One thought I've had about this is to beef-up/renovate the ignore system (so that you can completely hide people, topics or even just individual posts) and, while doing that, add the ability to have multiple ignore lists, some of which are private, and some of which could be published for others to view and subscribe to.
Have you read about the "glowing" Ignore button? It was before my time here, and supposedly the Ignore button would become brighter once more users have the user on Ignore. I think this feature was removed because it can be abused.
It may be possible to implement it again, and base someone's Ignore power on the Merits he's earned. Kinda like how the
bump power works, but maybe minus something based on how many Merits the user earned.
While typing this, I realize this works in my favour. But most of the "glow power" should come from multiple users ignoring someone.