Operation Audacious Phoenix

So I saw in the progress report thread that being unable to reply to a message (banned, blocked, etc), would make the reply button in PM's poof.

Suggestion to simply grey it out instead? More universal + might avoid confused bug reports of a missing button?

Echoing the sentiment of preventing undue bug reports to make the staff's life easier.

I'd also like to bring up a misgiving I had regarding the function of the Reply button being missing or grayed out in the case of the person being blocked.
While I understand the frustration of typing out a long and well-thought reply only to find yourself unable to send it, historically there's been a stance of "Hard No" on anything that makes it easier to identify people whom have blocked you or you have blocked. Call me paranoid, but I can see the "gray out" function being used for precisely that.
Got beef with only one person and can't reply to this anonymous character's post? You know who it is. Go to reply to a thread but can't while the site is working perfectly and you know it is? That player has blocked you.
I'm far from a programming expert, and I'm a known paranoid nutter, but something like this, which could be abused by the imaginative, causes me some concern.

I agree with Jay's concern. It echoes a flaw in the Furcadia ban system where it can be used to suss out if someone is playing an anonymous character (all of their characters become banned). If you happen to know someone has you blocked, a feature like this might lead someone to figure out the player behind an anonymous character. Full disclosure, though, I've only blocked maybe three people on RPR and have little experience with the system as-is.

I think it would be a good idea for PMs, so time isn't wasted while typing out a message for people who have blocked, are outside of your age group. I do see where JayBird comes from; I guess that it would somehow still 'expose' an anonymous character so you'll know who the player is if you have them blocked or vice versa.

If the problem is wasted time vs privacy from grey-button seekers, and middle option would be having clicking reply immediately bringing you to a page explaining "you can't do that." it would require a little extra effort to find blocks, it doesn't have to be publicized much beyond when someone stumbles across it (so risk of abuse is reduced), it'll generally only be seen when someone was about to find out about the block anyway, but it'll still save the wasted time.

And I think a question worth pondering is if it's better to vaguely state "oops, you can't post here" or to have the sort of polite explanation that those upset at being blocked often need to see.

So... there's always a balance between privacy, safety, and convenience, and there's always real tensions between them. I tend to think safety is the #1 issue, but privacy is also really high up there (and sometimes they can be the same thing.)

With the advent of age group restrictions and "only friends can initiate contact with me" and the like, I think this is a much lesser issue than before, at least in the case of PMs. There's plenty of reasons why you can't message someone. Obviously some vague explanation making it clear that that is intended is required.

We currently see a lot of posts from people shocked to discover they are blocked by someone they don't think they've ever talked to before, or at least think they've only had civil interactions with that went great. Not having a clue who has blocked you or why, and being blocked by more people than you think you have been, is pretty common. You might think that you've sussed out who the one person who has blocked you is, but there's actually no way to tell if you're correct, and it's perfectly likely that you're wrong.

Since it functions in one direction, it doesn't, in my eyes, present a "raptors testing the fences" problem where you can quickly block and unblock someone to try and suss out their anon characters. They are in control of when you can no longer contact them. You can't form a suspicion about an anon character and then "test" it by swapping your own settings.

It is already impossible to reply to a topic that is started by someone who has you blocked, even if they started it as an entity you didn't know about (because that entity is anonymous, or because you knew them through an anonymous entity,) so this is a common way that people discover they are blocked by someone. My hope in removing the reply button was that it would lessen the "horror" of discovering you are blocked by someone you thought you were getting along with, by at least not requiring someone to invest work in a reply they then find out was wasted. Novalyyn's compromise of moving that discovery to the point of clicking the button rather than writing the reply would be fine by me.

Kim's idea to make the button be what tells you you're blocked instead of typing out the reply and then finding out is my favourite! It would still be startling but would prevent so many lost efforts.

I can easily jive with the button click being the trigger, too! One way or another someone is going to discover they've been blocked/denied, either way!

I've got to say that my misgivings seem to be well explained and put to rest now.
Back to the subject brought up, I really agree with Copper about graying it out rather than having it missing. I think it'd be a little more clear and less confusing that way.

IT SHALL BE DONE

I wonder if this would also work for when you are going to reply to a topic that was written by someone who doesn't have you blocked, but there's a person who has respondd to that topic that does have you blocked and you try to "quote" that person by using the reply button on their specific comment in the thread? Would it try and prevent people from doing that?

I've seen people use that feature a few times to try and talk to someone who's blocked them and directly quote them so they can get their attention and try to directly talk to them even though it's typically not allowed for that person to talk to them.

For example; if by chance I happenstance I am blocked by Copper_Dragon(I am not, ) and I wanted to click the 'reply' button on their comment on a specific topic that someone else has posted, would I receive a quick page telling me "Oops! You can't do that!" and discover that I have been blocked by Copper_Dragon ?

I don't think that'd work. It's a little more cumbersome than using a button but you could always just type

My concerns are addressed. Adding in my support for a greyed out button to prevent false bug reports!

No, this does not currently happen in either version of the site. As Claine pointed out, one can still just type in the quote to get around it with ease. If someone is knowingly trying to get someone's attention out in public, I definitely encourage that to be reported!

I know on some forums, when you block someone, none of their threads show up to you, and none of your own threads show up for them, either, effectively making you both invisible to each other. I don't know if that would be something to consider, here? I suppose I don't frequent the forums quite enough to know if this would cause issues, but if you can't respond to a thread anyways, because the OP blocked you, why not just have it hidden from your feed entirely so you don't even have to look at something you're being 'excluded' from/something you'd be tempted to reply to?

(Other than being abused to smacktalk people in public forums, but the mods are pretty timely).

(Edit: Whoops, I suppose this is its own suggestion, at this point.)

You'll be able to pinpoint who anonymous accounts belong to by blocking anon characters and checking forum threads selectively until you find discrepancies. It's a huge issue that'll violate someone's anonymous identity easily.

I also am not personally in favor of hiding all content because I've been subjected to some situations such as where someone was inviting people to talk about how awful I am in PMs, through a public forum post, which I ended up reporting and would have gone unnoticed to me otherwise as we'd mutually blocked each other to my knowledge.

I really see the benefit of it, but it has so many additional factors that come into play that I can't really be in favor of it.

The plan for the 2.0 project is to make it optional to hide all content from someone you've blocked, although this would only apply to entities you could reasonably know about. (ie, if you blocked them as a user, you wouldn't stop seeing their anon characters, or if you blocked them as an anon character, you wouldn't stop seeing their user posts - though neither would be able to contact you directly.)

When I block a person, I don't want anything to do with them or their anon characters.

I wouldn't want to see anything from them or their anon characters anywhere in the site to be honest except my blocked list

I don't want to see my friends befriending them in my feeds either so an option for a total block out would be much appreciated

If I have blocked them/their anon. characters is because they leave a sour taste and I prefer they do not creep up anywhere so as to not ruin my enjoyable experience

Then block their anon characters too, if you know that's them?