There was a recent thread on the Ignore feature, and since there are a lot of new faces here, it's about time for another thread on this topic.

The Ignore feature -- clicking "Hide" on a person's post -- puts that person on Ignore. That means that each post of that person will only appear as a "stub" -- mostly so you can un-ignore them (by clicking "View"). You will see this "stub" in place of each of the Ignored person's posts. So you'll know that he posted something. In fact, some people's curiosity can't handle it *grin*

We used to display an "ignore count" at the bottom of each post -- so everyone knew how many people were ignoring them. For the sake of reducing database accesses (and site speed), I disabled that feature.

The Ignore feature isn't 100% -- for example, if someone quotes a post by the Ignored Person, you will still see it. If the Ignored Person starts a thread, you will still see it in New Posts. When you click it, however, any post(s) by that person will be stubs.

But it does prevent you from having to read their posts. And here's probably the best part:

If you have someone on Ignore, and they try to PM you, it will reject the message. You are literally ignoring them.

In a perfect world, we would all love each other like family, and you wouldn't want to ignore anyone.

But in the REAL world, CathInfo is such a large and diverse group, that there are going to be abrasive, abusive, and annoying characters that you wish would go away. The problem is, no one can agree on who those people are. So banning them isn't an option. If I asked each CathInfo member for the name of ONE PERSON to get rid of, the forum would clear out pretty quick. In other words, with a few exceptions, there is no unity on "who should go".

Enter the Ignore feature. It's a way to help keep maximum variety on CathInfo, while preserving the sanity of the various members, acknowledging the reality that in the Traditional Catholic world, there are going to be some people who massively annoy you, tempt you to anger, etc.