Add the ability to ignore users

Question

Stack Overflow has successfully borrowed at least one XBox feature (Achievements). I'd like to see another feature borrowed as well.

Let's say I'm playing Halo online and another player is being a bigot. I have the option to add him to a list of ignored users. After doing that, all the racist things he says will never be heard through my headphones anymore.

Now, on Stack Overflow, I'd like the ability to add a user to a list of ignored users. This would hide all of that user's comments, and maybe his questions and answers as well (not sure if hiding questions/answers is necessary).

This serves multiple purposes:

1. It would make it easy for users to avoid other users' flamebait.
2. It would give users a more appropriate response to flamebait.
3. The ability to start flame wars would be reduced, since fewer users would see those comments.
4. Users would now have an incentive to be more diplomatic, as there is now a negative consequence to the behavior (the silent treatment).
5. Administrators could review which users are the most often ignored, which would be a strong indication that someone should be put in the penalty box or even locked out of their account.
6. Administrators wouldn't have to spend as much time dealing with complaints about abusive users, since users would have a better way to respond.

---

annakata makes a good point in a comment to an answer, that I thought should get more visibility:

I had a problem, reported it and got the response "not bad enough to do anything about, sorry". Which is kind of true, because the only options available to the mods are the nuclear one (penalty box) and the zero-effect one (do nothing). We need a middle ground option where abuse can be handled for you without also being handled for everyone.

Answer 1

I'd love an ignore feature.

Related: Greasemonkey: Ignore User Script

Answer 2

Stack Overflow is not meant to be a developer social networking Web site (this has been mentioned in the podcasts). It's a Q&A site. People are not at the forefront of Stack Overflow, questions and answers are.

Users are relevant for their authorship, not for their presence. There's absolutely no point in ignoring a user. You shouldn't really care who says something but rather, what is said.

You can ignore tags because they represent content, not users.

Answer 3

See here for my thoughts on this; short version:

• I genuinely don't think the team should add this
• if an individual post offends you: flag that post
• if the mere existence of another user offends you: grow up

Answer 4

Might be helpful in some scenarios, but... I'd feel pretty foolish if I posted a new comment/question/answer only to find out it was the exact duplicate of a very popular comment/question/answer posted an hour ago by someone I was ignoring.

As Leaky notes, this isn't a social networking site. If someone is annoying you that much, either they're using the site wrong or you are - either way, the solution is for one/both of you to knock it off, not let one/both of you ignore it while the rest of us have to keep littering up the place.

This is declined for the main Q&A sites, but note that chat is meant as a social environment, and so it does have an "ignore" feature.

Answer 5

2021 Update: Just marked this as status-deferred. We will consider this request as part of a larger inquiry into abuse and how to mitigate it. This is not on our roadmap in the near future.

2018 Answer:

We're going to consider this.

This didn't make as much sense in 2009 as it does today mostly because in 2009, people came here for the rules; they were fed up with other platforms where the noise far outweighed the signal and at that time a little abrasiveness, even when kinda obsessive, was a price most were okay with paying for high signal with very little noise or distraction. I think even I said 'get a thick skin' back then and that was one of the wrongest things I think I ever said given what I've learned since then.

Putting something like this in place back then kind of felt like giving in before we figured out how far forward we could push without it. Twitter dog piles back then weren't very common, nor was people cycling through dozens of bogus accounts to deliberately target and harass people, which is unfortunately something that keeps the community growth team busy.

We're going to take a look at this through (what I fear) is going to be rather painful analysis and look at all of the ways where the option to mute interactions in a more granular way might make a bit more sense. The goal here: Let people turn off specific kinds of noise at certain thresholds, but don't hide abuse that we really need to be dealing with at a lower level by simply burying it.

We also don't want new users just cramming their fingers in their ears, which could be tempting if they get off on the wrong foot. Changes here have to fit in closely with changes to help users post better questions to begin with.

I don't have an ETA but as we look at ways that we can make people more confident that they have some control over what rings the inbox notifier, it could serve as a last stop above the current level of toxicity that some have been reporting.

And before you go nuts, I said consider

When / if we roll this out it will be much more considered than "just build a per-user mute button". We have to look at other aspects of the software that lead some folks to believe that 'mutable' behavior is acceptable if you're a good enough rule lawyer, and put our 'be nice' policy more in front of people as a solid code of conduct with advertised and consistent consequences.

