i'd like a block feature...

[Morgan MLGman]

13 hours ago, Moonzy said:

does it bother me when i see things i dont like? yea, slightly

but it takes 2 scrolls to move on to the next thing

 

though i understand that not everyone can do this

Question about the boldened part of your reply - why? Why wouldn't anyone else be able to do what you described?

[BondiBlue]

19 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Question about the boldened part of your reply - why? Why wouldn't anyone else be able to do what you described?

I'm not Moonzy, but I think what they're saying is that some people have a really strong urge to start something when they see something they don't like. It's like people are incapable of just ignoring things that aren't interesting or important to them. 

 

I see this all the time on Reddit. Here's an example:

Last summer on the Mac subreddit we had many posts of people showing off their new Macs. Great, it's nice to see people enjoy their new computers. However, it got to the point where people would be extremely rude to the people posting these pictures, saying things along the lines of "we all know what a MacBook Pro looks like, you don't need to post another picture of one" and other things. It got to the point where people were very toxic to one another, and the problem was a complete lack of active moderation. Since that time I have become a moderator there and keep things flowing according to the rules, but people got so upset at seeing these pictures of people who were just happy to be enjoying their new computers. They wouldn't just scroll by and ignore the post. No, these people felt the need to comment rude things that just caused more arguments. Some people just can't ignore things they dislike. 

 

Maybe that's not what Moonzy meant, but that's how I interpreted it anyway. 

 

Edit: I guess I interpreted it correctly then. Hopefully my explanation of the Reddit incident makes sense.

[Moonzy]

34 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Question about the boldened part of your reply - why? Why wouldn't anyone else be able to do what you described?

 

19 minutes ago, BondiBlue said:

some people have a really strong urge to start something when they see something they don't like

pretty much this

[spartaman64]

14 hours ago, Brok3n But who cares? said:

Same thing in twitter. I guess it could be by IP instead of by user. Could present a problem for users on VPNs however... So perhaps a combination of both, where If you're signed in and xx blocks you, you're blocked by your account/username, but you're also blocked by IP-and the IP block only kicks into action if you're signed out, so if you sign out and try to look at their profile, you're still blocked. You could still use a VPN in xx location- at least until they block somebody using xx VPN in xx location, I dunno. It doesn't fix the problem but it makes it more inconvenient to access profiles. 

wtf so if someone is at a university or something it just blocks their entire university

[colonel_mortis]

Why exactly do you want to block people from viewing your profile? You mentioned stopping them from replying to your status updates, but not being able to view your profile wouldn't block that - status updates are also accessible from the widget in the sidebar and from the all status updates stream. Are there any other reasons that you want them not to view your profile, or is the feature request here that you want to stop people from replying to your status updates? (Feel free to PM me with reasons if there's anything you would prefer not to discuss publicly.)

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, colonel_mortis said:

Why exactly do you want to block people from viewing your profile? You mentioned stopping them from replying to your status updates, but not being able to view your profile wouldn't block that - status updates are also accessible from the widget in the sidebar and from the all status updates stream. Are there any other reasons that you want them not to view your profile, or is the feature request here that you want to stop people from replying to your status updates? (Feel free to PM me with reasons if there's anything you would prefer not to discuss publicly.)

I believe the they are tired of people pointing out why them being a fanboy for certain companies, and want to block them.

it seems like @FakeKGB and i would probably be on that list, judging by some of our history with op 

[Ashleyyyy]

4 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

I believe the they are tired of people pointing out why them being a fanboy for certain companies, and want to block them.

it seems like @FakeKGB and i would probably be on that list, judging by some of our history with op 

you indeed would be lol

[Helpful Tech Witch]

32 minutes ago, Ashley MLP Fangirl said:

you indeed would be lol

which is exactly why you are on my ignore list

 

[Ashleyyyy]

9 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

which is exactly why you are on my ignore list

 

epic mic drop right there

[colonel_mortis]

11 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

I believe the they are tired of people pointing out why them being a fanboy for certain companies, and want to block them.

it seems like @FakeKGB and i would probably be on that list, judging by some of our history with op 

That doesn't explain wanting to stop someone from viewing your profile though.

[tkitch]

On 5/15/2021 at 6:49 AM, colonel_mortis said:

That doesn't explain wanting to stop someone from viewing your profile though.

I suspect they want block to work like it does on FB.

 

If I block someone, they don't / can't see:

1) Any of my comments / posts

 

2) Can't see mentions / tags in other peoples posts

 

3) Can't view my profile 

 

4) Can't DM / PM me 

 

Flipside:  I'm restricted from seeing the same things for them, too.

 

(Exceptions to 1 & 2 is if I have a mod in a group blocked, they still can see my activity in that group as a mod.)

 

Basically, if I block someone, they can't interact with me on FB.  I also can't interact with them, either.  

[colonel_mortis]

4 hours ago, tkitch said:

I suspect they want block to work like it does on FB.

 

If I block someone, they don't / can't see:

1) Any of my comments / posts

 

2) Can't see mentions / tags in other peoples posts

 

3) Can't view my profile 

 

4) Can't DM / PM me 

 

Flipside:  I'm restricted from seeing the same things for them, too.

