LogFAQs > #972792765

adjl posted...

If, say, I have a particular aversion to people using "literally" to mean "figuratively" to the point where I would prefer to ignore any users that make a habit of that

Ironically, if you DID have that aversion, then you wouldn't be replying to my post right now, because I do that all the time!

Mainly because I believe in the concept of linguistic drift and evolution of language by usage, which means that if enough people "misuse" a word for long enough, the connotation changes and the usage becomes valid (and new dictionaries will start including the new connotation as an official definition).

The boat on "literally" has long since sailed (Ambrose Bierce was pointing out people used it that way 150 years ago, and modern dictionaries actually include the alternate definition of "literally" used for emphasis), and at this point the people complaining about it are actually the ones in the wrong.



adjl posted...

Where the whole point of ignoring users is to make the board more enjoyable, exempting some users from being ignored stands to undermine that.

Yeah, but then you're pushing up on the fact that you don't actually have any sort of inalienable and innate human right to digitally ignore anyone you want, and online services aren't obligated to provide you with the ability to ignore other users at all.

So if a site decides to allow you to ignore users, that's as valid as as letting you ignore everyone or no one. It's just how that site chooses to administrate.

If a site decides to give you the ability to ignore (or block, or whatever), but still mandates that admin and moderation-level staff cannot be ignored for official reasons, they're fully entitled to do that. Even if they have the technological capacity to create multi-layered announcements or ways of administering things, they are in no way obligated to do so.

And to be brutally honest, if you're so bothered by people saying or doing things that are literally too minor to be modded or to get mods in trouble, you might be too thin-skinned to be on the Internet anyway.



adjl posted...

Even then, it's easy enough to work around that.

Let's be honest, though. This site is coded by monkeys. Even when they introduce the simplest of features they wind up breaking three other things, and almost everything they do is wrong.

If they tried to do something that allowed mods to bypass ignore only under special circumstances, they'd probably break both the ignore feature and the moderation queue entirely.