So, yeah - we have to keep up with the times, and maybe we waited a little too long in this (and other) areas of the site to finally accept that there are social aspects where we need to be much more influential, if not in complete control.

We're going to take a look, and there will be a separate (2018 version) discussion once we've got some ideas.

Thanks for poking this.

Answer 6

Similar to Usenet KILLFILE

I like this idea. From Usenet experience, there's always a couple of odd characters who seem to contribute little to discussions but are able to stir up way more than their share of controversy.

It's nice to be able to just ignore the controversy. Plus it gives people the ever-satisfactory rejoinder to any disagreement, "that's it, you're going into my killfile!"

As a practical thing, it might be useful to moderators to see which users are being ignored by lots of other users.

Answer 7

Every possible feature must be examined with a few variables in mind.

• How does this benefit individual users (consumers)
• How does this benefit all users (community)
• How does this contribute to the goals of the site

How does this benefit individual users

This can be subdivided into three categories: Ignorers, Problem Users, Bystanders

Ignorers

This group benefits the most, obviously. There is some user that they do not want to see anymore. Those comments will disappear, those answers will disappear, and those questions will disappear. The minor consistency problems with this have been illustrated already. But those could be mitigated by simply having an 'IgnoredComment' pop-up of some kind. Configurable, of course. Like the ignored tags.

The downside is that this user could potentially miss out on a good question or good answer. But it's a huge community, so they probably wouldn't be missed. The ignorers will end up being more productive and happier as a result.

Problem Users

These users are annoying. They're not offensive, otherwise their comments could be flagged as offensive. They are not spamming, otherwise their comments/questions could be flagged as spam. The behaviours that they are exhibiting are simply annoying for whatever reason. The moderators cannot do anything because they are not breaking any rules. So they simply continue to exist and make life worse for those around them.

Once they are being ignored, they have no way of knowing it. They are not being told to get better, they will not notice that they are being ignored. There will be literally no indication to them that they are expected to improve. Furthermore, if someone does tell them to improve (someone who has helpfully not put them on ignore) and they DO improve, they will still be on ignore lists, which means that their past behaviour precludes them from fully participating ever again. As one poster points out: being NEW is considered crime enough to put them on the ignore list.

This also means that users are punished for disagreement. I am someone who believes that many architecture decisions are complex, and therefore there can be many contradictory but independently correct solutions. This means that there will be arguments. I will downvote and comment on questions, and the author will clearly disagree with me. If that user gets frustrated with me, they could just say "I'm ignoring you!" and then feel smugly superior, like they won the argument. In fact, they are simply running away. They have no convinced me of their opinion, they have not convinced me to change my behaviour. Especially on meta, where discussion (heated sometimes) is encouraged, this feature would be counter-productive. You would lose out on voices of dissent. I'm not saying that these people are right, but if you just white-wash and convince yourself that no one disagrees, then you are LOSING out on valuable input.

Furthermore, if there is as few as one incident, they can be ignored. And there is no way to redeem yourself. You are just gone. This goes against the point of SO, where content is judged individually, and the votes speak for themselves.

The Problem Users who, as I've highlighted, are not necessarily problematic at all, will have a much much worse user experience, with no guidance as to how to improve.

Bystanders

Bystanders are everyone else involved. If the ignorers start ignoring people, the bystanders still have to see them. But, there will be fewer people actually trying to help those problematic users. It means that for the bystanders (the bulk of the community) the general product will be worse. The annoying people are still being annoying, but there are fewer people reporting them. If they attempt to answer a question for a user who is on many people's [ignored] list, then there will be fewer people to comment and provide feedback. If they edit a bad question and make it better, this will also be [ignored] by those ignorers. Ultimately, it means that the bystanders will end up seeing less information from the good users, and more information from the bad users, because there are fewer people trying to keep the content-to-noise ratio down.

For bystanders, the net result will be bad.

How does this benefit all users

As I said in the bystanders section. This feature is anti-community. It encourages us to ignore problems rather than try to solve them (an interesting position on a problem solving website). The bad users are still bad, but no one is going to make them better. The reason this community is so strong is that it takes good programmers and makes them better, and it takes bad programmers and makes them into good ones. Those programmers will then become huge advocates who will contribute strongly to the community.

