Muscatine

Can I ask one question here? Why not just a simple "ignore" button at the bottom of each post? Another board has that feature. If a person's posts offend you, click the ignore button and the content of everything that person posts is hidden from your view. You can un-ignore them anytime you wish. Simple, efficient, upsets no one. 

  I'm so glad that people are being so honest on this board.  I appreciate your support, "just curious", other responses, nedl & your response as well, Robert.

  Robert, you are in a tough position, "the go-between guy".  It's hard & you are doing a very good job relating information to us.  It is appreciated! 

  One major reason for the new ratings system is so NL staff don't have to "keep track" of our users.  Instead of treating you guys like children, we've moved towards a system of self-governance so our users can decide for themselves what constitutes acceptable behaviour.  However, past experience has shown that some restriction is required.  I think the problem with our original "everything's completely anonymous" model was the lack of personal accountability.  Even with total anonymity, most folks are fairly polite and friendly... but one bad apple makes the place miserable for everyone.  The friendlies get tired of the nastiness and leave, while the bad apple has to keep escalating, trying to get a rise out of whoever's left.

  Hey all, I'm there!  I get what he said.  I came onto this board as a TOTAL NEWBIE!  I had never been on a "public board" before.  I was learning & a few didn't like me.  Some very mean things were said to other posters & myself.  They were very hurtful.  I was ready to leave on 2 different occassions.  The worst one was when I shared how our precious dog was run over in front of me & died in my arms.  I was heartbroken & shared w/ others.  MANY, MANY were loving & supportive.  A few were mean, hateful & vindictive & made fun of the grief our family was going through.  I appreciated the support, but could not forget the hurtful comments; the sad thing is they came for quite a bit after. 

  I finally realized there were more loving, giving & caring people on this board than jerks.  WAY MORE!  NEDL is right!  We need a mute button to get those kind of people out of our minds!  ROBERT, that is our answer!  As adults, we REQUIRE that we have that say-so.  Push the mute button 1st.  If that fails... we report to you!  Makes sense to me!

I think that's a great idea, nedl, and one we will certainly be implementing as soon as possible (which unfortunately doesn't mean "right away" because we have a bunch of projects going on).

However, this isn't likely to replace the ratings system and in fact I suspect that being ignored by lots of people would feed into the ratings... I don't know if that's what you had in mind or not.

Here's why "ignore" doesn't solve everything: for every regular contributor on our Muscatine forum, there are somewhere between 10-100 "lurkers" who read, but never post; many don't have NL accounts.  (This isn't unusual; see the 1% rule here (Wikipedia) and here (Customer Evangelists blog).  These folks wouldn't have any way of ignoring problem posters.

Also, an "ignore" button, by itself, may actually increase problem posting.  Instead of engaging someone who is being inappropriate and trying to steer them into a more acceptable means of expressing themselves, you just click ignore.  Much easier for you, for sure, but we want to see NL grow... and think of what the forum looks like to a new visitor in this case.  The obnoxious sorts are spewing whatever they feel like, and nobody is calling them on it.  Makes it look like the forum is overrun by jerks.  I suspect most polite folks won't stick around long enough to sign up for an account and find out they can ignore the obnoxious sorts... while the IMpolite folks will figure they've finally found somewhere they can spew!

We want NL to remain a welcoming place for new visitors...

                   -Robert.-

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I understand it better now and won't bug you about it again. Have a good week.