I believe back in the day you used to be able to see how many people ignored you. My number was 2 and, every time I saw the number, I was hopelessly curious as who ignored me and why. Unless you check your stats every day, you will have no idea what you may have posted / said to warrant the ignore / mute / hush. I have only ignored people who are posting spam except one case where the user was posting stuff I really, really wasn't into and the user kept showing up in my feed. The content wasn't bad - I just had zero interest in it and they posted quite frequently and got an average number of shares. If this user had known that I had ignored them, or that they had gained another ignore, and it caused them any anxiety or worry or contemplation, I would have felt badly. The user wasn't posting bad stuff, just stuff I didn't personally find interesting. Secondly, what will this add? Will it actually help deter people from acting in a way that earns them ignores/mutes/hushes? Or will it just cause anxiety in those who get randomly ignored for whatever reason but don't need to change their behavior? Lastly, could it ever become something that trolls use to validate their bad behavior, especially since we don't have downvotes, just like some trolls on reddit attempt to accumulate the largest number of downvotes on their account? ps: I unignored the user 2 days later because I was worried I wouldn't see a great conversation if one happened on their posts. I really think I overthink things sometimes.
I take it as axiomatic that it's a bad idea to encourage people to act in a way that makes them avoid mutes/ignores/hushes. The reason those features exist is to let users avoid friction (if they wish) and have a better experience from their own perspective, not to discourage people from expressing themselves. If someone is a complete clown and enough people ignore them, they will go away relatively quickly (this claim supported empirically), and their expression hasn't been denied by external forces. It's a good system and has worked well for the last year and half since those fuckers tried to ruin our humble little site. I don't think it's a good idea to make this stuff public. Tried and failed, even though that wasn't anonymous. Let's leave it alone.
Who are 'those fuckers,' I've heard whispers of a dark time in Hubski's history and I'm really curious. Also, I found a deactivated account where all the posts were a gif of a dude putting a gun to his head. What's the story behind that?
I agree with you, it seems it could cause anxiety for users, and make them less likely to post things in the future. What if a box popped up for a private message when you ignored a user, so they would at least know why they were ignored? Could help inform users of unacceptable behavior, without publicly calling them out.