What's the size of your ignore list?

[msplsh]

Not everyone behaves badly on purpose, so explaining what is wrong and why (not just "calling names") in such cases can help a lot. If you won't do that nothing's gonna change for the better, it can only get worse, I've seen it on a lot of forums.

In my experience, most people who are behaving badly do so because they can, there's no force causing them to change, and there aren't any consequences.

 

[zirias@]

most people who are behaving badly do so because they can

I can. I'm "behaving badly" sometimes.
My dear old uncle once taught me, when I was a kid: "first think, then speak".
That's IMHO a great maxime, and I won't stop calling out jerks disrespecting that.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… In general I prefer face to face talk.

+1

… Next best thing is irc where I can at least talk interactively.

Yes and no.

Especially not where a person becomes impatient verging upon bullying, which happened to me once (years ago). Open source at its worst, that was.

Humour is sometimes as lost in IRC as it can be in a forum.

All content has value.

Yes, but it doesn't mean all content has equal value, otherwise everything would be worthless:
If contentX_value = contentY_value for all X,Y, then …

I'm fairly certain that the detailed formulae were humorous. The humour is not lost on me but I can't be certain.

For myself, I'll stick with the simplest possible :

positive or negative

– and for anyone who'd like a humorous take on my use of the ignore feature, listen to Chris Morris in the third and fourth seconds

THOTMIDWTSHF – if you're ignored, you're off the monitor

 

[kpedersen]

… nine.

With those kinds of numbers, you possibly want to look at setting up an allow list instead rather than a block list

 

[msplsh]

With those kinds of numbers

There's 25,000 accounts on here...

 

[kpedersen]

There's 25,000 accounts on here...

Not to mention that I don't believe there is actually an allow list functionality.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

FreeBSD Forums

There's 25,000 accounts on here...

Yeah, the vast majority of content is fine. I ignore 10/25,241 ≅ 0.036 percent of members. We can't tell how many accounts are active (or active daily), but whatever the number, it's a tiny percentage – there's much more good than bad.

Reddit

December 2016: users between 30–49 represented a significant chunk (40%)† of the Reddit audience. To any person who finds a significantly younger audience, and can not tolerate the youth: for your own benefit, spend time in a different subreddit.

June 2021: something like fifty-two million daily active users, ten people blocked by me:

Of the few people blocked at Reddit (a much larger place), I recognise only one name, I blocked him around a month ago for being unnecessarily disruptive (more towards other people, than towards me). It's hard to tell, with forgotten names, but I guess that three of the blocked people were /r/freebsd participants.

March 2022: my blocklist for /r/freebsd is one person. 1/25,109 ≅ 0.004 percent. Again, we can't tell how many of the twenty-five thousand members are active, but the percentage blocked by me is miniscule

---

† <https://web.archive.org/web/2021091...phics-of-reddit-the-official-app-7e2e18b1e0e1>| <http://archive.today/ydJA5> | <https://medium.com/@sm_app_intel/the-user-demographics-of-reddit-the-official-app-7e2e18b1e0e1>

 

[drhowarddrfine]

December 2016: users between 30–49 represented a significant chunk (40%)† of the Reddit audience.

That might be for all reddit but says nothing about individual subs. It also does not reflect on the quality of user nor does it say anything about active users..

 

[msplsh]

Makes 20 seem small, too.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

Twenty is not many, IMHO. Pros and cons of the ignore feature are, naturally, debatable but ultimately, it is a feature, and people have a choice.

Codes of conduct aside, we have ideals such as these:

– intelligence without EI can be less than welcoming.​

 

[Hakaba]

If I hurt someone, I have to know it to be better in future.
As I apply this rule for others, I never ignore someone (maybe I am ignored and I do not know why, please tell me)
The only case for me to ignore one person is if, after explaining, this people ask me to ignore it.
That happened sometime when I was an online/forum player.

 

[Friend Of Jolly Devil]

I'm fairly certain that the detailed formulae were humorous. The humour is not lost on me but I can't be certain.

It all depends on how you define humour It can be called a black/dark humour. The logic of it is irrefutable, so it's a reasoning "ad absurdum" - it means that our assumptions were wrong. We usually silently assume that everything can be judged by its "absolute value", while in reality there's no such thing, it is only a construct of our brains, and as such it is just a subjective property. The problem arises when people try to make/perceive it as an "objective" reality - in terms of absolute value. It gives a rise to:
1. Fascist-like views - nazism that claims Disabled/Gypsies/Jews/Poles/etc. are worthless; libertarianism that claims poor people are worthless, racialism that claims "black"/"white"/"yellow" people are worthless; etc.
2. Communistic-like views, that try to claim that everyone is equal, and effectively making all people worthless, as the true history of communism shows - but not many people (want to) know that communism killed more people than nazism, because it's "in such a good cause".
Because of all this, it's impossible to make all people believe in such false views without some sort of totalitarianism.
So what's the best thing we can do? Word "Equal" assumes an ability to give absolute value, so instead of saying "Everyone is equal" we should say "Everyone is equally important". If we all were rocket scientists we would all die from hunger. We need people with different skills, interests, abilities, point of views, etc. but we should give to all people a chance for education, because it increases their subjective "value", and it makes the world a better place (yes, even if not all want to educate themselves). Of course one should remember that education doesn't mean "forcing someone to have the same point of view as me", it is rather "show/explain to them consequences of their actions"
So in terms of this forum, instead of ignoring people we should try to explain to "bad behaviourers" their wrongdoings (and be open to possibility that actually *we* may be the wrongdoers) because even if it won't work for the wrondoer someone else may learn from it.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… be open to possibility that actually *we* may be the wrongdoers …

"… some members will ignore me, which is fine…"

instead of ignoring people we should try to explain to "bad behaviourers" their wrongdoings

That's a nice ideal, I certainly did so more than once in the past. One topic was particularly memorable, I'll not draw attention to it.

