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So, I want to ignore questions for certain users from my Questions/Unanswered feed. How do I do that?

The main reason for this kind of feature is that not everything that annoys me is against the rules, and I don't want to punish other people for me getting annoyed at them.

But, if I can't ignore annoying people, I am less likely to contribute at all, because why would I come back to place that annoys me, to do free work?

I have been fairly active in EVE Rookie Help and from that experience I know the ability to focus on the people I feel like helping and ignoring the rest is what helps to maintain my sanity and willingness to help anyone at all.

And on the other hand, I strongly dislike the idea of preventing others helping someone just because I am annoyed by him. This kind of environment leads into people getting banned/downvoted by random just because some higher-up had a bad day. Which is plain wrong.

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    In which way do these users annoy you? Are you talking about the quality of their questions? Or are you just looking for a way to hide questions from the Questions or Unanswered tab that you are unlikely to be able to answer it? Do you have an example of a particular user being banned/down-voted because of a bad day; you would be the first to notice such inconsistency I think. So, please, let us know some more details without specifically calling out a name; then we can explain why things are the way they are or improve things if you have a good reason for them... :)
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 6:25
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    +1 Whether people agree or disagree with the sentiment, this is a well constructed and thoughtful question.
    – Mike Fitzpatrick
    Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 7:08
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    +1 please add this. A user on SU annoys me the whole day with his incompetence and I'm about to leave SU because of his troll posts.
    – magicandre1981
    Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 13:05

3 Answers 3

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The Stack Exchange platform does not currently provide this functionality. There is an old feature request on MSO is currently deferred, which means the team didn't explicitly say no, but also didn't see it a something that needed doing immediately.

Personally, I hope it doesn't get implemented, because I'm not sure why it's necessary...

If there is a serious problem with another user that would warrant ignoring them, just flag a post of theirs to get a moderator to have a look - we can clean up and take action as necessary.

If there isn't a serious problem, well, then why do you need to ignore them?

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    I agree (+1) because an "ignore" option is an anti-social feature that leads to invisible divisions in the the community that won't make sense to those who don't know who's ignoring whom in addition to causing the formation of cliques. The "plonk" feature in usenet newsgroups (NNTP) has lead to this very problem, and has actually made it worse in my opinion because the trouble-makers just return with a different identity (to take a page out of a spammer's handbook). One of the functions of a moderator is obviously to quell such disorder, and for a few instances I know of it was handled well.
    – Randolf Richardson
    Commented Aug 10, 2011 at 16:43
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    When being on forum where everyone can ask questions the people who are incoherent or don't answer to further inquiries reduce my willingness to follow that forum at all. Just making them non-visible on my end still lets others to help them, but also makes me more willing (and able!) to help the people who behave in reasonable manner.
    – Zds
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 12:07
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    And because this is matter of personal preference, and different people have different things that annoy them, user-per-user ignore is good way to go.
    – Zds
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 12:08
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    @Zds - people who aren't coherent aren't welcome; each incoherent question can and should be closed (and so we need people to see these questions and close them - if you can't vote to close yet, then please feel free to flag to close). Those users that don't answer enquiries usually are one-shot visitors anyway, so ignoring them doesn't help you (because they're not coming back anyway).
    – DMA57361 Mod
    Commented Aug 11, 2011 at 15:04
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In general if there are problems with members of our community, we like to intervene to fix it directly. Hiding someone is sweeping an issue under the rug and we would prefer to take a more proactive approach.

So please, flag posts and explain what the issue is and our crack moderators will assist.

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  • I'm sure you mean the good kind of crack. =D
    – Randolf Richardson
    Commented Aug 13, 2011 at 22:20
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But, if I can't ignore annoying people, I am less likely to contribute at all, because why would I come back to place that annoys me, to do free work?

This is really a personality thing. One of our top contributors over the last two months left because they were annoyed by a rather small thing (maybe one particular person). This is not what we want, of course. However, from my personal experience, things like these don't happen too often, therefore such a feature would introduce a social component that goes way beyond the scope of Super User (which is, asking and answering questions).

Are there users who really post so many questions that they need to be ignored?

I know the ability to focus on the people I feel like helping and ignoring the rest is what helps to maintain my sanity and willingness to help anyone at all.

Focusing on the important stuff can be achieved by browsing through the tags you're interested in or sorting questions by votes. If the user who annoys you asks questions under a tag that doesn't interest you, add it to the "ignored tags" list. If on the other hand their questions are within your scope of interest, why not answer them?

You still haven't given us enough information to actually help you out. If there is one person posting stuff you feel doesn't belong on the site, flag or downvote them. This would include rants, off-topic matter, personal attacks, poor questions, et cetera.

And on the other hand, I strongly dislike the idea of preventing others helping someone just because I am annoyed by him. This kind of environment leads into people getting banned/downvoted by random just because some higher-up had a bad day. Which is plain wrong.

This would again mean that the questions or answers posted by this person are objectively still a good fit for the site and not necessarily bad. If you say "preventing others", that would imply you flagging a post for closing or deletion for the wrong reasons. If that were to happen only because you are annoyed by the person, you're abusing the system.

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