Pallas I flat out requested the ability to block a user, as is possible on other platforms. You don't see anything they do. They don't see anything you do. I don''t see this as at all controversial or requiring permission from anyone else.

There are unfortunately bad actors out there who might seek to abuse such a system. Consider:

I hate user Bob. I unilaterally set a 2-way ignore so I don't see what he says, and Bob cannot see what I say. Then I go off starting threads about how much of a jerk he is, or lying about things he has said, or just throw passive-aggressive snipes at him.

Bob may not see any of it, or he may see partial responses from people manually quoting me, and be utterly confused and caught on the back foot about what is going on. But in any case, he is harmed because he doesn't have the opportunity to see what is being said about him in "hidden" posts he cannot control, and has no opportunity to defend himself. He also cannot control the fact that I have selectively hidden my public content, about him, from him. Months later, he later views the forum from a logged-out state, or does a Google search and sees threads where I am constantly spewing falsehoods about him. How would he feel?

I selectively take off the 2-way ignore and see he's now aware of my games. So I decide to make his life even more miserable. I take off the 2-way ignore, and shoot off to him the most foul PM putting him on blast. Then I immediately re-instate the 2-way ignore, so that he is unable to respond to me (I won't see it).

The mutual agreement method @Rubens mentions worked because he and the other member treated the situation like reasonable human beings, and mutually agreed to give each other space. Admittedly, that is the best case scenario 🙂

      Then maybe we could do it that way. Once a mod has reached out to two members for such an agreement, any breach of it would be grounds for a warning.

      It's also important to define what would constitute a breach of the mutual ignore agreement. From the top if my head I'm thinking:

      1. Any direct reply, of course
      2. Any mention of the other user
        And here come the more controversial ones because I'm in controversy mode today:
      3. Any participation in a thread started by the other user
      4. Any rebuttal of an idea/opinion expressed by the other user! Yes that's a big one! But think about it. You write a post stating something. The other user comes in a says that that statement is wrong or is a misconception, but without directly replying to you or mentioning you. Still counts, sorry. And yes, I understand that it could be frustrating, but it's a small sacrifice IMO.

      Pallas if each person is still closely watching the other

      I don't think you would need to closely watch each other. If that person attacks what you wrote you will immediately see it, even if you were not watching out for it beforehand. What do you think?

        @navindra is there any plug-in or option to make a post's edit history publicly visible? Because I can easily see someone abusing the current system by saying something worthy of moderation and then going back and editing it and being like "why are you upset?" (knew a guy who would do that).

        I'd say it's worth trying a new system. And if it's really so unmanageable then we revert to the old system. The bar isn't very high to begin with.

        Pallas My request for a block button is because it's the best way for me to reclaim my time.

        Is the Ignore feature that Navindra already added sufficient? On mobile if I go to a user's profile and click on the top right, the Ignore option shows up.

        Regarding all the stuff you said about yourself, I think it's admirable that you realize this and have strategies to avoid bringing out that side of you.

        Pallas I would feel embarrassed for everyone to see my edit history

        I'm also on another modern forum and there you get free edits for 5 minutes, and then after that the timestamp shows an orange "edited" that you can click on and then after a day or two it turns grey. And honestly people hardly notice it unless they're actively looking for something.

            Pallas I'm completely willing to go without a block button and just - I don't know - ask people for help or whatever "together" people do

            Oh, that's a shame about the Ignore not working like a Block! But I have a feeling that people will look out for you here and try to protect this space from that kind of negative behavior 🙂

              Pallas

              The world needs all sorts of heads.
              Everyone has different talents.

                David-G This exemplifies a basic design problem with Piano Tell (and with PianoClack). It is often hard to know which thread you are looking at. This never happened with PW, because every post there contains the thread title. Aside from Josephine's observation, I have noticed that not infrequently I find myself "lost" here, in the sense of not knowing what thread I am in.

                So @Navindra if at all possible, you should do something about this. I don't mean put the title in every post - but there might be somewhere in a non-scrolling part of the page where you can put the title? Maybe at the top?

                I mentioned somewhere else that PW's structure is actually excellent - the paging system. If they were to have an upgrade with the same structure, minus the intrusive ads etc, with proper direct file-uploading and handling features (eg. music and pics and web-linking like youtube linking), then that would be very formidable. It would take down flarum for sure, unless flarum has an option to have paging ... eg. page 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. And also incorporate the 'reply links' that allow users to jump to the source being replied to.

                    Gombessa The mutual agreement method @Rubens mentions worked because he and the other member treated the situation like reasonable human beings, and mutually agreed to give each other space. Admittedly, that is the best case scenario

                    Ok I guess we could go with that "system" for now. I remember after that particular agreement was reached there were plenty of opportunities for me and the other user to attack each other's ideas but we didn't. So maybe we can expect people to cooperate with such agreements.

                      twocats I suggest removing the "replied" field

                      Hmm... I like that you can click "XYZ replied" and jump straight to their reply. Especially since it's not nested, I think it's important to quickly see replies to something without having to read everything. I can see replies to my own posts in notifications, but I can't see replies to others' posts without it.

                          jeremy Hmm... I like that you can click "XYZ replied" and jump straight to their reply. Especially since it's not nested, I think it's important to quickly see replies to something without having to read everything.

                          Totally valid argument! Maybe it could be compressed onto the same line or something like that.

                            Not relevant to the discussion so far but I want to say that I love the notifications here!! So much better than PW’s platform.

                              I don't know if this would just end up being a section only for me, but I was wondering if there is a place for a "Piano technology" subforum. It kind of straddles "piano forum" and "tuners/tech forum" and undoubtedly part of digital, but I think there were certain subjects at PW that I struggled to categorize, such as discussions about:

                              1. Player and silent systems
                              2. Novel piano mechanisms like magnetic actions, celeste/sordino/mozart systems
                              3. Video/mic/recording/post-processing setups
                              4. Tablet sheet readers, sheet software, bluetooth page turners, etc.

                              Thoughts?