No, musicvid, not at all. It's fine to have differences of opinion. For every time I've disagree with something you've written, there are probably several times that I silently nodded in assent.

Thanks for the info --- that's what I was afraid of. I know a lot of users were doing that in the 'Billyboy' days, but I never did.

Wow, if you now want to put someone on "Ignore," but never did so with bb, someone must have really put a pebble in your boot.

the "issue" with the ignore was that it wouldn't just ignore that person, it would not show all the replies that person had. The forum threads actually branch out, like a drive structure, but normally you don't see that. so, in a sense, if you ignored me (for example) & everybody who posted after me hit "reply" to my post you'd never see any replies.

Plus it didn't ignore new threads, you always saw that.

"bb" was opinionated, often belligerent and argumentative, but he was knowledgeable and he did try to help when he wasn't spouting off on something. Generally, if I don't like the way a thread is going, I'll stop reading, and that worked very well in those situations.

The user who raised my ire yesterday disrupts threads with repeated, pointless nonsense that's not even peripherally related to the topic.

Chuck, I know exactly what (not who) you mean.

Yesterday, I posted something and someone replied with a series of self-aggrandizing statements that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the original post.

It was extraordinary difficult not to respond, but I summoned the strength not to.

Very frustrating!

Thanks for the enhanced explanation, HappyFriar. That sure isn't what I want, so it looks like I'll have to grit my teeth and flip a virtual bird while skipping over this particular user's twaddle.

Jay -- More and more frequently, I've started to compose a response to something like you've cited, but then remembered several colorful sayings that illustrate the fruitless nature of wasting your time arguing with anonymous people on the internet, and have stopped mid-sentence. Took a long time to get to this point!

That said, I can understand where threads veer off-topic, and don't have a serious problem with that. What I object to is someone posting seemingly just to post, rather than contributing in some way to the discussion, on topic or off.

Think of it as the online forum version of Tourette's Syndrome, except that what is blurted out in writing could be controlled by the author, but was not. (No slight intended to people who suffer from the actual disease...)