Still don't get it?... Many people earn permanent "ignore" status before they even get out of the newbie quarantine zone.
For others, the "ignore" button gets pushed later, after they try a few troll posts and readers give them the benefit of a small doubt by looking up their post history.
If you post worthless posts, you will be treated as a worthless poster sooner or later, after which you just post into a vacuum. Not a bad system, all in all.
Post away!
So what happens if they hit ignore? That doesn't seem like punishment to me at all. The forum has tons of users and you are guaranteed to piss of some of them no matter what you say.
It's not "punishment". It's just that in this forum nobody needs to read posts from people they perceive to be making worthless noise. No emotion needed. You can ignore whomever you wish, but they can ignore you too.
Someone who posts nothing but junk eventually winds up talking only to himself/herself and nobody cares. Someone who pushes the "ignore" button out of spite or mean-spiritedness locks himself out of reading potentially-valuable posts. That's OK too - self-inflicted wounds.
People can always turn "ignore" back on or off if they change their minds about the nature of a poster.