This isn’t a stereotype - I did not refer to all men as acting this way, because they don’t. But some do, and what I’m saying is that women who are tired of it shouldn’t have to be subjected to it. Because it happens. A lot.
I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen in other contexts, that this is only aimed at men. I’m giving an example that is familiar to so many women, in agreement with a previous reply that said the same, but there are others.
The term “mansplainer” refers to a man who talks down to non-men as if they know little to nothing and need to be educated. It does not refer to all men. If the term offends you, happy to rephrase:
Being kind of a condescending man who talks down to non-men as if they know little to nothing and need to be educated isn’t an expellable offense, nor should it be. But if there’s a non-male member who’s really tired of a guy who just can’t help but “well, actually” them, they should be able to block them and move on and be done with it. Of course as an admin I know we are working to combat the microaggressions and work really hard to foster a healthy culture, but the OP is right - it is nearly impossible to eradicate.
At any rate, this is an example of something that happens very frequently and as such it would be very nice to have a block feature. This is just one example, which was given to confirm the experiences of the previous poster, but there are others.
Imho the issue we will always have with inequalities or in this case would be being inconsiderate to others making presumptions and needing their pov to be the correct answer(so to speak)
Creating special tags. Encourages ppl to believe one is worst than another.
Don’t get me wrong either. I mean no disrespect. Just something to consider.
For example being prejudice to an extreme imho whether it is ethnic, class, preference or gender. They are all equal.
You’d be surprised often they are also toxic to other males if they think they are the stronger Alpha complex.
But yes there are people who are condescending toward ppl they have prejudices to. This is usually the root of their ignorant inconsiderate treatment of others.
Welcome to Discourse Meta. I’m wondering which specific features that you would like to see added to the existing ‘ignore’ function.
I just want to say that I am a woman also with my own life experiences but I really dislike these kinds of generalisations, they don’t speak for me – we are not all that fragile. I think it’s not enough to use this alone to bolster an argument.
I think having the Ignore function still allow you to choose to view individual replies on each topic helps, because context matters a lot more on forums than it does on other chat mediums (like especially twitter where everything is almost always detached from context).
And also, for example, Discord’s block is actually relatively similar in allowing you to view hidden replies from a blocked person as they come up, and Discord also doesn’t do a two-way block where the other person can’t see your posts. In places where context of the discussion likely doesn’t make sense when posts are holed out, blocking usually consists of still allowing you to view hidden posts.
I’m wondering why specifically would it help to have a two-way block on forums, if you happen to also want that?
and most of the time, 99% of the time, I am not dealing with stalkers online or dealing with “microaggressions” – that has happened only once during multiple years with someone requesting inappropriate content.
I am also just emphasising that to say to try not to just bring up “women” or some other identity group as a cause in general for any case, this is a bit frustrating to me – try to actually outline what you mean in terms of what you’d like to see from the feature or how it’s not working for you.
(I am a woman and I hang out in online music communities. there are probably a couple of different reasons that many people don’t. before I started posting, it was actually more a shyness thing, and not sure if the stuff I share will sound good)
I think the existing ignore feature shouldn’t go two-way – I have been blocked by someone on discord because I was just posting too often on one server. It was way likely more of an annoyance than hate, when I asked a mutual contact. I still wanted to read the other person’s content, even if they were annoyed with me, at least they don’t have to read my posts if they don’t want to. Once they did reply to one of my posts on another server, which probably meant they clicked to view a hidden post.
I still think that if someone is being abusive, this seems like a case for reporting and suspension from community rather than relying on individual users to have to block them.
If someone is more than annoyed at something, to the point where “some users really need protection from some abusive posts”, I still support the default way of protecting them from those posts which is from flagging and moderation
if enough people think something is abusive, the more ideal case would be that they flag the content to let moderators know that something is an issue for more than one person, rather than having multiple people block.
I think that an element is that people seem to be basing their expectations for a block feature from twitter/X, rather than extended discussions like discourse and even real-time chat like discord, where context has a larger role.
Also I find most of the concern about mean abusive content (where it’s ok to some people and not to others) to be hypothetical and probably based on experiences with X/twitter. generally I find that people tend not to be so mean to each other on discord servers/discourse forums compared to any of the random mean replies that you can get very frequently on twitter (I use and participate on discord servers and discourse forums, and it’s so different to what you see on twitter, I never participate on twitter).
On twitter, a giant house where everyone is crowded inside, you don’t really have anyone to report things to, like death threats and what else. and you’re dealing with this way more often coz there are so many people who can just decide to say mean things to anyone else on the site, and so people have to constantly resort to block. on discord and discourse, there tends to be people moderating because they’re much smaller communities and easier to manage in that sense.
on chat and discussion platforms, and not tweet platforms, making block go two-way and not allowing you to choose to view hidden replies in context would also fragment the conversation a lot more compared to twitter.
as for how I find the ignore feature on discourse, I have found it to be fine. I very rarely have used it, and mainly just in annoyance when I just want a break from someone’s posts. I have often un-ignored after a while. When something is hurtful, I usually flag it.
