threads are active discussions that are built upon individuals interacting with one another. If person A blocks person B, and then comments and pivots the discussion in a new direction, it makes it hard for Person B to take part in that discussion due to not knowing the full context around the pivoted direction.

I don't really get the purpose of having the blocks be two-way on a forum. Blocking someone and not seeing their posts should be enough, should it not? You no longer engage with them or have them engage with you. You no longer see their posts and it saves you the mental struggle without alienating them from using the site.

@Eagly_lmtd_xmasskin I disagree honestly. I feel like people have the ability to voice their criticism of the system without defaulting to name-calling or making people feel awful about it. If this thread were to the point where people were name-calling or outright bashing others, I'd get it. However, this isn't what's going on. The only reason Skywake even mentioned Anti-matter was because it ended up being one of the most recent examples of blocks having a frustrating effect on utilizing the website itself.

I'd also point out one clear way a forum isn't like Reddit or Facebook or Twitter. Sure moderators are always stretched and kudos for the work they do. But the level of moderation on a site like this orders of magnitude higher than it is on large social media sites. At the very least here issues like bots, spammers and other clear bad actors are able to be controlled by more blunt moderation tools. I don't think there's a desperate need for users to be taking on moderation duties

Also, as a side note, outside of clear bots on twitter back in the day I have personally only ever blocked one person. And that was one of my sisters, on Facebook, because every family has to have one. And I didn't want her seeing anything about me. Fair to say I don't think anyone on this forum could ever even remotely approach that bar and certainly I don't post anything here which would be that level of personal I'd want to hide it

So yeah, social media site have this kind of feature. This is not the same kind of forum so, IMO, the comparison falls flat

@skywake Exactly but I see it all the time, so many users compare this site to a social media site like Facebook, or Twitter and honestly I don't know why, they are comparing apples to oranges. It's just not the ignore/block features too it's other features they ask for to, I see it all the time in the suggestion thread. Facebook has this can we get it here, Twitter has this feature when are you adding it etc etc etc. I think the most common one people as for is a PM cause Facebook has it. Again you want a social media type of experience go to Facebook.

Just want to say this, PMing has always been a thing on forums I've been to. Even forums I went to long before social media was even a thing, they all had PM as a feature. Nintendo Life is the first forum I've been to where PMing does not exist.

As for blocking, it was a feature at the previous forums I've been to as well. Again, forums that existed before social media was a thing. I had to use it several times due to people harassing me over liking cartoon based games. Sometimes it's something I had to resort to doing. I think at one of the old forums, it stopped the blocked person from PMing you.

Personally, I'm ok with ignore/block options given experiences I've had in the past. Here, I think I used ignore twice.

I don't think anyone would mind if block stopped you from pming someone (@-ing them for this site). It's the fact that blocking you makes it so you can't see public comments which is the complaints — I've personally never seen that sort of block on other public forums though maybe you have. Yes, some social media has that type of block, but social media pages and accounts are often focused on a particular person, whereas the 'social' part of this site is purely focused on public discourse. In most social media you can also, for example, simply make things private or only accessible to friends etc. so it is different than stopping someone from seeing what literally the whole world can see which is what block does on this site.

@FishyS Yeah, I always thought blocking just prevents you from seeing the person you block, which is the ignore function here. I always saw this place as a forum rather than social media. I sometimes post pictures to the chit-chat thread, but everything here is organized into categories and topics.

To me social media is I post something, anything, and people click like and comment, but there's no subjects or ways to organize outside maybe hashtags. I only use Instagram, so I go there for that. I come here to chat about gaming, or movies in case of the movie thread, or anything in the chit-chat thread.

PMs were definitely a thing on forums before social media was really a thing. The main reason I created an account on this site was because the band forum I was on before this wound down after they stopped releasing albums and eventually broke up. There were PMs there, was how people shared leaks/bootlegs/etc. I was also on various other forums around that time, not all but certainly many had PMs. Honestly I can understand why this site doesn't have them, you just know that the feature would mostly be used for ROM sharing. Even so, it's hardly a social media invention

Ironically given this discussion I'm fairly sure Facebook messenger didn't exist when I was on most of the forums I frequented before this one. I was certainly using MSN Messenger a good year after I joined Facebook. Must've been somewhere around mid-2008 they added that. This was also before they added the news feed and well before they started to jam ads into the feed and have an algorithm tailor your feed to you. Facebook back then was basically just like having your own personal page where people could comment on. That was it. Good times

But yeah, social media is generally been a lot more personal than a forum. On a forum your account only really exists to make it possible to follow the discussion. You can set your avatar, name and signature but you're not given that much space. It's basically an unwritten rule that on places like this you don't share personal information. Often it's an explicit rule. On a site like Facebook you're quite literally given spaces to put your real name, where you live, where you work, where you went to school, your phone number, your email, literal photos of you, the ability to tag yourself in photos, who your friends are, what your relationship status is, how you know your friends etc, etc....

If someone on this forum is hyper focused on attacking me personally? I mean sure, I might ignore them so I don't have to see when they respond to me. But does it matter if they see my ramblings about what I think a toy-makers next toy will be? Not really. But on a social media site where if you follow me you can probably see me being tagged in work photos or there might be discussions about what I'm doing. Is it possible I might want to hide that stuff from someone who might be a literal stalker? The real world kind of stalker? Yeah, it's an entirely different ball of wax

I've used the ignore function and that's about all I've been willing to really use. Blocking feels really unnecessary when I could just do the same thing with the ignore button. If people see my comments, it doesn't really effect me, since I don't get notifications that they've seen what I said or even remotely have to engage with them if I wish to not do so. I just don't get why we need a two-way block when ignore is frankly enough.