At first, this struck me as unnecessary, but as I've been finding my feet and exploring the forum more, I'm starting to see their point.
It took me much longer before I started using "Ignore". Now I love it, it saves time not reading useless posts.
I'm still reluctant to ignore users because it feels "permanent" and I don't want to miss out on their contributions if they decide to change their posting habits.
Have you tried the Ignore button? Posts made by Ignored users show a
Show/Hide link, so you can once in a while "review" them when they post in a topic you're reading. Or just wait for someone to quote them.
So, what I would really like is if next to "ignore" there was a less drastic option that only added them to my ignore list temporarily (say for 10 days), something like this:
Given how rare forum updates are, I don't expect this to happen.
I'd be much more interested in a data dump of all Ignored users. That would give great statistics!