Every once in a while you get across an asker that just isn’t worth wasting your time with. Grades improperly, doesn’t finalize his/her questions, etc.
Until a while ago, there wasn’t much you could do about it. There was quickpost, but not everybody knew about it. But now, with the new site, there is one thing that is good (well, maybe more but from my point of view, practically, only this one): the possibility to filter things. And blacklisting is a sort of filtering too.
So how you filter out the "bad guys"? Pretty simple.
Create or edit your filter like this:
– in the search term filter select "May not Contain"
– then in the next combo, select "Any of these words"
– in the next editbox enter the usernames of the users you want to blacklist separated by spaces
– in the next combo select "the name of the question asker"
– click update
– click save filter
Every single time you add a username, click on the update and click on the save filter. You don’t do one of these and the filter doesn’t get updated 😉
I don’t know if the filter is case sensitive or not, so make sure you copy-paste the username. Better safe than sorry.
When I blacklist a user, and this is my personal policy, I post a comment on that question so that they know they got blacklisted and I also tell them that it’s permanent. Maybe this will wake them up. And after I post, I unsubscribe from the question (I really don’t care if and what the asker has to say: when I decided that (s)he is blacklisted, that’s a decision taken). I also tell them that I unsubscribed from the question so that they know not to expect anything more from me, even if they post their apology of whatever.
Yes, I’m mean 😈
Another setting I have is email alerts: have the filter email you every (in the alert combo) and from now on you will not see any questions from the users you blacklisted.
Be aware that some of the sites functions do not take into consideration your filter. For example if you sign up for the question alerts program. There might be other things too, but I just don’t remember them.
Enjoy 🙂
I’ve added 2 greasemonkey scripts to aid this blacklisting process. note that you still need to manually create the blacklisting filter yourself.
find the scripts on my greasemonkey page http://www.ciuly.com/greasemonkey/index.html
I have created a dedicated place in my EE corner for sharing blacklists. You can do this manually via the add page or semi-automatically via the dedicated blacklist script.
More information on my [url=http://www.ciuly.com/ee/bl/index.html]EE blacklist share program[/url]