Having difficulty putting someone on 'Ignore'

frivolous_fay

I see the forum team are being very prompt pulling spam recently - bravo! :T



Soooooo... is everyone back off their holidays now?

*cough*



*cough*

Former_MSE_Webmaster

Not quite.

However, this is actually a really frustrating problem and it all relates to case sensitivity . We've spent quite a deal of time on it but because this Forum's been around for quite awhile now, we've got lots of usernames that would be duplicated if we made the edit.

What this basically measn is that if we made the suggested change, we would immediately invalidate 1000s of user accounts.

We're trying to figure out a way around this but I'm not sure how long it'll take. Really sorry I can't be more specific.


Webby

frivolous_fay

Consider my vote cast in favour of NOT invalidating the names with lower case letters

marleyboy

This is something tat should have been worked out by now, cant you just program your software not to be case sensitive?

Godders

The software is written and maintained by a company called vBulletin so it's not always something MSE can just change.

I've just checked the registration process on a fresh install of 3.8 and depending on the collation type on the users table your ability to register the same ID but with different case changes - with binary collation you can register both "Testing" and "testing" as user ID's, with it set to CI it will not allow you to register the second ID.

However, the buddy/ignore list behaviour stays the same (it cannot distinguish between the two ID's and converts everything to lower case) irrespective of the collation type so with this in mind I would be tempted to report this as a bug in the software to vBulletin. The behaviour should be consistant, either the whole software is case sensitive or it isn't, they have altered something between 3.6.0 and later versions to introduce this behaviour so they may be able to come up with a code change to reintroduce the ability to distinguish between case (when it creates the buddy/ignore lists it doesn't even store the user name, just the user number so the fault lies in the query that is searching for the userID from the username you have provided)

wherediditallgo

Regardless of what's causing the delay in sorting this out, one thing is very clear to me, and that is that the members are being expected to live with a situation that the software or MSE staff (be they volunteers or paid) should be resolving one way or another. The 'ignore' facility was provided to allow members to stop members having to see (and therefore be less tempted to retaliate to) posts that were designed to offend, disrupt or annoy other members and/or the board they appeared on. Everyone benefited - members could control what posts they read by blocking out the ones they didn't want to see, the people who were put on 'ignore' posted less upsetting content as a result (because their posts weren't getting the attention and replies they expected), and there were also less complaints about post content for the abuse team to deal with.

Without this facility, MSE members are being expected to just try to ignore the person or report the post. That's not a constructive solution - some post content might not be deemed abusive by the rules of MSE, but may nonetheless cause significant upset to those reading it. Also, people are only human, and what you ignore on one day may be the straw that breaks the camel's back on another. People can only be expected to do that for a certain amount of time. A working 'ignore' facility allows the membership to deal with the situation themselves.

The problem with the 'ignore' facility has existed for several months, and so much time has passed that I've now started to question how much the feelings of the membership matter in terms of the growth this site has seen. It may well be that the software has a bug in it, but until the software part is sorted out I fail to see why the bulk of the MSE membership should be made to live with this situation when asking the mods/board guides to deal with reports of upsetting posts in the interim would help to sort this out. I realise they've got a lot to do, but the membership is what keeps this site alive. Some of the people posting the messages that do the most damage are repeat offenders, yet they're in effect getting away with it time and time again because the content isn't deemed serious enough for abuse, but is serious enough to affect whether people keep using the site. If members are knowingly left in a position where they have to keep reading content that puts them off being here, MSE may eventually lose them. If the effect on the membership hasn't been seen as a priority issue in the past, it's probably now time that it is.

Labman_2

wherediditallgo wrote: »

A working 'ignore' facility allows the membership to deal with the situation themselves....

......as does not reading the posts from people who offend you. Personally I don't see the need for an ignore facility....it would be water of a ducks back to me if anyone became offensive to me. I'd read it & have a laugh at their ignorance. In fact I doubt if I would bother reporting it.....life's too short to be upset by mere words from people you don't know & who don't know you.

wherediditallgo

Labman wrote: »

......as does not reading the posts from people who offend you. Personally I don't see the need for an ignore facility....it would be water of a ducks back to me if anyone became offensive to me. I'd read it & have a laugh at their ignorance. In fact I doubt if I would bother reporting it.....life's too short to be upset by mere words from people you don't know & who don't know you.

Easier said than done. I'm not talking about posts that appear eg in a chat/sport forum where things aren't necessarily that important. I'm talking about posts in forums where people are in great need for advice & support (such as the Bankruptcy forum), where personal issues are discussed & where there's already concern about social stigma. By the time someone sees who's written the post, they've already read half of it. When someone's in great difficulty, under a lot of stress & is seeking help, they don't need posts that jeer at them or their situation, or blame them. MSE say that board is not for judgement, but some people seem to use the knowledge that not much can be done about it to make comments that have no place there. The ignore facility helps deal with that.

It's precisely because so many people assume it's that easy to ignore posts why the 'ignore' facility is needed. Sometimes the matter isn't enough to consider passing on to the abuse team, but without the 'ignore' facility, people feel the 'powers that be' don't care too much how the system is used, as long as the members keep coming. Good for you that you feel it wouldn't affect you, but until you're in that situation where something is said that does actually matter to you, it's hard to be sure of how you'd react to it.

Labman_2

wherediditallgo wrote: »

Easier said than done....

....I honestly don't see what is difficult about not reading posts from people that have caused you offense in the past.

It's precisely because so many people assume it's that easy to ignore posts why the 'ignore' facility is needed.

Hmmm...don't get that? Are you suggesting people cannot resist reading posts from people who have offended them in the past?

Sometimes the matter isn't enough to consider passing on to the abuse team, but without the 'ignore' facility,

But there is an ignore facility...we all have it!


...people feel the 'powers that be' don't care too much how the system is used, as long as the members keep coming.

....people may feel but I think they'd be wrong

Good for you that you feel it wouldn't affect you, but until you're in that situation where something is said that does actually matter to you, it's hard to be sure of how you'd react to it.

I know I'd be fine!

wherediditallgo

Al_Mac wrote: »

Sounds to me like you'd be putting most of MSE on ignore.

Not at all. However, on that particular forum there are a couple of people who do seem to go out of their way to cause trouble.