But that won't happen anymore. We are writing off people who need improvement. We are also writing off people who have abrasive personalities, despite the positive things they could contribute.

Another aspect to consider is the effect on new users. I'll illustrate with a trivial/silly example (please don't extend this past the purpose I'm bringing here) If you live in a messy apartment, but you just ignore the mess, and live there just fine. Every new person you show your apartment to is going to comment on the mess. But you don't notice anymore, so you think it's fine.

New users are going to find that there is a lot of spam, and a lot of annoying users. This will cause them to turn around and leave. Yes there is an "ignore user" option, but they won't know about that initially, and they won't bother with trying to get value from the site, when it is clearly just overrun with spam.

How does this contribute to the goals of the site

The goal of the site is to be a repository of information. That means, taking common questions and putting them in front of as many people as possible, and letting the best answers be decided by the community. Adding the ability to ignore users means that the questions (which could be useful to everyone) will no longer be seen by everyone. That means that users who could have provided incredible answers that were read by everyone will now not do so, just because the question asker did not meet their personal standards.

Ultimately, this feature does not contribute to the goals of the site.

Breakdown

Benefit to individual users: Ignorers: Positive Benefit to individual users: Ignored: Very Negative Benefit to individual users: Bystanders: Negative

Benefit to community: Negative

Contribute to site goals: Mostly Negative

SOLUTIONS

Just move on. If their comments annoy you, move on.

If their comments are offensive. Flag them.

If their questions are spam/offensive/argumentative. Flag them. Close them. Report them.

Lastly, (for those with the strength of will) engage them. Try to help them. Why are they argumentative? Are they naturally douchey, is there a language barrier, do they have an aggressive oratorical style? Did their wife just cheat on them with their best friend and that bitch wants my car now too?

I can't rule any of those things out, and I really don't care. I just want to contribute to this community as much as I can.

Answer 8

As you note in the quote at the end of the question, part of the problem is that moderators have only big sticks. Ignoring users who you know get under your skin is attractive, and I'm glad to see that the team will evaluate this problem, but it's a complicated problem with a lot of edge cases. Another way to approach the problem is to give moderators the ability to ban users from commenting.

We can already manually block bad reviewers, and the system automatically blocks new questions (or sometimes answers) from users with poor track records. The one-size-fits-all suspension has already been broken up. Except for comments. Some of the sites I participate on get a lot of comments, many of which need to be deleted, but, often, individual cases don't rise to the level of suspensions. But if I could say "you there! no commenting for you for the next week!", I'd use that in an instant to quell rising heat levels on my sites. Incidents should be logged with the user (as other bans are) for easy review; if a track record emerges, then we can suspend in good conscience instead of the constant questioning and endless review of deleted comments that we have to do now.

Yes, please think about the larger ignore problem too, but please give us a comment ban in the meantime!

Answer 9

This needs to be revisited. If not the ability to ignore a user completely, then I'd at least like the option to have posts from specific users not give me a notification. (Like Yvette Colomb's Can we have a feature to ignore specific user's pings?)

Also the ability to mute all future notifications from a specific post would be great. (For those times when you just want to answer programming questions, but notifications from a post a few days old keep popping up...)

Answer 10

Users who are annoying for whatever reason are definitely a problem, but I question whether this solution could be implemented well. Turning on "Ignore" functionality almost always leads to consequences that are different than the original problem, but just as bad. Simple example:

Alice is ignoring Bob, but otherwise everyone can see everything.

Alice: [relevant comment]
Bob: [trollish comment]
Carl: [something along the lines of "shut up and go away"]
Alice: Hey, what was that for?

Adding things like only ignoring comments or only ignoring questions makes the whole mess even stickier.

Answer 11

What if we filtered users the same way we filter tags? The responses are still there, just kind of grayed out. You can still see the actual content (for dupe purposes), but it is not going to jump out at you.

It could also work the opposite way, allowing you to hilight users you believe are more knowledgeable/useful.

Answer 12

This feature really needs to be reevaluated given that's been a couple years since it was declined. This could also allow the network infrastructure to allow people to feel more comfortable here.

