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I must admit that I felt a bit offended by a specific user's attitude towards people trying to answer his question.

I also realize he mentioned that it's not the first time people helped him (and he didn't want their opinions), but his profile shows no prior questions. Strangely, I feel like I've interacted with him before. I might really be mistaken about that, and I frankly don't want to know; I think it's both better for my mood and him if I just choose to privately ignore him in the future.

I don't think he's commited a "bannable" offense, or anything that needs third-party rectification. I just have a desire to choose not to interact with him.

  • Are there any integrated or off-side tools to hide his questions in the future? A userscript, maybe? I don't want to carry a piece of paper with a list of people whose questions I won't read around with me ;)
  • Is this at all a sensible thing to do, as community member?

nb: I'm back later, but have decided to catch some sleep now, as I'll probably be less grumpy than I am now.

(note that I'm adding references to the interaction in question not to accuse the asker, but to clarify what kind of feelings I'm trying to avoid having to choose to either ignore or express. I would value your input on how to manage these feelings, but I'd guess that would justify asking a separate question.)

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  • \$\begingroup\$ It seems this has been suggested 10 years ago on the main meta, and a late 2018 answer from the staff indicates they're actually considering this: meta.stackexchange.com/a/309160/325443 \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Jul 29, 2019 at 12:10

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I'm fairly sure that such a feature does not exist, and I'm fairly sure I wouldn't want to see one.

The fact that you (especially as a high-rep user) get annoyed by these questions and bickering is part of the quality controls. I've also felt tempted to ignore certain users, but since it means that I would not see his (pretty sure it's always a he) future questions there would be one user less to downvote and close.

Considering that an annoying user might get blocked by many of us, chances are that their questions will remain on the site for a longer time.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Hm, fair point about the moderation lacking if enough people ignore someone. But I think if I would say "If you're not the one to downvote bad questions, who will?" would be a crass overstatement of my individual importance to the site. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Jul 26, 2019 at 8:02
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    \$\begingroup\$ Indeed active removal of bad questions and bad answers works a reasonable fraction of the time on a site with a strong technical community. Unfortunately, it does not work on some of the edge-of-technical SE sites like IOT where an "upvote for participation" type mindset prevents the unanswerably incomplete stuff from being pruned - with the result that the incurable noise ratio means they lose whatever technical contributors they might have had if properly administered, and the ratio of unsolvable or unsolved questions (and 180-degree-wrong answers) only gets worse. \$\endgroup\$
    – Chris Stratton
    Jul 27, 2019 at 16:55
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Is this at all a sensible thing to do, as community member?

No. You accuse Op of being rude multiple times, of wasting "multiple expert's time", of being entitled, snark and sarcasm as if OP should have known better. This site does not work on "if you have to ask, don't", and at the point where you feel entitled to insult someone for the crime of not seeing things your way, who do you think is the real problem?

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    \$\begingroup\$ This is just a rant on OP, and doesn't address any issues in the question. \$\endgroup\$
    – pipe
    Jul 26, 2019 at 4:33
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    \$\begingroup\$ @pipe OPs post is a rant masked as two separate questions. Only 1 sentence is about if he can block a user. I address the second question "Is this at all a sensible thing to do, as community member?". \$\endgroup\$
    – Passerby
    Jul 26, 2019 at 6:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Passerby so, thanks for the feedback. I don't think I agree with you on this one – obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have posted here; especially, the "should have known better is really really bitter to me: Chris and I repeatedly tried to move OP to tell us about his application, and I really tried to explain why it's objectively a bad idea to deny us application information, even after, and that's where I can see you're coming from, I got quite a bit worked up about being told that "people who know the full application tend to give unsolicited advice",which,honestly,I find the strength of SE. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Jul 26, 2019 at 7:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ But that's the thing: I know I'm human, and I know there's a few ways to make me upset. I don't want to react upset, I don't want to attack people (I objectively did, my sarcastic comment I linked to) but I really do think that "I intend to hide critical information" is harmful to the community, so my presumption was that if I know people who will make me unhappy, and I know I won't change their behaviour, then it's best to figure out whether and how to ignore them as the least of all evils. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marcus Müller
    Jul 26, 2019 at 7:58
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    \$\begingroup\$ Marcus never said anyone "if you have to ask, don't". He asked OP to provide more details, to ensure that he wasn't answering a XY question. Which is legitimate, although Marcus was maybe a bit vehement about it. But it seems you too are also able to be a unnecessarily vehement, so... \$\endgroup\$
    – dim
    Jul 26, 2019 at 12:44

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