Given that the purpose of moderation is not to suspend people, or to aggravate meta, but to prevent having to do those things... I am not sure I agree with you. This makes the quality of moderation worse, it's a net loss.

@Sklivvz Okay, so as a thought exercise: what's the purpose of moderation? I know it's not all about suspending people, but that does have to be done a fair amount in chat. 'Sides, I don't expect this would generate many complaints on meta; we don't see many at the moment, even when warnings just plain aren't issued at all.

@ArtOfCode the purpose of moderation is making sure that a community is healthy and thriving. This means, mostly, dealing with exceptional behavior. The best possible effect of moderation, and its primary target, is to help users be effective on the site, be it through editing, closing, or simple chats where necessary. That means that bad behaviors need to be addressed and corrected. This can't be delegated to meta or mod messages only.

@Sklivvz I'm not suggesting we delegate addressing bad behaviours to meta/mod messages; I'm suggesting that you can still use chat for it, but let another moderator do it. Trying to address the behaviour of a user who is already annoyed by your name is going to end in tears, so I'd argue that you should be letting another moderator do it even if said user doesn't have you ignored.

@ArtOfCode what if a user ignores the whole mod team? What if other mods are not available? etc. I would never moderate a user I have a issue with, but I certainly moderate users that have issues with me all the time. Every half decent mod has to.

@Sklivvz Both of those situations are uncommon enough that if they happen, I'd be comfortable asking a staff member or a dev to remove the ignore temporarily so I could talk to them.

@ArtOfCode that is still a barrier for no good reason...

@Sklivvz If you make moderators unignorable, you're saying "you're not allowed to be annoyed by this person". That's a good way to lose valuable community members. Instead, I'd be more comfortable letting users ignore mods and either relying on a different mod for communicating with that user, or just giving moderators the ability to remove themselves from a user's ignore list (temporarily, perhaps).

Hopefully you won't ignore me here :-)

There are a number of issues that we need to consider

mods need to know they are ignored to work around it. right now one just speaks in a room and receives no acknowledgment

I make a point of not ignoring anyone :)

@Sklivvz yeah, that's definitely an issue I'd like to see resolved

also, i am not a big fan of "here's me" vs "HERE'S ME SPEAKING IN A MOD VOICE"

In theory, though, would SE be okay with giving moderators control of other users' ignore lists?

Because that might be a decent compromise - let a user ignore you, but then be able to override it if necessary.

Well that can be discussed, but I can see it backfiring

Yeah. Plenty of potential for abuse in it.

also, simply forgetting to disable silence would suck

What about, as a start, popping up a message if you try to ping someone who's ignoring you?

Perhaps with a link in it to remove yourself from that ignore list?

atm you wouldn't see them in the ping list

or maybe just the message, to start

also, that doesn't work when there are multiple users, unless you are pinging them all

@Sklivvz sure, but you can still type in the right characters. I can type @Sklivvz without tab-completing it.

@Sklivvz the link doesn't, no, but it might still be worth the popup - "You tried to ping @UserX, but this user is ignoring you."

It would be simpler to mark the user messages or icon in a different color, put a menu on the user

Oh, so if someone's ignoring you then their messages show up in red to you?

something like that. It's still a partial solution because not all the users are shown on screen

Decent solution, though. It solves the issue of trying to ping someone who's currently making trouble.

I am just not sure that "not being able to ignore a mod" is worse than "a mod can undo your ignores to talk to you". The action would be more personal.

Yeah, I can see that. But at the same time, not letting users ignore a mod is like saying "you can't possibly be annoyed by this person, look they're a mod"

and that's gonna annoy people more than the mod themselves

well, yes. We should tell them to complain to the community team

To be clear: I'm not particularly opposed to people not being able to ignore mods, but I don't see what's wrong with the current status quo. Mods have been working with that for however long - 5 years?

Well tbh I asked around (devs and community team): no one really knew this was the case and even the dev who built chat did not know... It's not by design afaict

Sounds like nobody wrote in the special cases :)

I feel it's important to have this chat, thanks for giving your opinion.

@Sklivvz That seems strange. I know there are some TL regulars that ignore each other, for example.

And we have had, and probably will have more, some controversial mods being elected.

We've even had at least one mod that caused the resignation of previous ones. Mods are just regular users who've won a popularity contest. They should still be ignorable by those users who can't stand them.

If only to keep the TL, at least, free of drama.

In other words, it's a feature! :P

Well, that's what we need to chat about. It's was not designed.

Shhhh!

In all seriousness, I get that. And I am very glad you all are chatting and thinking about it. I just think that ignoring mods is more of a help than a hindrance. If I really need to get through to a user I can. If they're being obnoxious, I can kick and/or suspend them whether they ignore me or not.

Just my $0.02: I think that changing a user's settings (like the ignore list) is "not done". As such, I think a user should be allowed to ignore a mod if he so wishes.

Maybe it's an idea to show the green (1) if a user is pinged by a mod he ignores, and provide a entrance to view the message, that way.

@Cerbrus The suggestion does not require changing the settings. If you ignore me, you would still ignore me everywhere I am not a mod.

@Sklivvz, it was in reply to this idea:

(Probably should've literally replied to that)

I can get behind something like a ignore feature simply not working on mods.

@Cerbrus Ah, gotcha. Yeah I wouldn't do that, and that's also why I'm uncomfortable making mods able to override it at will

I don't think it should be made too complicated. Keep it easy to explain.

^ that sucks

@Sklivvz A: *Rants on meta*

Agreed

Then again, I can imagine a mod not wanting to force his presence on users that want to ignore him, if said mod is just chatting in a room

For example, Madara Uchiha is very active on the SO rooms. I'm sure there are people that aren't a fan of him (As with all mods). Blocking / breaking the "ignore" feature when a moderator is targeted might result in confrontations that could've been avoided

(<3 Madara, by the way. Just an example)

true, but that is the typical sacrifice that mods have to make (be careful with words, going around with a diamond)

That's true, also.

Not a huge reason, but that's why i'm instinctively more comfortable with it.

@Cerbrus mods can already change most user settings

@ArtOfCode I'm honestly surprised by that.

@Cerbrus Why? We need to be able to remove an offensive avatar or change an offensive user name, for example.

Sure, but that's public information