The rules are changing, we are going to start showing the assholes the door

If you had waited 10 more seconds and not leaped on it, you'd have noted that I removed my commentary. Self-edit has some value.

Well, if I'd known..

Anyway, good work with your retraction, Rags. Like I said, I don't think it was that bad, but the "spirit" of it was probably not what Bob is trying to encourage.

But, getting back to this "blocking" thing:

Many here seem to be very proud of the fact that they have "ignored" someone and victoriously announce their having done so to the crowd. I guess they are in part looking for congratulations from others, but there is also an element which suggests they have "punished" someone by ignoring them.

That's not exactly "ignoring," is it? There seems to be an ulterior motive behind such announcements. But the "punitive" aspect will become more real if blocking is implemented, and it will be used just as often (much more often, actually, I would guess) for petty, self-serving purposes.

To me there's a significant difference between choosing what I care to listen/respond to and me imposing my private preferences on others by limiting what THEY are allowed to listen to.

It might be interesting to talk to the Not A2K facebookers about why they left (I'm sure Robert has) but I know one left due to the constant harassment of one poster to this thread. I know another left, not so much due to harassment, but to the ceaseless repetitive bullshit of another A2Ker who hasn't found this thread yet.

Is this grounds for kicking out an asshole? I don't know. Assholiness is subjective.

In a wetware community, people are exlcuded/included on a complex algorithm that none of the community are really aware of. Call it natural social selection. It looks like Robert's new 'group' functionality is trying to do an analogue (digilogue?) of that.

But what ever Robert does will succeed or fail based on our response to it, and if it's failing I don't doubt Robert will change it again - or just walk away. Welcome to the 21st Century, agility and natural selection in social media.

It's kind of nice that you care enough to comment, but ultimately it doesn't matter much.

A2K has had a startlingly good run, but ultimately the connections it's made between people will survive longer than it does, as with any medium.

Your premise is false, at least in my case. I don't ignore people to punish, I ignore them to survive and increase the chance of meaningful interaction in my experience of A2K.

Someone has to repeatedly be a dick and show major cognitive dissonance before I'll ignore them.

Having opinions I disagree with or using an obnoxious faux persona constructed for your own amusement usually isn't enough. Otherwise I would have ignored you.

Personally, I don't find the need to use some "automated" feature to control what I'm exposed to. I can skip a post on my own. There are times when you must know what a certain person has said in order to even follow the discussion.

I didn't say everybody used it for that purpose. And, of course, you're quite free to express your disapproval of what others do in an upfront way without being combative or condescending about it (as you have just done with me). I have no problem whatsoever with you expressing your opinion in that way.

If you find me to be "obnoxious," by all means say so

It is not a perfect solution and is not without its flaws but the bottom line is that it enables flexibility in rules. Most of the members some people want removed are members others do not. Right now the main options are dealing with it or leaving the forum (or being kicked out).

With blocking, the less nuanced tool of a site wide ban is the alternative. With the ability for individual members to block others then they don't have to leave the forum, demand that people that annoy them be removed, or just deal with annoying interactions (nobody should have to deal with **** if they don't want to here, they should be able to shape their experience).



Nonsense, and adding superlatives doesn't do anything to make this case, it's just strength of conviction without substance behind the thinking, a reflexive opinion that you are going to defend instead of challenge in yourself.



Nonsense, the individual user can't shape your experience any more significantly with blocks than they could before. Right now they can still choose not to talk to someone (as they should be able to this is not a place where every random idiot gets to force their opinion down everyone's throats) they can. They must simply leave to do so or refrain from talking to everyone to avoid talking to one person.



Nonsense, everyone else can talk to that person just fine, just not on the conversations of one single member, and that single member has a right to have some control over their conversations and no frankly it doesn't significantly affect anyone else. That's a lot of silly handwringing and when this is implemented you will be able to see that if you'd like to.



Users already have all of those base desires and can do it all anyway. Those who try to block and talk about other users will be shunned by communities (if that happens in any community that I run they will be kicked out) and users will shun them too (if someone does that they will be notorious for having shitty one-sided conversations and the users can ignore them or vote their shitty conversations down).

Everyone else in the community is free to discuss anything they want with the blocked member, and the actual effect of this is going to be insignificant compared to the gloom and doom it's being described as.



You've made no case at all that this will happen, and are just throwing out you fear, uncertainty and doubt about the changes. If it ends up having even a significant (to the point it is perceptible) negative effect it will become an option per community, if it will destroy the communities like your hyperbole suggests then naturally we will reverse it.

Take note that Robert did not try to get the buy in from the other stakeholders for his plans and started with a thread with the word assholes that was directed at members/users of his own website that he did not care for.

Then to made sure that no one have any question over the matter he ban one of the major posters on this system.

He had exercise all the charm of Trump in my opinion.

If that's true, then I must completely misunderstand what "blocking" does.

He was specifically referring to your the faux persona schtick being obnoxious. If you are soliciting opinions on its degree of obnoxiousness put me down in the finds-it-obnoxious column.

I have made a case, although it wouldn't surprise me if you ignored it.

It is sometimes (perhaps frequently) necessary to know what a certain poster has said in order to meaningfully participate in a discussion.

That's my claim. Do you deny that's the case, Bob?

yeh, I must agree w/ Hinge. The ignore feature allows me to skip right by the ramblings of Quahog, Frankie, JTT and several others, who , with the help of ignore, are dead to me, unless Im in a particularly nasty mood when I want these folks to know I find their contributions content-free. Its really annoying when all you are exposed to is insane rants or repeated bumper stickers of one beliefs.

"skipping over" is ok when theres a troll in a running debate and you wish to just keep the content rolling, but where someone just wastes valuable bytes to choke the chicken, "Chazers bleibt chazern"

How much of post do you read before 'skipping'?

I have statistical approach. There's a certain threshold where a particular user's posts (based on past performance) have more chance of being 'nonsensical/abusive/self-serving/ill-considered' than interesting that it is no longer worth the investment of reading them to find out if they're worth reading.

I am on the spectrum between lazy and efficient.

I have always used the ignore feature as a self-censure. I have to open an ignored users post, read it and remember that the reason I ignored them was so I would no longer be tempted to reply to them. I read 80% or the posts by people I have ignored, but have replied to zero of them.
Has made A2K better for me and probably them. I hate when I open a thread though and it's just a page of ignored users. I usually just move on.

I'm not "soliciting" opinions, but yours is duly noted. Nor would it require any "solicitation" from me for it to be appropriate for you to express your opinion, needless to say.

If it serves that function for you, then it's a good thing. There are some who just cannot voluntarily resist responding to "trolls" (and thereby feeding them).

I have officially set myself on ignore.

Why are my comments showing up?

Thanks for the injection of some humor, Rags.

I'd reply but I can't find the words.

In fact, even my dog has turned his back on me.I had to tie a pork-chop around my neck to get her to lick my face. She carefully ate the chop without touching me.

Heh, keep it up. It's quite in line with what I think is an appropriate "spirit" for these kinds of forums.

Some treat them as SERIOUS BUSINESS, and that's fine too. But, talkin for my own damn self, I'm mainly looking for amusement and entertainment.