Answer 13

If we're following the xbox live model, well they have flagging... and they have mute. was that a mistake then?

My view is that if the lack of a mute feature causes someone to want to not spend time on SO, well that's a serious problem for SO. It does not seem that the penalty box has been a sufficient deterrent.

Answer 14

While Hellbanning is distinctly different, the anti-community results are remarkably similar.

Stack Overflow is about content, not about people. You can't "friend" people, so therefore you can't "unfriend" or worse - "block" people.

You can show interest or disinterest in topics and tags.

You can upvote and downvote specific solutions.

You can flag and tag content.

These are the weapons and tools provided, and they are focused solely on content.

The one and only limited person based thing we have we do not hand to the users - only moderators can ban users/people.

Allowing users to target other users, even for only their consumption, is too user-focused and not enough content-focused.

Use the tools provided, and if they are inadequate, describe a content-based tool which would resolve the issue, rather than a user-based tool.

Answer 15

Something like this was declined on UV, but there weren't any reasons given, so I can only guess. I think Jeff's preferred solution is to warn such a person, use the penalty box if need be, and if they fail to shape up, take more drastic action:

(This should probably go without saying, but if the problem behaviors continue beyond the timed suspension, your account is very likely to be permanently deleted.)

Further, in systems where I've seen an ignore feature implemented, it always results in confusion. People appear to answering questions that nobody has asked, non-sequiturs abound, information gets duplicated. I don't favor it for this reason.

EDIT:

The whole Greasemonkey thing had me thinking about this again. How would ignoring even help in the case of an edit-war, like one that hypothetically, maybe, allegedly, theoretically inspired this thread?

Answer 16

Well, if I were sandboxed from their actions, that means I could sandbox myself off from the experts of a particular tag. And if I did that, it might mean that only people with less subject knowledge than you could think your answer was wizz-bang, while an expert might have a serious objection to the answer.

Reputation means that the system trusts you, so you shouldn't be able to be shielded from anybody whose reputation is significantly higher than yours. Unfortunately that means that you could be subject to some high-rep curmudgeons.

But everything's a tradeoff.

Answer 17

Perhaps this concept could be extended; when a question gets enough downvotes, it can be closed. Similarly, if a user gets enough "ignores", perhaps their behavior can be flagged for review / probation / whatever.

This would serve a different purpose than flagging a post; flagging a post indicates that the post is offensive. Ignoring a user indicates that the "ignorer" finds the "ignoree" so offensive that they don't care whatever they say. Plus, if I'm ignoring the user, I won't end up flagging their posts, which could tend to mean that their offensive behavior gets "unflagged" long enough to offend more new users who haven't learned to ignore that user.

Answer 18

I like this idea, I would use it for other purposes too.

• Sometimes someone pops up and quickly asks a flurry of beginner questions on one of my interesting tags. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer to leave them to other people to answer, and I don't find the discussions interesting either. I'd like to ignore their questions - just a personal decision. I know, it's probably bad karma.
• This is rarer, but I've noticed some people are very free with downvotes. I've posted (IMHO) quite nice answers on their questions, and they downvote because of a niggle with my phrasing. I check their homepage, and they dish out 10x more downvotes than upvotes. Again, a personal decision but I prefer to avoid their questions in future. Not just because I'm rep farming, but it's just a discouraging scene.

I would not ignore these people's answers or comments, just their questions.

Answer 19

I think one of the bit arguments against is that by design SE is supposed to be aggressively meritocratic. By blocking yourself from seeing specific users - you're more or less making it about the poster not the content.

As per the original question and many of the answers - well we shouldn't be seeing flamebait if people focus on the problems at hand. Even on the newer, subjective sites, I think our core goal - to get people useful, practical answers to real problems is important.

However with broadening scopes, not all sites have objective, purely technical scopes so having this as a option on some sites could be worth considering, other than these sites have more problems with folks not getting along, not less and being able to hide posts kind of just sticks a bandaid over a broader issue.

I can see some people benefiting from being able to block seeing comments but blocks on posts feels kind of against the 'ethos' of SE as a whole.

Answer 20

Contrary to the alleged opinion here, silencing certain users has made my experience here considerably greater. Keep in mind that the ignore-users script isn't a solution to bad-behavior here. Reporting to Mods is the preferred solution. The ignore-script is a hold-over, or an extra-jump if you absolutely need silence.