I think we could probably have a more healthy discussion here about features by leaving gender out of the conversation altogether. It’s not adding anything to the conversation - it’s just winding people up.
Let’s talk about the behaviours without assigning them to groups.
This topic is a feature request for more block functionality than is already provided by the existing ignore and mute features. The extraneous social discussion is causing tension and is actually irrelevant to the feature request itself. Let us please keep the discussion on topic.
There is at least one theme-component that helps improve BLock function by also hiding ignored user Topics
Using CSS one can hide th view hidden content from ignored/muted users. If one wanted or the team. Could add a toggle that can be switched on/off in user preferences.
So maybe we need to have it more expanded to what ppl feel is missing. Iirc Reddit also hides Reply tree of the blocked user. Which is maybe what some are looking for. I had a member who while partly content that there was a block option. He didn’t like seeing others ppl’s replies as he felt the person he blocked was ‘gaslighting’ others who didn’t block the user. And at one point was pressuring to have them banned.
Even with explaining that the system has a threshold default of 5 members blocking a user would send a couple of system messages. To which the member he blocked had not met the default of 5.
For these kinds of members they need/want a more complete block. Perhaps if there is enough support from other community members maybe a “crowd funded” theme-component or if more needed a plugin could be sponsored.
This is a complication with the discourse system if it is being used in that way, so members “cannot be banned,” unless they are first banned from the organization. This is more so a problem with organizations that do that than there being any problem with discourse.
I would like to share something.
Discord’s way of blocking is that the user on my end would be hidden with 1 blocked message then a show message button. On the blocked users end, they (typically) won’t know you blocked them unless you try to react to them.
Oh wow, this is what Discourse does too. It hides the replies just like discord when I ignore them.
For the feature request, I would add that for this to hide the profile picture of muted individuals would help to make this more complete.
As it currently works that seems to only happen if a muted individual reacts to a post, then in the display of who has reacted their profile picture is shown as blank and a mouse over may display “unknown user.”
However if a muted user has posted the most recent reply on a topic that is listed on the homepage of recent topics, their profile picture still displays there.
Indeed a new topic would be best. Though the idea is quite simple to implement with a bit of time. Similar to downgrading/locking trust levels. Which could also be an idea.
Sadly one of our forum members has been stalked, sexually abused and assaulted by someone who has just joined our forum.
They’ve used the ignore feature yet that isn’t enough of them to feel safe. They would like to know how they can feel safe by not allowing the bad actor to get “close” to them.
It would make absolute sense if one user could block another. So that the blocked user has no way of seeing/interacting with the other user.
This is an awful case and I"m sorry this happened on your forum and I hope the victim is getting the support they need. I am very disturbed and personally upset about this.
So are you saying you are still allowing the abuser to be a member? The user ignore / mute features are not a replacement for moderation. Even a “true block” tool (as described in OP) if it existed, would not be a moderation tool. These would be user experience opt-in tools in the preference settings. Are you using the existing moderating tools on bad actors or are you simply putting the onus on users to protect themselves?
If you are an administrator for that site, did you know you can ban the user e-mail and I.P. address from creating a new account?
That is a different category of a more serious situation what you described, which is beyond the discourse platform. Hope that person has been prosecuted for their crimes and is in jail.
There is also an option to restrict who can pm/DM a user in preferences I believe. But as others have mentioned your case sounds like more of a need to moderate. Ie silence/suspend user. Is there a particular reason to keep the other user?
If so you could use groups with category access security. The user who needs to feel safe can be in a group restricted category the other user has no access to.
Yes, it’s a horrible situation. Sadly we don’t know who the bad actor is and the situation has been happening outside of our community. We’ve asked if the person would be willing to reveal the bad actor’s name and they are reluctant to do so. We’ve let them know that if they change their mind that we’d use the name to watch and protect, rather than take any action – they are worried about any repercussions.
I wish we knew who the bad actor was, there should be no place for them in our community and elsewhere.
Sorry about the late reply, but I wanted to give some feedback:
You can delete the user/bad actor [even by IP]
However, they can still ban evade with a VPN, so keep an eye out.
As the topic title says, True Block, when the feature is feature is out, they can block. They can ignore them for now. But they can evade that, so it’s not going to work very well.
The harrassed user can also close their messages if they harrass using that method.
Quote from CA law:
California Penal Code § 653.2 PC makes it a crime to send electronic communications (such as emails or text messages) with the intent of placing the recipient in reasonable fear for his or her safety or that of his or her immediate family.
