Member Avatar for diafol

Any chance of bringing a 'Mark User as Idiot' button onto the post profile panel? This would just build a list of 'people to avoid answering'. I've wasted dog knows how many hours trying to help this or that person, only to find that they post the same tired questions a few days later, not having bothered to respond. You know the type of user to whom I'm referring. Before deciding to give somebody a hand, I could check my 'idiot list'.

I know there's more to this than just helping the OP, etc. But seriously, could this be done? The profile panel of an idiot would then have some sort of icon (only visible to the idiot-applying user of course).

I suggested this some time ago, but only got a lukewarm reception. Has the climate changed since then?

  • 8 Contributors
  • 10 Replies
  • 351 Views
  • 3 Weeks Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Lusiphur

Recommended Answers

All 10 Replies

Member Avatar for Biker920

climate probably same due admin seeing this tag as unfriendly to the member count. I feel your pain on this subject and understand the head bang on the wall,key board,desk & other notices of frustration. Later---

Member Avatar for Nick Evan

I'm sorry, but this is probably never going to happen, for obvious reasons if you don't mind me saying :)

How I personally avoid these people:

- Do not open/respond to threads with a negative vote. Someone (in 99.99% of the cases a regular) has opened the thread and has decided the question wasn't worth answering. Trust the voter, (s)he was probably right by voting the thread down.

- If a member has >1 post and asks a question in "chatspeek", check their reputation. If it's < 10 (s)he has posted a really bad thread/post before and probably won't reply to your response.

- If a member has 1 post and uses one of these words: "urgent", "gimme", "i need", "my tutor" or "answer the following question" ; it's a hit-an-run homework kiddo. They will not respond or give you a nasty response because you didn't supply them with a homework freebie.

- If a member has between 2 and 10 posts, has joined in the same month and asks for a homework freebie: It's probable a flooder. Check the poster's other posts and you'll see that (s)he has posted the same question in a multitude of forums. Also: google for the question if you want to be sure. If you use qoutes you'll most likely see that the poster has posted the exact same question on cprogramming, stackoverflow etc.

commented: Excellent set of heuristics (I have my own secret recipe but it's close) +0
Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~
I know there's more to this than just helping the OP, etc. But seriously, could this be done? The profile panel of an idiot would then have some sort of icon (only visible to the idiot-applying user of course).

Use the ignore list feature provided by vBulletin. If I've added a member to the ignore list, all the posts by that user would be hidden by default and a message would be shown. Something like:

Access the ignore list feature here .

BTW, you are not on my ignore list, it was just for demonstration purposes. ;-)

ignore-list.PNG 53.43 KB
Member Avatar for happygeek

What Nick and Sanjay say :)

Ignore button is much more polite than idiot button, don't you think?

Member Avatar for diafol

> Ignore button is much more polite than idiot button, don't you think?

But that would suggest that I'm polite! Call a fool a fool. Sorry, I just watched A-Team, the movie.

Thanks guys, the Ignore button is bang on. Must have missed that in the Control Panel.

Member Avatar for Lusiphur

I know this thread is marked "solved" but I have to say that ardav's original concept does have some appeal to me some days :twisted:

That being said... after reading some of the posts I've read today I'm thinking a "Mark Post as Waste of Time" button would be more useful.

Yes, I know people can use (to some degree) the voting system to indicate the worth of a post and yes, I know you can ignore users... but for the life of me I can't get over how 'rude' it feels to 'ignore' a user (not sure why to be honest).

Ironically, while I feel bad about adding someone to an ignore list, I wouldn't have any issue whatsoever with publicly flagging their post as useless :twisted: Go figure.

Member Avatar for Rashakil Fol

I think the idiot button would be preferable, especially if it sent the user a PM telling them that somebody (who gets to remain anonymous) marked them as an idiot, every time somebody does. Then, for users who have been marked as an idiot by 5 or more people, the next time they visit the site, they get goatsed.

Member Avatar for Dani

Mark thread as being a waste of time is essentially what down voting the first post in a thread does. Then, when skimming the list of threads, just don't go into any of them that are indicating down votes.

Member Avatar for ~s.o.s~

Your suggestion does not take into consideration idiotic answers, forum trolls etc. Plus, idiots have a knack of posting on "popular"/"useful" threads which makes down-voting it something which is against the spirit of voting, so yeah... ;-)

Member Avatar for Lusiphur

Your suggestion does not take into consideration idiotic answers, forum trolls etc. Plus, idiots have a knack of posting on "popular"/"useful" threads which makes down-voting it something which is against the spirit of voting, so yeah... ;-)

Darn it... and now we're back to "mark user as idiot" :twisted: (you know that there are some users who deserve it... as evil as it sounds)

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.