This explanation of the 'ignore' feature makes a lot of sense to me, whereas I didn't really 'get it' before:
[KimmyDawn wrote:]</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
When I joined, I accepted the guidelines here...knowing that I should post within them, but also knowing that everyone else here was only obligated to post within them no matter the upsetting topic (for me), opinion, etc.

In knowing that, I knew there might be that time that I have to put a member on ignore if their posting was triggering, upsetting, or otherwise, but within the guidelines for the community.

I think the ignore feature is a great feature. I also realize that it could be abused but I have RARELY seen that happen here. Some may have to ignore more than others for a short time because of the place that their in for the moment, as well as triggers, depression, etc.

When a person uses ignore, it's usually due to personal reaction and self-comfort, I think...not meant to upset.

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I, like a couple of the other posters above, had been really struggling with how using an ignore button could be a healthy thing, rather than learning to deal with the situation.

I've wondered about the trigger warnings/icon for the same reason, but in this community, I have come to more and more recognize that there may be folks who are especially vulnerable, (heck we're probably ALL vulnerable at certain times), for whom certain material can be very destructive and beyond their current, at-this-moment ability to cope with it.

Again, I think most of us have these times, (I certainly do), and some folks may have certain conditions or they may be at certain points in their therapy/recovery work, where these triggers (even if not really about the poster who is perceived to be triggering) would be more detrimental than others.

I think working on skills to simply pass-over certain threads or posts would be one to work on, but I can conceive of situations where that is much easier said than done.

I wish life came with ignore buttons and trigger warnings, but unfortunately...