Answer 21

I retract my previous answer having gained more knowledge of the site.

Blocking users or content in any way would be detrimental to us helping each other.
Sure I get frustrated with other users sometimes, but, there are times with users I'm familiar with where I've mostly liked their comments, I've then seen them post something I felt was rude, or stupid, etc.
Had I seen those bad comments first, I might have "blocked" them and not seen their better comments.

We can all have an off day, can't we?

We're a wild bunch of folks from all walks of life with so many varying opinions, and we will get on each others tips now and then.
That doesn't mean we should block each other.

The point is not to block each other out, but to learn to tolerate our differences.

Besides, if we block that annoying user, how can we argue with them next time :D

---

I might be behind a way to mark users as good or bad. This is better, although still against the spirit of a community.

Something like:
A function where we can click a username and mark that user as "Good" or "Bad", and neutral (which would be as it is now).

Then anywhere their name appears in comments (and even questions and answers) their name is GREEN for good and RED for bad.

Of course allow it so we can revert to Good, Bad, or neutral, regardless of the current setting.

This would allow any users to be "ignored" without removing their content.
This resolves:

1. Still see potentially valuable posts - a user annoying you (or whatever) in one post or several doesn't mean they don't have a comment (or answer or question) which is very useful to you
2. Able to revert from good/bad/default allows us to change our minds, and a system outright blocking content doesn't allow us to identify when we've been a little hasty or harsh on a user for a few posts. With the username just coloured, we can still see their other content and decide they just had a bad day, or we had a bad day and didn't want to block them really.
3. While the content can still be seen by the user marked as "bad" on your list, their username being RED means easy to ignore (more than now anyway).

Answer 22

Anyone offensive enough for you to ignore is offensive enough for you to report to the Stack Overflow team.

They are quite effective at cracking down on offensive users.

Answer 23

This feature would be cool, because I'm sure most of you know the feeling, when you just think someone should shut up, even if they weren't breaking rules.

To avoid awkward situations described here I have a slighly different solution than the questioner:

Problem users should just be blocked from questions of the ignorers, so there won't be any good answers missed because they simply can't answer to the question. In all questions from different users the Ignorers will se the problem users, but this isn't that much a problem, because one can just avoid an annoying user, which isn't the case on your own question.

Answer 24

Administrators could review which users are the most often ignored, which would be a strong indication that someone should be put in the penalty box or even locked out of their account

That's an encouragement to

• ignore unpopular opinions or people who frequently refute your points
• hope these "annoying" people get banned.

That's the most evil idea I have seen for a while.

Answer 25

I'm just wondering if Stack Exchange would be willing to reconsider this during the current "sprint".

In reality, you cannot opt out of "ignore user" being a feature; it's currently implemented as "not using the site". I would simply like it implemented as "clicking a button". A scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

There's already longstanding precedent with question and answer blocks---some users simply do not make a site "not-worse", but their behavior is not enough to warrant moderation actions. And if multiple users are ignoring a specific user, that gives moderators something tangible and objective to act on.

Answer 26

I initially didn't like this idea, but after seeing this and this I really think that there is a possible need for this in the future. Stack Overflow and Server Fault are more focussed then Stack Overflow, and Stack Overflow is bound to attract a lot more hate than the other sites.

Any moderators on Stack Overflow will require hair on their teeth and all the forces of the League of Justice) combined.

I realise there is a Greasemonkey script for this, however I don't use Firefox and work on any of 5 different machines at any given time, these are not working solutions for me.

Answer 27

This would be a good idea, because, if users on SE don't want to be annoyed by certain other users, they should be allowed to do so, conveniently.

I'd also say that if a certain user gets ignored by too many users, we could put his account in suspension.... that's up to the moderators, but it might be a good idea as that particular user is not doing any good towards SE, and only annoys others.

Answer 28

If this is implemented (and I am personally in favour of it), I think there needs to be some granularity. You should be able to choose which combination of questions, answers, and comments from a particular user you will not see (or be notified about)—and perhaps even be able to choose to not see only comments from a particular user in response to your own questions or answers.

I think there is a difference between something being reported as offensive in an objective sense (where a flag is appropriate), and just encountering somebody who keeps responding to you in a way that you find tiring.

