@Kidfried sorry to hear it’s been frustrating for you. I think every time I’ve had someone say they don’t like the feature I’ve had at least one other person thank us for implementing it.
Every instance is different and obviously there is two sides to each scenario.
We already made a change to implement a maximum number of users at any one time — the feature was added with the intent of people using it as a last resort in situations where bans were not applicable. With that in mind, there should only ever need to be a couple of people that need blocking at any one time.
A further consideration might me to implement a time limit on blocks, to encourage people to re-engage after they’ve cooled down. If problems persist it may be back to the moderators to intervene.
I don’t believe the feature should be obsolete, however, I do think there are instances where people aren’t using it as intended and therefore changes that encourage better usage are definitely up for discussion if you’ve got any further thoughts.
@Kidfried fully agree. I was blocked by someone who I hadn’t even replied to. Makes it very hard to follow the comments sometimes.
It’s human nature to have differences of opinions on subjective topics. But if someone is being abusive etc, the mods do delete their accounts which means a block system is not needed. (Or let the person who has blocked me, not see my comments or let me reply to theirs, but at least let us see what was written)
I refuse to block anyone, not because I’ll miss reading their posts but because everyone is entitled to their opinions, regardless of how idiotic they may be. I’d vote with removing the option to block if it was a possibility.
@colonelkilgore Same here! I am against self-moderation and the creation of "safe" bubbles. If someone is particularly nasty the mods could always ban the person permanently.
@Kidfried the people thanking us are in comments across our sites, but also, probably more often, in private. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not unanimous one way or the other and I’ve always strived to strike a balance with our approach to moderation over the years.
We’ve discussed before about “approving” blocks, but the original reason for implementing it was to give a user power to act even when moderators are not available/online — we are a very small team and can’t have 24/7 coverage, so don’t want users to feel powerless when we’re not online.
We could certainly make it so someone has to leave the mods a message when they add a block to give us the context as to why — as yes, blocking someone just because you disagree isn’t really a valid reason — and we could review when we’re back online. I think perhaps adding a time limit on it too may help.
@Kidfried I can look at it closer tomorrow when I’m working and at a PC — the team would also need to come up with a formal policy for reverting any blocks as that’s not something we currently do, it’s been such a rare occurrence since the feature existed.
@Th3solution@colonelkilgore@antdickens@Kidfried Yeah, I know there's a few users who have blocked me for differing opinions some of whom are quite active so things are pretty confusing for me in a lot of threads and articles on this site and Nintendo Life...There was a user on Nintendo Life that wrote a few articles and I could only see the comments as the article itself was blank. Is this a known issue if a staff member blocks a regular member @antdickens ???
@WiiWareWave there is no way for the article itself to be blank. None of our staff or contributors are using the block feature, sounds like an unrelated bug — send me the details or a screenshot if you ever encounter it again.
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