Nope

You could become a mod, then drive them crazy on Halloween by modding their every comment until the wrath of Auggie fell on you. That might be fun.

Nope – this has been asked before. If they are harassing you in pms, you can contact the Community Manager but on public questions, you just have to ignore who you don’t like.

You cannot mute or block a user. As @janbb said, if you are having issues with a user via PM, send a message to augustlan so she can look into it. If they make questions or responses that you feel break the guidelines in some matter, flag them and a moderator will look into it.

As for general annoyances, there is really nothing anyone can do. Most users have at least one certain user who bugs them, but that’s just the way things are.

It really wouldn’t work on a discussion site. If you don’t see the answers you can’t really follow the discussion. I think it’s right and proper that with our discussions you have to take them as they are or walk away. None of us get to curate who is and isn’t contributing. Well, unless you’re a mod. But they usually seem to have good judgement so I’ll take them over spambots and flamewars any day.

That’s one of the unmet wishes on my list. Since there’s no more development going on, I just keep a mental list of don’t-reads and skip over those few whose posts I prefer not to see.

Simply ignore them in your mind, don’t read or respond to their posts or pm. That seems to work for some.

Would be good if it was possible.

I go to bed at night praying that when I wake up it will be possible. And I’m agnostic. But I would be swayed if it happened.

I see a ‘mute’ button as equivalent to a small child squeezing his eyes shut, holding his hands over his ears and yelling, “LA LA LA LA LA” at the top of his lungs in an effort shut out something he finds unpleasant.

It’s the Internet, we’re adults, and they are just words.

I see it more as making a choice as an adult to ignore people who cannot, and will not, act like an adult.

@Blondesjon I agree with you in general, but there is one particular jelly whose posts make me sad almost every time. That is not because I don’t like that person, it’s because they seem so very sad all the time. Yes, I do find that unpleasant, and yes, I would like to shut it out – but is that so bad?
I have a hard time hearing that person’s stories because sometimes, I don’t feel good enough to block out other people’s misery. I’m not advocating a mute button because it would be impractical for @fundevogel‘s reasons – but I do wish for one sometimes.

my post is one hundred percent about ‘in general’. there will always be exceptions :)

In that case, we are 100 % in agreement :]

On another site I visit, there is a blocking feature. For two years I never used it. But there is one regular who whines constantly, forever seeking sympathy for the miseries of her life. Those miseries are usually along the lines of how awful it is that she can’t get her son, her parents, her friends, or others to do something her way. I see her as making the lives of everybody around her miserable with her demands. So finally, feeling like a wretch, I blocked her.

Now her name appears grayed out, with a note that says “Not shown because you blocked this member. Show?” If I really want to see the post, I can just click. And I can undo the block any time.

I found that once all those relentless complaints disappeared from view in the threads I frequented, my enjoyment of the site increased at least 40%. I know they’re there, but I don’t have to look at them.

If we still had active ongoing development here, I’d welcome that feature. But we don’t, and that’s all right. I was just surprised to observe how much difference it made to be able to mute a constant irritant.

I’ll shut up now.

It would be a nice feature. There’s always those 1 or 2 people in any large crowd that can’t seem to stop spouting the most inane, mind-numbing drivel.

As much as I used to want to have this feature here, I don’t think it’s necessary or warranted in Fluther,so I’ve changed my mind.

Like @Jeruba, I have also been a member of another Q&A site that had a “block” feature. Although some posters there annoyed me from time to time, I never availed the feature to block anyone; I learned to ignore, bypass and simply not read the things they posted, or just laugh at their antics. (Had they attempted to annoy or harass via PMs, I might have changed my mind.)

On the other hand, when I finally crossed a line with one of the thin-skinned ones there by commenting too caustically once too often, I found myself blocked by that person. It didn’t particularly bother me, but since it prevented me from responding directly to that person’s posts, I had to POP them (post-on-post, where we can “adopt the question” and post about it without responding). I found that using that feature made me even more sarcastic, which isn’t one of my better features (even though I can do it pretty well).

For all my complaining about the mods here from time to time, and there is no doubt that they occasionally play favorites, over-mod those they don’t like, and under-respond to complaints from those people as well, learning to “play nice enough to pass within the rules here” has actually made me a better writer – even if a majority in many threads still disagree with me. So I’d generally vote against a “block” feature.

The mods do tend to keep down abusive and personal attacks; I’ll definitely give them credit for that. (I don’t know about PMs, though. I don’t get much “hate mail”, as some have reported from time to time. That might be block-worthy, but again, I think the mods generally deal with that, from what I’ve heard.)

I disappear from Fluther now and then because I get tired of seeing one or two users and all their gobbledygook.

I mute myself.

Not that it’ll ever happen, but the best part of such an option would be that the people that wanted to use it could, whereas the people that wouldn’t want it wouldn’t have to. If it made things more pleasant for everyone then I don’t see an issue with it.

Rather than mute, just point & laugh.

☝Ha-ha!

Steady on old timer, you may do yourself a mischief.

@ucme A year and a half later it hit me in the funny bone!

Comedy, all about…timing :)