Is it possible to block a person from seeing your posts? One of my players has flagged my posts to see them, but this makes it far more difficult to ask questions about monsters and other DM tricks to surprise them. (He told me that he was following my posts after I mentioned something I had found out about on here.)
No, it is not possible to prevent another user from seeing your posts. You can only prevent their posts from being visible to you using the Ignore feature. Two options available to you might be:
Ask your player not to follow your posts as you'd like to be able to ask questions without spoiling anything for them (which given that they're following your posts and would likely be notified of this post, they're already aware of)
Make an alt account for the purpose of asking questions covertly, away from the prying eyes of your players
I've seen threads where the comments go from #2, #3, #4, then #6, #8, #10. Opened the thread in incognito mode where I was not logged in and saw someone had posted in #5, #7, and #9. These were not deleted comments. I thought to myself "someone blocked me? what did I do?", but just moved on and didn't give it much thought. I only remember coming across this once or twice in all the years I've been coming here.
A forum like this isn't the same as something like Facebook or Twitter where you have your own page and can post there. In those places, being able to block others from your page makes sense.
Here, it's more like being in a public space and talking. Ignoring is the way to avoid seeing anything they say, as an anti-harassment measure in addition to simply being able to not deal with them.
Im going to assume you've never been the target of serious online harrassment.
I'll be honest with you, this forum is heavily moderated. If such harassment is happening, the mods will slap the offenders pretty fast. The ability to ignore people you don't want to hear from should be enough in such an environment.
Would it maybe be an issue in a more free-for-all space? Possibly. But it shouldn't be an issue here.
Im going to assume you've never been the target of serious online harrassment.
Yeup.
I've brought this up in the past. This style of false blocking empowers abusers. There's a reason a lot of people prefer BlueSky's nuclear blocking option and hate Discord's, as a for instance.
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Setup: Charlie likes trolling Bob. Bob has Charlie on "ignore". Alice is some random person posting a random question:
Alice: Anyone know how the Abracadabra spell works? Bob: You cast the spell and it does the thing Charlie: That's not totally accurate. You must have a slot available of the correct level. Alice: (reply to Charlie): I tried it on dndbeyond. Looks like you're correct and Bob is wrong. Thanks for the help.
Bob has Charlie on ignore. If Bob sees Alice's reply to Charlie, he will have to look at the thread from a dummy account to see who Alice is replying to. At which point, he sees that Charlie is replying on threads where Bob is posting, forcing Bob to face Charlie. If Bob complains to a moderator, it looks like Charlie is just posting information, but it just so happens to be any thread that Bob posts on. If Bob cant see Alice's reply to Charlie because Bob has Charlie on ignore, then Bob sees a comment thread that makes no sense, and if Bob logs in from a dummy account, he sees Charlie following him around on different threads, trying to troll Bob into replying. But if an uninvolved moderator looks at a single post, it might appear that Charlie is merely answering a question that just-so-happens to have Bob on the thread. And the "ignore" feature creates more work for Bob to figure out that Charlie is quietly following him around and posting contrary comments, making Bob look bad or just trying to get his goat.
"ignore" makes it easy for a harrasser to harrass, and puts the extra workload on teh victim to figure it out and try to report it.
If nothing else, "block" puts the extra workload on the harrasser. They have to look at the comment threads from a dummy account to find their victims comments.
There's a flip side to that: Bad actors can easily use such a system to block anyone they have any disagreements with, leaving people who have done nothing but disagree with opinions or (to use an example suitable to this forum) correct rules advice they've tried to give. It's a double-edged sword.
No system is going to be perfect. But for a public space with sufficient moderation, "ignore" is probably cleaner than "block". The real people involved can deal with judging edge cases like you presented. Not that they aren't a problem, but they aren't common enough to account for as a primary measure.
Also, at least here, you can still see who (in your example) Alice is replying to. I tested it by setting you to ignore (something I've taken off since and was only using to see how it's handled here) and could still see the reply to you, by name, in AKADDK's post. So the way it handles ignores here is just by "deleting" the direct posts of the ignored users on the client's side.
"Bad actors can easily use such a system to block anyone they have any disagreements with, leaving people who have done nothing but disagree with opinions or (to use an example suitable to this forum) correct rules advice they've tried to give. It's a double-edged sword."
one edge of the sword is razor sharp and the other is a butter knife:
Worst case using "ignore": a relentless troll can easily harass the victim as I pointed out above.
Worst case using "block": a troll blocks a good faith user, and that good faith user doesnt get all the "good" advice the troll is handing out?
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Is it possible to block a person from seeing your posts? One of my players has flagged my posts to see them, but this makes it far more difficult to ask questions about monsters and other DM tricks to surprise them. (He told me that he was following my posts after I mentioned something I had found out about on here.)
Thanks in advance,
Evan
No, it is not possible to prevent another user from seeing your posts. You can only prevent their posts from being visible to you using the Ignore feature. Two options available to you might be:
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Really? Cause there are three posts on a thread I’m on that I can’t see.
If I’m being annoying, tell me to shut up. Seriously. Just say “Bananer shut up.” And I will. For a few seconds!
Don’t listen to the folks down at Adohands. It’s good for me to overwork myself.
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I've seen threads where the comments go from #2, #3, #4, then #6, #8, #10. Opened the thread in incognito mode where I was not logged in and saw someone had posted in #5, #7, and #9. These were not deleted comments. I thought to myself "someone blocked me? what did I do?", but just moved on and didn't give it much thought. I only remember coming across this once or twice in all the years I've been coming here.
Just for reference:
How to: Replace DEX in AC | Jump & Suffocation stats | Spell & class effect buff system | Wild Shape effect system | Tool Proficiencies as Custom Skills | Spells at higher levels explained | Superior Fighting/Martial Adept Fix | Snippet Codes Explored - Subclasses | Snippet Math Theory | Homebrew Weapons Explained
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Dndbeyond images not loading WORKAROUND FIXED!!! (TY Jay_Lane for original instructions)
On online forum with no block-user feature?
Is it 1999 or something?
And no, "ignore" is no where near the same.
A forum like this isn't the same as something like Facebook or Twitter where you have your own page and can post there. In those places, being able to block others from your page makes sense.
Here, it's more like being in a public space and talking. Ignoring is the way to avoid seeing anything they say, as an anti-harassment measure in addition to simply being able to not deal with them.
Im going to assume you've never been the target of serious online harrassment.
I'll be honest with you, this forum is heavily moderated. If such harassment is happening, the mods will slap the offenders pretty fast. The ability to ignore people you don't want to hear from should be enough in such an environment.
Would it maybe be an issue in a more free-for-all space? Possibly. But it shouldn't be an issue here.
Yeup.
I've brought this up in the past. This style of false blocking empowers abusers. There's a reason a lot of people prefer BlueSky's nuclear blocking option and hate Discord's, as a for instance.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
How "ignore" doesn't stop the trolls:
Setup: Charlie likes trolling Bob. Bob has Charlie on "ignore". Alice is some random person posting a random question:
Alice: Anyone know how the Abracadabra spell works?
Bob: You cast the spell and it does the thing
Charlie: That's not totally accurate. You must have a slot available of the correct level.
Alice: (reply to Charlie): I tried it on dndbeyond. Looks like you're correct and Bob is wrong. Thanks for the help.
Bob has Charlie on ignore. If Bob sees Alice's reply to Charlie, he will have to look at the thread from a dummy account to see who Alice is replying to. At which point, he sees that Charlie is replying on threads where Bob is posting, forcing Bob to face Charlie. If Bob complains to a moderator, it looks like Charlie is just posting information, but it just so happens to be any thread that Bob posts on. If Bob cant see Alice's reply to Charlie because Bob has Charlie on ignore, then Bob sees a comment thread that makes no sense, and if Bob logs in from a dummy account, he sees Charlie following him around on different threads, trying to troll Bob into replying. But if an uninvolved moderator looks at a single post, it might appear that Charlie is merely answering a question that just-so-happens to have Bob on the thread. And the "ignore" feature creates more work for Bob to figure out that Charlie is quietly following him around and posting contrary comments, making Bob look bad or just trying to get his goat.
"ignore" makes it easy for a harrasser to harrass, and puts the extra workload on teh victim to figure it out and try to report it.
If nothing else, "block" puts the extra workload on the harrasser. They have to look at the comment threads from a dummy account to find their victims comments.
There's a flip side to that: Bad actors can easily use such a system to block anyone they have any disagreements with, leaving people who have done nothing but disagree with opinions or (to use an example suitable to this forum) correct rules advice they've tried to give. It's a double-edged sword.
No system is going to be perfect. But for a public space with sufficient moderation, "ignore" is probably cleaner than "block". The real people involved can deal with judging edge cases like you presented. Not that they aren't a problem, but they aren't common enough to account for as a primary measure.
Also, at least here, you can still see who (in your example) Alice is replying to. I tested it by setting you to ignore (something I've taken off since and was only using to see how it's handled here) and could still see the reply to you, by name, in AKADDK's post. So the way it handles ignores here is just by "deleting" the direct posts of the ignored users on the client's side.
"Bad actors can easily use such a system to block anyone they have any disagreements with, leaving people who have done nothing but disagree with opinions or (to use an example suitable to this forum) correct rules advice they've tried to give. It's a double-edged sword."
one edge of the sword is razor sharp and the other is a butter knife:
Worst case using "ignore": a relentless troll can easily harass the victim as I pointed out above.
Worst case using "block": a troll blocks a good faith user, and that good faith user doesnt get all the "good" advice the troll is handing out?