"I'm not sure how well it works, but last year, a script was posted in the HTML forum that's basically an "ignore" feature for Renderosity. It works through greasemonkey in Firefox, so it's got a limited scope of use."

Argh, my great idea has been done already? And just as I was about to suggest it.

Yeah, that should be possible. I had something that would reformat pages on the fly, removing ads, formatting text etc. The name escapes me but it worked in Opera and there may have been one version for all browsers - you can do quite a bit of portable stuff with Javascript AFAIK. Of course, it would be better to have it built in.

As long as we're dreaming, I'd like to have (private access) to a count of the number of times I've been ignored (not by who), with perhaps the ability to reset it. The ignore count by thread would be awesome but a simple count would do. If you want something more public, some forums have thumbs up/down buttons (per post)  with a count of each. In fact that would be the most granular way of feedback. As always, a few would probably abuse it thumbing down their enemies everytime - hopefully only a tiny minority. OTOH, some may legitimately dislike a comment but not want to say anything for whatever reason. Giving the 'silent majority' a way to respond might help. Oh crap, did I just do Nixon? Forget it.

@ Sam - perhaps you could talk privately to those pissing you off (without references to hidings, punch ups etc. of course :-) 

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken