A "stabbing" is a bit much for me. I'm a "sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you" sorta guy. Although, I know words can hurt some people's feelings... and there may ultimately be a time to
throw down if the words from the person start turning into actual physical threats that could push it to that point, or overall incessant harassment maybe. But most IRL people I know aren't just going to punch or stab someone who is being obnoxiously annoying.
It occurs to me that keeping a counter on what percentage of posters in the thread are ignoring a poster could help, but that's getting offtopic.
I have had mixed feelings here. We've had a similar feature before I remember when joining the forum, complete with stats and info theymos was releasing occasionally, which I kinda liked seeing at the time as a newer user... but after being here for this long I think it would just be manipulated and misused as another drama/attack tool, and ultimately cause more people to leave than it is probably worth appeasing... I'd have similar feelings on a demerit system but maybe with various restrictions on how and who can do it, it might be OK, although I haven't begun to think through what might make sense on requirements there.
It would be interesting stats and info. to know, unfortunately it sounds like it may have been too resource intensive for SMF.
Some of the theymos posts & threads I found from the past:
I prefer not to show it at all. No one really needs to know, and it'll probably cause hurt feelings and drama.
Current rules are:
- 0.35% of very-established users ignore you: no public highlight, but a range on your posts that only you can see
- 0.5% of very-established users ignore you: light highlight
- 1% of very-established users ignore you: medium highlight
- 1.5% of very-established users ignore you: dark highlight
You're very established if:
- You have 100+ hours of online time
- You have 100+ posts
- You registered 30+ days ago
There are ~1414 very-established users right now.
The change only shows up in the default theme.
It is hopefully possible to speak your mind and still avoid ignore highlighting. I intend for people to only be highlighted if they are often overly aggressive, rude, trollish, or off-topic. None of which have anything to do with the ideas themselves, but the way that they are presented.
I have temporarily disabled this feature unless you are logged in. It is very expensive. I plan to make it less expensive soon, but this requires many changes.