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Original poster

Being able to not read posts by a certain poster

41 replies

socialdilemmawhattodo · 10/12/2025 14:30

Hi Mumsnet

I'm on a thread at the moment that, in my opinion, is being derailed by one poster, I would love the facility on here to be able to skip all posts by that poster as they contain little or nothing of interest to me at the moment. I am skipping manually and that slows down my reading of interesting posts on that thread by other posters. Any thoughts if this could be done? Thank you.

OP posts:
ThisLittlePony · 10/12/2025 14:34

People have been making that request for ever, it’s not feasible

EmeraldRoulette · 10/12/2025 14:43

ThisLittlePony · 10/12/2025 14:34

People have been making that request for ever, it’s not feasible

it is feasible. I respect that it's their site and they don't want to do it. But it is feasible. I have been on a discussion board that did that before, and it's really helpful.

VoltaireMittyDream · 10/12/2025 14:57

Semi-relatedly, I would love the option to follow posters who reliably bring the laughs.

I used to love how funny MN was, and as the site has grown & the world’s gone a bit sour, it’s become harder to find the good natured humour amidst all the outrage and vitriol and trauma dumping.

I would love to be able to curate my MN feed the same way I do IG, though I can also totally see how that could lead to stalkerish / bullying behaviour so I get why it’s not possible.

Dollymylove · 10/12/2025 15:15

Surely you can scroll.on by when you realise whose post it is?

Original poster
socialdilemmawhattodo · 10/12/2025 17:10

Dollymylove · 10/12/2025 15:15

Surely you can scroll.on by when you realise whose post it is?

That's what I said in my OP but this poster is posting every 3 to 4 posts, it takes a lot of time to skip by manually. Their posts are very similar and I have no interest in them.

OP posts:
MyThreeWords · 10/12/2025 17:35

If you want to be able to choose whose responses you see, surely it would be better not to use a site like this. This site is organised around conversations, unlike social media platforms, which are organised around follower lists.

How can there be meaningful conversations when anyone who wants to can choose to hear just some of the replies? You'd end up asking questions that had already been answered, or repeating the answer yourself, or wondering what everyone was laughing about and taking the piss out of, or wondering why the thread was suddenly focused on tortoises or whatever.

Plus, you'd have to read lots of tedious questions from posters who have selectively deafened themselves to parts of the thread and consequently don't understand what is happening. You'd also have to read the tedious explanations offered by other posters.

And you'd be importing the social media vice of creating your own little opinion bubble.

Some posters whose contributions you don't like might occasionally say something worthwhile, or interestingly challenging. Others will just be dickheads, but it isn't hard to scroll on by

IBorAlevels · 10/12/2025 17:40

socialdilemmawhattodo · 10/12/2025 17:10

That's what I said in my OP but this poster is posting every 3 to 4 posts, it takes a lot of time to skip by manually. Their posts are very similar and I have no interest in them.

Show quote history

I agree, they are thread vampires and end up making them impossible to bother with. Also I suspect a large number are "Carols" (ref to a pulled thread last week) so it would be nice to just avoid all the distracting BS.

Instructions · 10/12/2025 17:42

ThisLittlePony · 10/12/2025 14:34

People have been making that request for ever, it’s not feasible

It's feasible. Plenty of other forums allow you to block certain posters. MN don't want to do it and their reasons may be sound, but if they wished to they definitely could.

temporarynamehere · 10/12/2025 17:50

ThisLittlePony · 10/12/2025 14:34

People have been making that request for ever, it’s not feasible

It is on X. I block scores, if not hundreds, of people & that works.

ThisLittlePony · 10/12/2025 18:09

socialdilemmawhattodo · 10/12/2025 17:10

That's what I said in my OP but this poster is posting every 3 to 4 posts, it takes a lot of time to skip by manually. Their posts are very similar and I have no interest in them.

Show quote history

Well don’t read them then? As pp have advised it is feasible, so the sites that want to do it do, those that don’t don’t, so you choose what sites and threads you want to be on!

EmeraldRoulette · 10/12/2025 18:42

PP saying it would make a muddle of threads

Just sharing this as a point of interest

It doesn't make a muddle of anything really.

If there's posters who you normally choose to ignore and not engage with, then you would just carry on doing that.

The site I was using, if someone quoted them, you wouldn't be able to see that either

So with a complicated thread that has 100s of posts on it, it's unlikely that you would engage in with everyone anyway, especially if you're not the person who started the thread

So it just carries on as normal.

Quite often, I will only reply to the person who started the thread so that just carries on in a totally normal way.

The person I was ignoring (on another site) didn't believe in mental health problems. I had found the site quite supportive when I just needed to chat things through. So by being able to block him, I never saw his posts because I knew all he was going to do was tell me to come off medication and to be honest, I suspect he thought my problems were due to being single and child free? But I will never know, because I blocked him and I never saw his posts.

this is before I joined MN and I was a big fan of the gym back then, which he also thought was bad for me, because apparently it was more logical to get home from work at 9 pm and go running. (I can't actually see that point, but it does get annoying when you say that you don't feel comfortable being out running in the dark and you just get told that the safety of women is not a real issue).

I think with this site being so slow, it can be the case that if you have to scroll by someone who has hijacked a thread to be a nuisance, it can feel like much more of a task, because you're also waiting for adverts and things to load.

I think one reason MN don't want to do it is that if you could block a user, you might then find out their whole range of usernames.

I have also asked for a block/ignore option, but they clearly don't want it so that's fair enough.

