This sums up what I see. Some people feel entitled with the right to speak anything they want. Included in this "right" is an audience. They feel that if others have the "right" to ignore what they don't want to be subjected to, then it infringes their original right to an audience listening to their free speech.

I think many of the examples given are overblown. most people will only ignore people that truly remove their fun and usefulness of the forums. IF, someone decides to ignore me for a single difference of their opinion, I see 2 reactions to this. First, isn't it their right to do so? Second, why should we care? If someone ignores me, I'm confident its for the best. I'll end up saying something similar to whatever offended them so much again and/or I'm likely not to make friends with someone that can't accept a difference of opinion anyway.

The people I want to ignore are a pain. Its not one post or 20. Its a never-ending disrespect they show to everyone they respond to. Being able to manage my experience in a community allows me to be a part of that community much longer and I'll be much happier while doing so.

Another way of looking at it is, its the high ground. Ignoring someone ends an argument right there on the spot. All temptation to get that last comment or dig in is removed. I don't think ignoring "SHOULD" be used to manage opinions... but if some want to do that... they should be able to. As I mentioned above... why do some feel the need to manage whether or not others get to manage their communications. ignore exists in email, phones, chat, twitter, facebook, friendface, and almost every internet community I've ever seen... for good reason. It solves many more problems than it causes, or else EVERYONE is doing it wrong... and having seen it work, I don't think everyone is wrong. I just think the GOG forums are light on features. The more it grows, the bigger problem this will be.

@Skunk

I've read your entire post, even though you are like you stated hateful.
I'm one of those people whom like to always give chances and don't judge others too hastefully, i'm one of those people who don't put a cross on a person and cast him aside just because he doesn't share the same opinions as mine or because he made a lousy remark.

If you wanna add me to your list, so be it. I for one will never use such a list, because it's pathetic and it means that people deem themselves too worthy and snob to accord any interest to this or that person. Neither of us are kings as far as I know, and your "Pride" that leads you to determine who is not interesting enough, or a viable threat to your reputation so you can ignore him instead of facing him, well I'm sorry but it disgust me.
As far as i'm concerned you can all put me on your ignore list, doesn't mean I don't exist, and i'm not still posting on the forum.

The right to express one self is greater than the illusion of supperiority one can derive from choosing to whom he could listen. Because a statement, be it coming from the worst person on earth or from the wisest, is still a statement, and it could very well be interesting and true.

What you're basically saying here is "no, you don't get such a feature because I don't see a use for it". While I agree that we shouldn't implement an ignore function, I also think that basing one's decision upon "I don't see how this function would benefit me, therefore, you can't have it" is absolutely wrong. You can't implement\not implement something purely based on whether or not you personally find it useful.

However, I agree that an ignore function shouldn't be implemented, for the reason given by PhoenixWright here;

Threads trailing off into incoherency due to several participants blocking each other and subsequently being unable to see each other's answers creates a disorganized and hard-to-follow forum, and should be what we as a whole aspire to prevent, not actively implement. PhoenixWright's GameFAQ example proves that an implementation of a block function would negatively impact everyone, and I don't think that a few people's inability to deal with people they don't like should take precedence over the functionality and well-being of the forum as a whole.

Therefore, with the best interest of the forum itself in mind, I feel that today's downvote function is a good compromise.

EDIT:
Grammar.

I'd like to remind everyone that this is the GOG forum, where buttons are by default invisible, pop up when you move your mouse somewhere and if you ever click something "on", you can't ever click it "off" again, even if it was a freak accident caused by a rampaging giraffe.

I already have a universal "ignore user" feature it's called : a mouse wheel

If want to "ignore" a user just don't read his/her/it posts, It's fast, easy and works will every forum, blog, comments section, etc... on the Internet.

I don't ignore anyone nor would I if given the choice. After all, those posters who create a problem are not in the same room with you so you can easily just skim over their posts if you disagree with them.

I'd ignore every single one of you motherfuckers and have the GOG forum all to myself! >:D

i'd welcome a word-filter feature for 'DRM'. it would instantly block any message containing the word so i would never again have to read the same fanatical nonsense.

That's the first time a thread's ever actually made me angry and I do really want to apologise for how I behaved in that last post. I won't attempt to make it sound like it was a good thing to do.

But I still stand by, with a bit of dilution, what I said. The two subjects of that thread are why we need moderation.

No online community, no matter how close knit, like minded or otherwise, can be without someone ensuring everything is running smoothly. In any community, someone like Flux would have been banned after the first post; its only purpose was to bait people into a twisted, unintelligent rant - it was obvious that he'd be trouble. But for some reason that didn't happen.

Moderation should be in the form of selected, volunteer community members.

If we're not going to have that, then we need to split General Discussion into "Off Topic" and add a description to General Discussion indicating that it is "for GOG and related-to-GOG discussion", meaning anything from GOG to Steam and all the stuff in between. Off Topic is where you can dump your politics and pseudo-blog posts (or you could just check out blogspot.com).

Or maybe, having been here long enough to see the 100th game added to the catalogue, I'm just cranky. Damn kids - not on my lawn - but in my favourite park with my favourite bench. I could just find another bench, I guess.

Also, again, please do excuse my French in that thread. My conduct could have been so much better.

Get the assault rifles and the getaway vehicle!

I've already given my arguments previously in the posts, and it's not ONLY because I don't find it useful, but because it could be a potential nuisance.
Sorry, but if you wanna critisize someone, please do read his posts before doing so.

Thank you.

The day we get moderators is probably the day I leave here. We mabye have two controversial threads a week. That's it.

The forum is doing fine, if you would take the "bitching about the forum" threads away, it would be even better.

Y U VANNA INGOR MI!?

Not sure what you're referring to. Am I right to think you mean one I made? I've never made one and I can't remember seeing one for a long while.

How about the one we are in?