Topic: Changes to our 'Block User' feature

This is honestly a really good change and keeps it from being abused while still being intact. Another reason it’s a good idea imo is that I think the community is small enough for this kind of feature to work without the team being sent a million different block request.

@MontyCircus
You still have email notifications turned on?

@RubyCarbuncle we made these changes a week or so ago unrelated to twitter. We also still have the same ignore/block feature as before however blocks will need to be approved going forward as we had too many people misusing the block part (which affects other user’s experiences, not just your own). For example we had people blocking others when they hadn’t even had any interaction, which the ignore feature will suffice. Blocking should be a last resort.

@RubyCarbuncle I think it’s far /less/ likely to be abused as we’ll have to verify the reason for the block — which seems fair for everyone. We want to encourage fair conversation and therefore the more we know as mods the better and we can enforce our rules on anyone who breaks them. We’re still committed to having blocks when necessary.

I wouldn’t confuse it with twitter as we’ve not removed the feature, just made it more robust.

Sounds like a reasonable change. I wonder if people have blocked me in the past? No, I don't wanna know. If you blocked me in the past, please don't tell me!!!

@RubyCarbuncle my reasons are pretty much what @antdickens said. If our community was as big as twitter I wouldn’t understand this change as much but it’s not all that big at all making such a change even possible.

@MontyCircus I'd agree with this if it wasn't for the fact that I'd get super angry at the people who ignored me.

Sounds like a good change.

Excuse me for taking a shot of whisky in the not-so-dark at this, but it was antimatter (among others) who really showed the problems with the block function wasn't it?

@Samalik there were lots of examples of it being misused and it would be inappropriate to try and start naming names when it was a widespread issue and not just a couple of users.

@antdickens perfectly fair. For some reason, even I started noticing comments from users I couldn't remember blinking out of existence the moment comments loaded.

Had to go through Incognito mode to figure out what was going on.
In that essence, I suppose you could say the block feature was kinda useless when I point out such an easy exploit.

@Samalik It was not useless, it was so useful it was beyond the comprehension of all mortals. It therefore had to be dumbed down so all creatures of dust could finally be at peace.

@Lightsiyd It was a useless feature. Anything that gives the populace control over someone else is useless.

@Tasuki Well it was certainly useless to me since I didn't even realize it existed 😂 Can't help but think about all the chances I missed to block Alex Olney. Such a shame.

@Lightsiyd I dont think you can block staff.