Realistically, over time, I learnt that it's better for me to completely ignore some types of people. Off the monitor

On extremely rare occasions I'll tell a person where to go before blocking. I did this once in 2021, once in 2019, I can't find any earlier record of me foffering direction.

 

[rorgoroth]

Strange, I see many votes but no replies to this thread...

 

[eternal_noob]

Oh, so you're one of the guys with 21+

 

[kpedersen]

Oh, so you're one of the guys with 21+

Hah yeah agreed, I'm not sure why they would say that. This place is booming!

I'll add my 2c then. I have 0 in my ignore list for two reasons:

I am not passionate enough about web stuff to configure / change the settings. Everything default is how I like it. Non-standard settings introduce bugs and the web is a buggy mess enough as it is

I tend to suspect someone of being a little bit inadequate if they can't deal with a problem in any way other than playing in separate playgrounds. Spamming and bullying are removed by mods so anything else is simply a conflict of personality. Deal with this as you do in the real world. Did you come here to actually join the community (good and bad)? Or did you come here as a customer (to be entertained and indulged)?

That said, if you are neurodivergent and an ignore list is the only way for you to attempt to get involved in a large community, then absolutely go for it. The bit above is not relevant to you. Likewise there are other corner cases admittedly.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

… The quarrel that would be forgotten in real life in 5 minutes, …

It's equally easy to forget minor and major behavioural disagreements online, no need to ignore or block.

Like, I might remember keywords from the subject line of a topic where disagreements occurred, but (without looking back) I don't recall the details, and I have no wish to look back.

well, when the forums went down several weeks ago, …

During that period, I gained unsolicited drive-by advice from a mysterious stranger. They divulged an alternate ID of someone in FreeBSD Forums whose behaviour was objectionable. At first, I didn't believe the stranger – I wondered whether it was intended to stir things up.† Cautiously, a few days later I browsed historic and more recent posts, I became 99% certain about the multiple IDs for a single person.

my blocklist for /r/freebsd is one person.

The person misbehaving here was the person who I had blocked, and forgotten, months earlier, in Reddit.

When the Forums came up, I swiftly began ignoring the offender.

Thank you, mysterious stranger

---

† Why choose the forum down-time for the drive-by? Were the two somehow connected? And so on, I became quietly paranoid about the drive-by and its timing, and the paranoia didn't end until a few days after the downtime ended.

 

[msplsh]

It's equally easy to forget minor and major behavioural disagreements online, no need to ignore or block.

When I don't forget and find myself saying "this again" then it's time.

 

[rorgoroth]

I am not passionate enough about web stuff to configure / change the settings.

Truth be told I actually have 0 too.
Apart from on some slow forums where I've blocked/ignored spammers I've never added users to such lists.

I don't really care for it also - I've had disagreements and fall-outs with people over the years but never felt the need. There is also the fact if it's a regular person, for example if I blocked you who I see commenting regularly, it would leave a hole in pages/conversations and I would find that far too annoying.

 

[Cath O'Deray]

a hole

It's never annoying.

If you want to see what was written: a single click. It can't be simpler. For example:

– or:

– and so on.

 

[obsigna]

On invasion of Ukraine, it will become a tad longer by members of this Forums from Russia. Sorry guys, this is nothing personal, but in case your president decides to leave the modern, rule-based, developed world, by adopting cave man policies, then you will leave it together with him as well - at least from my sites. Also, I will utilize my sysutils/ipdbtools for Blocking access from Russia to our servers on invasion of Ukraine.

 

[shkhln]

You are delusional if you think that current conditions (pandemic, very weak ruble, negative public opinion on Syria business) are favoring any kind of open warfare. We are still not quite sure here if that Sputnik vaccine even works properly.

 

[astyle]

My dear old uncle once taught me, when I was a kid: "first think, then speak".
That's IMHO a great maxime, and I won't stop calling out jerks disrespecting that.

I completely agree with that maxim. Unfortunately, the Internet makes it way too easy to ignore that idea.

As for responding to this topic: I am way too lazy to set up an ignore list, just not motivated enough. It's bad enough that I've got a lot on my plate already (https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/poudriere-bulk-not-finding-updates-to-the-tree.83134/), now there's another thing to STILL set up??? Give me a Rembrandt laptop, then I'll bother to THINK about it. DOING the setup of the ignore list is another matter entirely

 

[obsigna]

You are delusional if you think that current conditions (pandemic, very weak ruble, negative public opinion on Syria business) are favoring any kind of open warfare. We are still not quite sure here if that Sputnik vaccine even works properly.

Note, I did not say that an invasion will happen.

As long as it does not, Russian citizens are very welcome to visit my sites. According to the Google search console for one of my sites, Russia is ranking by visits on #4 after 1. Germany, 2. US, 3. Brazil.

As long as it does not, I will happily continue to discuss with you and others from your great country any issues about FreeBSD here on the Forums, and some off-topics of my interest as well.

That said, a war in Europe would be a game changer in many respects. And everybody should be aware of this.

 

[eternal_noob]

I'd prefer to keep world politics out of my thread.