attie, what I did not understand is what about my post made it seem like the staff could read others PM's. I have said it before and I will say it again because I want to be as crystal clear as possible. We can not and do not want to read PM's between members. They are
PRIVATE messages and we treat that very seriously. If members want to talk with each other about anything under the sun then they can do that using the PM feature without worrying that anyone is reading it. The only person who possibly have access is the owner, Andy R., but he takes privacy very seriously and would never just read someones PM secretly. Not only is he very against doing things like that, but he simply does not have time to engage in such activities even if he did want to (which again, let me be very clear, he does not).
attie said:
I disagree with the ignore option, nowhere within these forums have I seen any activity from anyone that would warrant such an option from another. What is the purpose of it, in my mind the person who hits the button to ignore Joe Blow should be mature enough to approach Joe Blow and sort their differences out.
Just because you have not seen any activity that would warrant such an option does not mean it has not been there. All that that means is that the mods have excelled at their job of keeping it off the board. Trust me, the activity goes on. The mods catch it as soon as possible and remove it from the boards and take it to PM when needed so that it does not negatively affect the rest of the members. They do their job very well which is evident by the fact that you never see any of this.
As for the comment about people being mature enough to approach Joe
Blow and sort out their differences, I have two comments on that.
1. Who says everyone here is mature? There is no rule saying you have to be mature to be a member here. You do not even have to be an adult to be a member here. Who says that someone wants to ignore someone else because they have differences to work out? What if someone just rubs you the wrong way and every time you read one of their posts it drives you crazy, not because they did anything wrong or anything that needs to be worked out between the two of you, but just because you clash as people? That does happen from time to time and a mature thing to do is just ignore the person. It does not hurt anyone and can only help matters. No one ever knows they have been ignored. There are no notification that are sent. The only person who knows is the person who did the ignoring.
2. Who says that things can always be worked out by approaching someone you have a difference with and sorting it out? In a perfect world that would work, but in reality it may or may not work, and from the position I am sitting in I can tell you that when two people clash to the point that the ignore feature is considered then talking to the other person almost never works. It does not mean you have failed at anything. Not a single person here has ever been friends with every single person they have met. Everyone of us has met someone who just drove us crazy for no other reason them just not jiving with them. You can not always talk to someone and make them act a different way so they do not drive you crazy. It is one thing if someone has a specific problem with someone else such as they do not like how person A says that abc, but if the problem is with their personality and not with a specific action then it becomes more more difficult. Who is going to change their entire personality just because someone on a forum does not like them?
The ignore feature is just a tool. If people do not like it then they do not have to use it. I can promise you though that the times it has been used it has most likely made DC a much more pleasurable place for everyone and no one has even realized it has happened. It is just one of the many tools we have here. Not a single person here uses every tool we have available. There are many many tools. They are there if you want to use them. If you do not want to use them then you do not have to. No harm is done.
