If you don't like that user, ignore them.

Hiya everyone,

For a month or so, I've removed myself the Blazers Edge community, purely to clear my head and enjoy Blazer games a little more again without thinking about the between-games discussion. Sure, I'd still read at times, but it seemed like a good time to back off a bit, as the mid-season duldrums hit. But I ran across something that seemed useful to pop on and share.

I found part of the my lack of enjoyment was the influx of new users. In reality, most of the users (new or old) on BE are outstanding. But, anytime something gets more popular, it automatically invites another element as well. It may be someone who is a heavy fan, but really pushes the bounds of negativity ("Brandon's had two bad games, he sucks now"). It's also folks who just love a site where everyone likes the same thing. It's easy pickings. They make sure to use an ounce of truth to a statement, and act like they care about a topic, when they're really just trying to get a rise out of everyone. And of course, some folks just want to come in here and be your basic internet troll.

Personally, I think the moderation here is top-notch. Dave created an explicit set of rules, with a little wiggle room involved along the way. If you read a post and think "that's going to get deleted", you're probably right. That's some good rule-making and moderation (kudos to you Dave on a well-run site).

On the other hand, there are a lot of users who walk a very fine line. Sure, they may be trolling, but they're borderline enough that you can't be sure. The typical feeling on this is "if you don't like that user, ignore them". Heck, there was a front-page post a while back with that conclusion. But that's easier said than done; usernames are at the end of a post (really a pain when you're scrollling down), and you're simply trying to read in order. It's good in theory, but very tough in practice.

I mailed the crew at SBNation to ask about an ignore function recently. They put lots of work into this site, but unfortunately an ignore option is unavailable. From their response, it sounds like they know about the interest in it, but there was no hint of a timeline for it. They probably have a lot of stuff they work on, so it's understandable.

I thought everyone might like an alternative. If you use Firefox to read Blazers Edge, a user has written a greasemonkey script (that works on all sbnation sites among others) that will allow you to hide any comment, or any user, that you'd rather not see. Here's how to set it up. I'm going to give the short version, and assume the reader has some basic installation experience. Apologies if the steps seem short.

1. Download and install Mozilla's Firefox browser.
2. Download and install the Greasemonkey Firefox Extension.
3. Go to the userscripts.org entry for the killfile script. Click the install link, and give an ok for firefox to install it.
   

Then come back to Blazers Edge. You'll immediately see Firefox ask you to update to the latest version of killfile. The author has apparently released a newer version than the userscripts one. Go ahead and install it.

After that update, head back to BE. Next to every comment, you will see two new options:

• Kill: You no longer see comments from this user at Blazers Edge, period. Just a message (on your browser only) that the user has been blocked. I have no reason to believe it kills the person in real life.
  
• Hide comment: This particular comment will be hidden from view

There you go. You can now ignore users on Blazers Edge. But since I have your attention, may I make a few recommendations?

1. Don't block any user just because they disagree with you. That's one of the great things about this community! They may make your blood boil, but they have an intelligent opinion. It's always good to keep your thoughts open to other viewpoints.

2. Make an effort to identify with the person you want to ignore. Perhaps you're misreading their posts? Sometimes it's easy to get the wrong idea about a user after one or two comments.

3. Try to un-ignore a user occasionally. I can think of a few very good BE users who started out shaky, but came into their own over time. You may want to check in to see if a previously-annoying user improved later. It would be a shame to miss some good conversation, wouldn't it?

4. If you feel the need to reply to people who seem to be clearly trying to troll us, try taking a breath and enjoy the ability to click the word "kill" instead. It may make you feel better immediately, and might prevent an ugly exchange.

Anyway, that's it. Take it easy everyone. Back to lurk mode. -Tim

[IMPORTANT NOTE: I can't personally vouch for the trustworthiness of the user script in question. I did a once-over and it looked generally ok, but I'm not a javascript expert and I might have missed something. If anyone here regularly writes JS, you might want to give a once-over to confirm, then give an "ok" to everyone if so.]

Edit: A couple questions from the thread below:

1. Can you see a list of the people you've blocked?

Yes. Type “about:config” into the Firefox address bar. Then filter on the word “troll” or “killfile”… it’ll show one entry with your blocked user list. Doubleclick it to view the entry if you’d like.

2. How do you unignore a user or a post?

On every blocked post, it will have an option to unhide that message, or "unkill" the user. You can also edit the config file listed in question 1.

3. I blocked you but still see this post, what gives?

Har, good one.