It’s not configurable by admins at the moment, no.
Our mute/ignore is different from social networks because we’re a little more focused on the community rather than the individual. It’s possible a topic started by an ignored user could have information you want to see from others, so we keep them accessible. The difference in behavior is also why we don’t call it “block.”
While you can’t mute/ignore from within a topic, you can from a user’s profile page with this button (we’re going to update the icons soon, because the person doesn’t make a lot of sense). That might be a little easier than going to your user settings:
Adding the button to the user card could certainly make it easier to mute/ignore someone… that’s something to consider.