 

(Exceptions to 1 & 2 is if I have a mod in a group blocked, they still can see my activity in that group as a mod.)

 

Basically, if I block someone, they can't interact with me on FB.  I also can't interact with them, either.  

Right, but this is still what you want to happen, not why.

[LogicalDrm]

2 hours ago, Cvet76 said:

Ask yourself why people block each other on twitter & facebok and extrapolate the answer to this forum. Maybe because they just want to, maybe they don't like someone, maybe it's maybelline.

I would wager that neither of those reasons are enough for implementing this...

[colonel_mortis]

5 hours ago, Cvet76 said:

Ask yourself why people block each other on twitter & facebok and extrapolate the answer to this forum. Maybe because they just want to, maybe they don't like someone, maybe it's maybelline.

Ignore is supposed to fill that niche. If ignore is not filling that niche, I want to know why (from the perspective of "why do you need more things to be blocked" rather than "what does ignore not do"), so that I can assess the needs and requirements.

 

Just saying "I want feature x" on its own isn't super helpful, because maybe feature x is really difficult to implement but actually if we implemented feature y we could get 90% of the impact for a fraction of the effort. If someone wants to block others from viewing their profile because they're getting harassment on other platforms that they have linked on their profile, maybe the simpler solution here is to not show profile fields to blocked members. On the other hand, if it's because they don't like people replying to their status updates, then blocking access to the profile won't solve the problem, but maybe some changes to status updates would.

[colonel_mortis]

2 minutes ago, Cvet76 said:

But this is arguing semantics. You're aware of what it would take to achieve the thing OP wishes, but they aren't. You have insight into these things, they don't. They may have phrased the question wrongly, but just outright denying without specifying what could work, is also not super helpful. Not saying you absolutely should implement it, just maybe clarify what the actual solution would entail and the complexities behind it, if any.

I haven't said no, and am not opposed to implementing something, but I have repeatedly asked for clarification on the problem that people are trying to solve, without success. I can't suggest alternative options that may solve the problem until I understand what that problem is.

[kirashi]

12 hours ago, colonel_mortis said:

Just saying "I want feature x" on its own isn't super helpful, because maybe feature x is really difficult to implement but actually if we implemented feature y we could get 90% of the impact for a fraction of the effort.

 

If someone wants to block others from viewing their profile because they're getting harassment on other platforms that they have linked on their profile, maybe the simpler solution here is to not show profile fields to blocked members. On the other hand, if it's because they don't like people replying to their status updates, then blocking access to the profile won't solve the problem, but maybe some changes to status updates would.

As someone who's worked with "agile squads" at their day job, it makes complete sense to suss out the viability of new features before implementing them, as it might end up being a waste of the development teams' time if the features aren't actually what the user wants, or if there's another (easier, simpler, or different) way to implement what the user is asking for.

 

I think you've hit the nail on the head though regarding hiding profile fields - it would indeed be nice to have the ability to hide certain fields from non-logged in users and users one chooses to block. That way people can independently choose which fields (or field groups, depending on the complexity of implementing such a feature) they'd like to hide from non-logged or blocked users.

 

Social media platforms such as Facebook already let users do this - you can selectively choose to show your contact information to friends in certain lists, allowing a group of trusted users (ie: friends & family members you place on the "TRUSTED" list) to view your phone number or home address, whilst hiding this information from everyone else on the platform.

 

No idea how easy this would be to implement of course, but if this helps prevent harassment from users who've been blocked or that aren't logged into the forums, it may help address OP's concerns, in addition to whatever they're asking for in regards to status updates. Screenshot of the sidebar on my profile with mocked up "hidden" fields below for reference.

 

[Spotty]

3 hours ago, kirashi said:

it would indeed be nice to have the ability to hide certain fields from non-logged in users and users one chooses to block.

-Snip-

If you only want certain users - those who are you friends - to see such information then don't put it on your profile. Send your friends a PM to share that sort of information.

 

I have had people request the ability to block someone from viewing their profile in the past, and interestingly looking at their profiles they don't have much information added to their profile. Usually just PC specs and maybe their country. Perhaps those people don't fill out the contact fields precisely because there isn't a block feature or a whitelist you can add friends to, but from the issues they had which were brought to my attention that still doesn't seem like the reason they want to block people from viewing their profile.

 

From what I've dealt with the conclusion I've come to is often they want to block people from viewing their profile in order to send the person they've blocked the message that they've blocked them. I don't think that's a good reason to implement this. 

 

 

I do think the ignore feature does need improvement so that people you've ignored don't show up on places like the recent status update list shown in the homepage and the status update feed. There should be an option to ignore status updates from people.

I think it's an oversight as status updates are meant to be more personal stuff posted to a user's profile, with the idea that if you don't want to see content from that user you wouldn't be visiting their profile anyway so there's no need to hide it, but a lot of regular forum users (the ones who use the forum as a means of socialising not just for asking for help with tech problems) use the status update feed to view updates from other members and it's those regular forum users who are more likely to want to filter out content from the users they don't like. 

 

Edit: I thought this last bit about status updates was also discussed here, but it was a separate thread. https://linustechtips.com/topic/1308633-hide-posts-in-the-sidebar-and-subforums-from-ignored-users/

Edited May 23, 2021 by Spotty