I think I asked for it because someone was just plopping onto all political threads to keep saying the same thing, even if it wasn't relevant to the discussion. Also, their posts were incredibly long!

Whatsthatsheila · 10/12/2025 18:43

socialdilemmawhattodo · 10/12/2025 17:10

That's what I said in my OP but this poster is posting every 3 to 4 posts, it takes a lot of time to skip by manually. Their posts are very similar and I have no interest in them.

Show quote history

You want a block button basically so you don’t see their posts

Bambamhoohoo · 10/12/2025 18:46

Yes agreed there are loads of people I’d like to block. Really weird that you can’t when you are able to on most forums

mind you MN only got tube edit facility what, like 3 years ago so is still reliably 20 years behind 😭

DifferentRoads · 10/12/2025 19:51

I agree with blocking posters.

Been off mn for a short while. I made a thread that was totally derailed by a handful of posters who were basically hounding me and not letting other posters get a word in. In the end, I had to abandon the thread as it was pointless trying to keep to the topic. If i was able to block those posters (2way block, like on another forum I'm on), I believe it would have made the thread a quieter place and the few posters who wanted to stay on topic would have had an easier time contributing to the thread.

Every forum has its good and bad and I believe the block feature really helps keep people sane in this online world. That experience has really put me off and I don’t see myself spending much time here now unless I become extremely bored.

Runrunrudolph · 10/12/2025 22:28

There's an awful lot of intolerant OP's on MN these past couple of days.
Must be the Christmas spirit bringing out the Scrooge in people.

elfendom1 · 10/12/2025 22:48

Runrunrudolph · 10/12/2025 22:28

There's an awful lot of intolerant OP's on MN these past couple of days.
Must be the Christmas spirit bringing out the Scrooge in people.

I think a few of those threads were written by the same OP under different names. The argumentative style and phrasing is just so similar. One of these threads has the OP posting 180 times.

GCAcademic · 10/12/2025 22:50

I would be happy with this as long as those who have blocked posters on the thread aren’t able to post on it themselves. Otherwise they will end up being far more annoying than the people they’ve blocked.

DifferentRoads · 10/12/2025 23:04

IBorAlevels · 10/12/2025 17:40

I agree, they are thread vampires and end up making them impossible to bother with. Also I suspect a large number are "Carols" (ref to a pulled thread last week) so it would be nice to just avoid all the distracting BS.

Edited
Show quote history

What's a Carol?

Agreed. Thread vampire is so apt.

EmeraldRoulette · 10/12/2025 23:18

GCAcademic · 10/12/2025 22:50

I would be happy with this as long as those who have blocked posters on the thread aren’t able to post on it themselves. Otherwise they will end up being far more annoying than the people they’ve blocked.

Baffled by this

It wouldn't make a difference to anyone else reading the thread.

Beerlzebub · 10/12/2025 23:32

DifferentRoads · 10/12/2025 19:51

I agree with blocking posters.

Been off mn for a short while. I made a thread that was totally derailed by a handful of posters who were basically hounding me and not letting other posters get a word in. In the end, I had to abandon the thread as it was pointless trying to keep to the topic. If i was able to block those posters (2way block, like on another forum I'm on), I believe it would have made the thread a quieter place and the few posters who wanted to stay on topic would have had an easier time contributing to the thread.

Every forum has its good and bad and I believe the block feature really helps keep people sane in this online world. That experience has really put me off and I don’t see myself spending much time here now unless I become extremely bored.

(2way block, like on another forum I'm on)

So you can block yourself from seeing the poster, but also block them from replying to your thread?

What forum software is that forum using? Because that seems quite unusual, for an actual forum. Not something that's some kind of Twitter clone.

GCAcademic · 10/12/2025 23:32

EmeraldRoulette · 10/12/2025 23:18

Baffled by this

It wouldn't make a difference to anyone else reading the thread.

Show quote history

I don't see what's baffling. I don't want to read replies from people who are deliberately missing chunks of the conversation.

It would be like being in a real-life conversation with someone who sticks their fingers in their ears at regular intervals.

DifferentRoads · 11/12/2025 00:13

Beerlzebub · 10/12/2025 23:32

(2way block, like on another forum I'm on)

So you can block yourself from seeing the poster, but also block them from replying to your thread?

What forum software is that forum using? Because that seems quite unusual, for an actual forum. Not something that's some kind of Twitter clone.

Show quote history

No it just works like every other main site (facebook, etc). You can block them, they won't see you or your threads/posts and you won't see them/theirs.

I specified 2way because some sites' blocking feature is one sided - where you can't see them but they can still see you. Defeats the purpose, imo.

Beerlzebub · 11/12/2025 00:14

DifferentRoads · 11/12/2025 00:13

No it just works like every other main site (facebook, etc). You can block them, they won't see you or your threads/posts and you won't see them/theirs.

I specified 2way because some sites' blocking feature is one sided - where you can't see them but they can still see you. Defeats the purpose, imo.

Show quote history

So it's not a forum?

DifferentRoads · 11/12/2025 00:17

It is. The forum's block feature works the same as facebook (used this for example), tiktok, etc block feature. A 2 way block, not one way like some forums.

Beerlzebub · 11/12/2025 00:18

DifferentRoads · 11/12/2025 00:17

It is. The forum's block feature works the same as facebook (used this for example), tiktok, etc block feature. A 2 way block, not one way like some forums.

So they can't see if you've posted a thread?