But nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
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There is a user registered with that name. They are not active as far as I can tell.
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I always worry about that.
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The church I grew up in had people simultaneously decrying news that advanced their apocalypse while supporting policies that would. Ex: “The Temple will be rebuilt just before the End Times 
– we must support Israel so they can do so! 
”
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Absolutely. I just added that because I remember a time back in the other place, when we got some meta-drama where someone had a go at someone else for liking a post that the first person didn’t agree with. Fuck that sort of nonsense.
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I want to take this entire paragraph out for a drink. I promise to bring it home before curfew, though.
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That just switches the identity from the person to the topic. It is still a very similar problem in that the muting is not based upon what is actually said. YMMV
I acknowledged that upthread, so how am I not getting it? But I said that I think that is antisocial, and better to encourage participating in a community where people emotionally self-regulate. I am guessing that most people have their standards for communication. Here, that’s where the “golden rule” fails me, of treating people as I would prefer to be treated. And others asking me to treat them in ways that I find disrespectful. It might be more honest to say that I get it, but have different values. So others might find my position on that as questionable as I find theirs.
When a conflict is about encouraging self-discipline on all sides, the usual response I get is to accuse me of being a condescending jerk, so maybe that fits here. I try to always re-think my strategies and inject some randomness to uncover latent bias. But when I still find that, after all that, self-discipline seems the way forward yet again, then that is still my honest position.
It always does!
This is not a problem for people who are not interested in divorcing identity from their discussions.
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Ah yes, the platonic ideals of what is social and what is not.
And then there is how people behave, which is often a lot more mercurial, sometimes platonic, but often bordering on saturnine, or in some cases seemingly martian.
Hector at them all you like for not listening, you’ll just get muted.
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right? Isn’t there a chan for that?
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Perhaps not, but this presumes that such disinterested people actually have some essential personal identity. So then the notion of divorcing such an identity is framed as merely dissociating from it, precluding any actual refutation. As I (whatever that may be) try to get more involved with online community, it becomes apparent how deeply baked into computer usage the philosophies of individualism are. How do collectivists function when interactions are all structured in such a way as to require a degree of selfishness?
There are no easy answers. If some of us know that we are essentially a collective, and some of us know that we are essentially individuals, then people are going to assume that the other group are being disingenuous. Either side would likely default to assuming that the other camp are those with the real problem. The latter operate with some advantage, because those assumptions are built into most of the available tools.
And as I mentioned earlier - even if one did exist as a separate, distinct agent - is that agency not a subset of larger groups?
That is precisely what is at issue here. How people interact is entirely facilitated by the formal structures we put into place. Should we “just happen” to find communications tools and complain about how they are used, or implement them deliberately in such a way as to realize those ideals?
Not really, that is again framing the scenario in terms of personal problems.
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I don’t believe that I have some sort of essential personal identity.
I recognize that functionally, there is something commonly referred to as an identity that I can keep track of and mold. I am comfortable with that and I enjoy it. I feel no need and see no good reason to divorce my behavior from it.
I don’t know how you can get what you want out of community, but it should be obvious that it won’t happen with others who don’t share your goals.
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OK, let me see if I get this straight. What is proposed here is to allow individual members to “mute”, solely in their own viewing streams, posts of members whose posts they don’t care to see.
Go for it.
I don’t anticipate needing it myself, but that personality clashes, even severe ones, will exist in a community is a fact of life. That some people will be triggered by certain others (whether they should allow themselves to be or not) is also a fact of life. This is a relatively polite solution to these problems.
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Yay, glad to see muting implemented - this is a long needed Discourse feature.
A muted person still shows in reply counts when responding to others, and hitting the disclosure triangle will show the muted person’s reply.
They also show in inline quotes.
From this, I’d guess it might be the case that if a muted person replies to you, you’ll get a notification. Anyone know if this is the case?
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A civil, non-intrusive solution that does not inhibit anyone’s actual freedom of expression; it begs the question why a small fraction of the membership is so vehemently against it, especially when no one is forcing them to utilize it if they don’t want to.
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I don’t want to mute you, generally, but I’d be happy to mute you to test this out. Hopefully, I’ll be able to un-mute you easily.
Edit: OK, I still see the line where your comment was, with the little microphone. Un-muting should be easy.
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A whole bunch of reasons, I’d imagine, Melz - I don’t care to speculate, and in this case, I don’t think it matters much. If some people find muting handy to maintain their civility, then by all means make it available.
I wouldn’t use it, but I ignore posts all the time, just on a finer-grained scale, that is, certain people when they ride certain hobbyhorses. That could even be most of the time, for example, Israel B. back in the old spot for almost anything except when he wasn’t talking through his bum about programming and technology.
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test
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