Why the block feature is a truly horrible feature to have

Why the block feature is a truly horrible feature to have

The block feature would be a ridiculously bad idea on a large scale.


It would instigate "the devianTART effect", that being the allowance of users with bad or otherwise undesirable art to persist in the creation of this art while being able to casually block anyone who criticises them. Such would drastically reduce the quality of the website and community, something which I'm sure we all want to avoid.

There is no real way to prevent abuse of the system. Giving people a limited number of block slots would allow people to circumvent the block system by simply creating new accounts ad infinitum until all the user's block slots were expended. Giving them an abundance of block slots would allow them to merely block people casually without fear of running out.

There's no way to prevent abuse of the system from either direction. The introduction of such a feature would either weight down the server further or degrade the quality of the website.

Another suggestion to prevent abuse would be ratifiction with an admin. If you need it ratified with an admin, then you might as well just get a cease and desist like the current policy allows for. Not to mention that our report center is horribly understaffed, and such ratification would clog the entire thing even more.

If anything we need more mods to accomodate for the growing site, especially in this current time of controversy.

Recent bans and moderator decisions show poor reasoning on their part, probably due to a lack of research on the topics.

Mods see an offense, banned. Regardless of who was in the right or wrong. Clearly this is because of the vast number of reports and the precious few mods to deal with them.


There is no effective way to prevent abuse of the block system. All methods can be bypassed or abused quite easily.


Ultimately the block system would be an unnecessary bloat upon the servers that would serve little purpose, due to being so easily bypassed or abused. Thus there is no practical reason for instigating such a useless or damaging feature.

If someone spams you, flames you, or otherwise harrasses you, deal with the problem yourself. I have never had any practical reason to report anyone for harrassment, because I resolve my own problems. Stop being helpless and fend for yourselves.


A block feature would be possibly the worst feature ever implemented on this fair site, leading to server bloat, abuse of the system, possibly downtime, and a definite increase of low quality artwork.