**@ Kaibach

Your intent seems to be a means of dealing with "trolls" ...

I question the validity of trolling as a concept – my thesis is that no such thing exists.  The allegation of “trolling” contains the allegation that there is either an insincere interest in the topic, or a hidden agenda on the part of the individual accused.

Both speak to motivation – which is something that the individual making such a charge cannot know with any measurable degree of certainty.

On-line chat-rooms and forums have caused people to lose perspective: In the real world  you can know a man your entire life, you can share triumphs and sorrows, victory and defeat, accomplishment and failure – and you still may know fully know the inner-workings of this man's mind with any degree of certainty.

Your possibility of knowing such certainty falls off a million fold if you only communicate with this individual on-line.

Your mind is not physically connected to any other mind – you are reading a pattern of pixels on a monitor screen. You do not and cannot know with certainty the content of another mind through this medium.

You certainly cannot speak to motivations.

It appears to me that those who level the charge of “trolling” do so out of convenience: They do not want to face disagreement; they do not want to face criticism; they do not what to face having no answer when their ideas are questioned … all of these things have to do with ego and the perceived “loss of face” they believe to be involved, and so they rely on this meaningless charge.

Trolling appears to be one of those slippery concepts that is used to define too many things – but I find that a concept that can mean anything actually means nothing.

What most people refer to as trolling seems to fall into other categories which are both conceptually valid and more clearly encapsulate the reality of what content is involved in the comment or post.

Things often identified as “trolling:”

1. Posts by someone who holds a differing opinion which questions your position.

This is not trolling because communication is the exchange of ideas. An idea may be valid or not, it may be cut loose from reality in many ways, and questioning the one proposing the idea is one way to determine how well it is constructed, is the idea rational, is the logic sound, can the idea be verifiably tested …?

Social networking sites have fallen into the pit of eternal lameness by holding the value of “polite agreement” over knowledgeable discourse. How meaningful is it that twenty “on-line ghosts “agree with you if they have applied no standards of discrimination …? Is it meaningful to agree with something that is irrational or meaningless?

Ideas are not sacrosanct. People are often personally invested in their ideas; however dissection of the validity of an idea is not the same thing as an attack on an individual.

[I say this last with full appreciation that very few people today appear to know how to debate the validity or merit of ideas without resorting to an attack on the person – this is a failing of education leading to a regrettable lack of personal character.]

2. Constructive criticism.

This is not trolling because as the creator of a work one can become lost in the process and simply “not see” flaws which actually render your work less effective than it could be.

It is often hard to face constructive criticism, and having worked over the span of my professional career in the printing and publishing industry where one’s ideas are put to the test in a rigorous way I still at times find this hard – however I have never lost anything by consideration of a constructive criticism, and my work has often been greatly improved by heeding constructive criticism.

3. Personal attacks aimed directly at your person.

You might call these trolling – however it is more clear to identify them for what they are, a personal attack.

So no, I see no utility in an ignore button – it only enables people who perhaps need to mature, and learning to deal with the fact that you will never agree with everyone, and others will persistently use their own minds and disagree with you is part of becoming mature as an individual.
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