@ebrown p,
I currently have three members on ignore, and am not clicking on their posts so I can see them anyway. The ignore feature is valuable to me because it helps me to automatically ignore the posts I would otherwise have to ignore actively by scrolling past them.
Although I don't myself announce who's on my ignore list and who isn't, I can see why people might do it. That way the ignored persons knows where they're at, and why they are no longer getting responses from the ignorer. Either way works for me though. No big deal.