Ideas for ignoring

submitted by wizzwizz4 from self.IdeasForSaidIt

There are some people here that we all want to ignore (naming no names). Some subsaidits that we don't want to see posts from (again, naming no names). However, allowing people to completely block stuff means that they won't be able to report spam (rhymes with "Fartin’ Rimothy"), and the quality of /s/all will quickly devolve.

So. What to do? How can we block things without becoming unable to see them? Here are a few ideas, stolen from various places and attributed where possible:

  • Visually de-emphasise blocked content with CSS, like:

    .ignore {
    opacity: 0.8;
    /* shamelessly nicked from https://stackoverflow.com/a/19848543/5223757 */
 background: 
     linear-gradient(to top left,
         transparent 0%,
         transparent calc(50% - 0.8px),
         red 50%,
         transparent calc(50% + 0.8px),
         transparent 100%),
     linear-gradient(to top right,
         transparent 0%,
         transparent calc(50% - 0.8px),
         red 50%,
         transparent calc(50% + 0.8px),
         transparent 100%);
}

  • /u/TomBombadil's suggestion of weighting content on the home page, slightly modified, can be used to reduce the weight of "ignored" subs, so that you see:

    • Lots of what you subscribe to,
    • Some of what you don't subscribe to, and
    • Barely any of what you ignore. It'd be great if we could customise the weights, too, or maybe create custom groups with custom weights and assign subs to them. This idea will increase the load on the server, but I think it's worth it. Also, depending on the intelligence (heh) of the SQL server, it might not be a significant penalty.

Other suggestions? Those'd be good!

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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

This middle ground of I want to block it but still see it to police it seems weird to me, but who knows maybe you're onto something.

My suggestion is add block user and block sub buttons everywhere that do 100% blocks. (Currently you can block users but only in your inbox, so you have to have a direct interaction with who you want to block).

[–]JasonCarswell 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I think hiding it or obscuring it is a bad road. The problem is not going to fix itself or go away. It's only going to get worse as this site grows. Those who comfortably hide the problem will burden those who don't even more. To keep our community strong we all have to be vigilant and be guardians of our own peace.

When the problem is out of control or used as an excuse to stomp us, by then it will be too late to collectively take action.

Benjamin Franklin had some quote about security and freedom and farts or something like that.

[–]Jesus 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I agree!

[–]wizzwizz4[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The middle ground is so the whole community still has a say in what's acceptable, so the standards are held across all subs and users and so that people aren't inundated with content that they don't find useful while still being shown content that they might find interesting.

Say that somebody doesn't want to hear about corruption in the US (me!). However, there's something new about the Bayer company poisoning something or other by negligence. I'd want to know about that, so I know what medicines to be careful of (in case they're reselling them to other markets again) and that's the kind of thing that gets a lot of insightful votes very quickly. Same with other important or interesting things; I might discover an interest in astronomy from seeing an incredibly detailed shot of the space around a decades-past supernova, but I wouldn't want to know about the relative merits of various telescopes unless I was interested.