I couldn't self isolate due to work so I had to wish my family a Merry Christmas through the dinning room window. They seemed to be coping with the cooking without me. My solo Christmas dinner is cooking now. Fire is roaring, Ice cold in Alex is on the TV and I've got a bottle of port on the go. Cheers...
My ignore list is growing. It is not about who agrees or disagrees. Rather it is based upon who does not post responses to the topic and my message. Instead the poster just posts juvenile minded snarky personal insults having nothing to say otherwise. They only waste my time so I put them on ignore. Simply put, I put trolls on ignore.
Adding to my list: Racists who think America was better when black people were second class citizens. I. Cannot. Watch. It. If you are a racist in 2021, you will always be racist, and no argument will convince you otherwise.
I have to admit that I have a couple of members here on ignore because after having had exchanged a few posts with them and read through several other posts of theirs: I've found them to be members that are simply of no interest to me because they continually fail to post anything close to coherent arguments in support of their positions. And, invariably when I click on show ignored content to see one of their posts I find that nothing has changed.
I haven't been here long. So far only two posters have "made the cut." I don't mind disagreement. I do mind denial and name-calling.
I've been posting here for over 12 years and I won't use it as a matter of principle. That's not to say that quite a few people didn't deserve it....
Earlier in this thread I posted that my Ignore list was 80-posters long and it was becoming annoying due to the fragmented discussions. So I decided to restore 78 of them, leaving only two permanently ignored (these two, I'd never restore). Oh well, rapidly, I'm back to 48... some people are just impossible. It is quite hopeless to try to give them a chance... rapidly they turn aggressive, offensive, trollish, rich in personal attacks, and they spout the most incredible nonsense. After all, posting here for me is a hobby; it's supposed to be entertaining and pleasurable... if you have to interact with nasty posters, it's not that pleasurable... so I think I've learned my lesson, and the disadvantages of fragmented discussions are outweighed by the advantages of not speaking with jerks.
´ ~ I sometimes put myself on Ignore ✖. { yes you can do that } I then become ' the invisible poster'. It's fun but can get confusing.
I used it twice for a short time. Knowing they were on 'ignore' I became too curious what they were up to and took them off ignore. They and a few others still drive me crazy but that's part of the game.
I don't think I've put anyone on ignore here yet, but I'm a huge fan of the ignore button. You don't waste your time in the physical world talking to everyone who wants to talk at you. Some people in this world are trolls, just looking for attention. Some people are mentally ill. Some people just aren't interested in listening to anyone else. Some people are rude and unpleasant. And a whole lot of people just want to publicly posture. I probably would have put more people on ignore here were it not for the fact that there is so little constructive engagement here that I don't spend much time here. Interesting disagreement is what I'm here for. Discussing ideas with people who all have the same ideas is pointless. I'm certainly not going to ever learn anything if I only ever talk to people who have the same ideas as me. There's a whole lot of meanness, and it's easy to get caught up in. It's easy to get rude when people are rude to you.
Good point! I give the trolls the opportunity to RAISE their game to my level. If they prove that they are INCAPABLE of doing so for whatever reason I put them on ignore.
Good point. Some people debate an issue just to score points. They experience some sort of twisted and sick pleasure in trying to thwart the debate opponent (complete with personal attacks), and trying to show off as smart (often they think they are smart, but are not; they are just ignorant and arrogant jerks). In real life, nobody in his/her sane mind would waste time with this kind of people. So, why engage with them here? They are best ignored. The 49th poster I have just moved to my ignore list fits the above. I said, I don't want to waste my time reading rubbish and responding to personal attacks, so, up to Ignore he went.
You may find the constructive engagement easier to find if you put a few of the worse offenders on ignore. Works for me. I just checked and currently have 45 posters on ignore, about a third of whom have since been banned.
Given that you are a rational poster who discusses topics with civility and who provides links to back-up what you are saying, I suspect that your list will grow beyond three, given that you'll encounter plenty here who don't adhere to these qualities.
I simply do not enter topics where there is likely to be a lot of the people who I find as having no redeemable value. If I see a lousy poster, and a topic intro designed to insult my intelligence or my ideology, I just don't go in. If you go looking for a pile of rotting decayed meat, you can't be surprised at the lice you find inside when you find it. I pay a lot of attention to who wrote that OP, because his motives and previous modus operandi/ reputation is the single best predicter of the experience I will have in that thread. Why reward trolls with the attention they salivate for.
That’s a very good point. About half (maybe more) of the threads on PF are obvious dumpster fires based on the clues you mention. They can burn themselves out without any attention from me!