Certain personalities just "clash," and, over time, there is a pattern of personal dispute. When it comes to comments, continuing to air such a fundamental difference of opinion serves no purpose. (Comments are not normally the forum for an ongoing debate.)

Rather than continuing to try to just ignore all comments from a particular user, it could be beneficial to simply never see them.

Not seeing questions and answers could address a similar situation.

The argument that not seeing a particular question could cause you to post a duplicate is valid—but questions get marked as duplicates all the time, even those that are visible to everyone. I doubt that there would be any significant increase in the need to mark questions as duplicates just because some users decided to turn on this option for certain other users' questions.

I don't see posting the same answer as somebody else a problem. This happens too—because nobody frames their answer in the same way. General voting simply decides which answer is framed in the best received way.

I can't really see a downside to this, but I can see an upside. (At least for some people in some situations.)

Answer 29

Considering the never ending pronoun wars going on right now, I can imagine this feature being used to pre-ignore people or the moment someone mentions their pronouns, immediately getting ignored.

Not that it would be a new thing since pre-blocking or getting blocked the moment you reveal your pronouns is done on other sites too. Even though it will not really make those users feel unsafe, it might them feel like they are being shut out and censored.

And since I am against any kind of censorship be it indirect or direct, this might not be the best idea. But still, that is a side effect of adding a ignoring/blocking function on any site regardless and it might be useful for some people. Personally I rarely use those functions.

Answer 30

Suggestion: Rather than blocking an entire user's question/answer/comments, just stop answers/comments from a certain question showing up in our notifications

From my experience, the biggest problems with harrassement come from the comments on various questions and answers. I have seen several offensive comments directed at me during my time at SE. I want to ignore these users and just move on. I don't want to silence them or prevent them from contributing. They can say whatever they want, I just want to not have to sit there listening to them. However, it is really difficult to do so when they keep spamming comments directed at you and I have to keep looking at their harassing comments (which are often just polite enough to avoid being flag-worthy) every time I open my inbox.

To put it another way, the current environment is basically set up to force people to repeatedly expose themselves to harrassing feedback over and over again, and then claim that not wanting to see this harrassment is a failure of the individual not being "mature enough" to ignore it (which comes off as victim blaming) when the system itself is tailored to prevent the individual from taking action to get away from the harrasser. Flagged material can be removed by moderators but this depends heavily on subjective decisions by mods as to what they consider to be crossing a line. It does nothing to break the cycle of aggression. Being forced to read every harrassing comment in order to make the notification go away and then see it floating around my inbox afterwards makes it really tempting to escalate things in a knee-jerk defense and really hard to just "ignore it and move on". The comments floating around the inbox mean you get repeatedly aggrivated rather than it being a one-time thing. It's kind of like being in an office setting and being mandated to have nasty e-mails pinned to the wall of your cubicle every time you go to work. The only way to avoid the comments is to not go on SE, which is kind of counterproductive.

My suggestion, just have subsequent answers and comments not show up in notifications if the user so chooses. I probably wouldn't even notice that these harrassing comments had been made if it wasn't for them showing up every time in my inbox. By default notifications could always be on and have to be removed on a by question or by comment chain basis by the user. This would make it much easier to just "ignore it and move on". Questions themselves aren't that big of a deal because unless they're blatantly off-topic like "why user X sucks" (and likely to get deleted anyway as a result) the asker is generally focused on their own question rather than harrassing another person.

Again, I don't care that people say these harrassing things, I just care that I'm forced to look at it. Reading the comments of this question, this seems to be similar to what other people are trying to articulate they want as well.

This way you have the best of both worlds. You dramatically cut down on flamebait (as well as stop many of these exceedingly long, unhelpful comment chain arguments that many SEs frown on) but at the same time you are not directly silencing any one individual. All of the harrassing user's questions, answers, and comments would still be there, so there is no risk of duplicating answers (they are still visible to the ignoring user if they go to directly look) or ignoring information based on its source. Any outright inappropriate response can still get flagged. If someone wants to ignore the responses to their own question, well, they're shooting themselves in the foot for why they wanted to ask a question on SE in the first place. And I'm sure some people would like to no longer be notified about an old question they no longer have interest in.