The Jailhouse

[Bird of Prey]

You must have typed and then erased, this is a new (to me) take on the "ignore" feature. I agree with you that most of the folks that *should* get ignored really need to be terminated. In a perfect world that would happen. Unfortunately, the real world sees too many that need to be gone still hanging around spewing filth, stalking, and generally making life difficult for more than a few members of the community.
I thought that one of your reasons against "ignore" was the hiding of messages didn't help towards the goal of more posting (therefore more traffic). I would definitely add the hiding of each others posts to the "User Specific Block" as I described earlier.
Personally I would even expand it to allow individual users to impose it on PM's ONLY. this would effectively put and end to stalking and harassment.
If she can't see what he writes; If he can't post to her directly; If he can't send her private messages; and vice versa, what is the point of stalking?
I've tried to figure out a way for a stalker to beat this, I'm not finding any wy to get around it, but I'm not much of a stalker to begin with.

I'm really not looking at this as a way to end flame wars. I seriously doubt that is actually possible. But NO ONE should have to tolerate a stalker.
I understand the concerns with programming overhead, but lets very this from another angle. Suppose some nice lady is cyberstalked while using IH and decides that IH is somehow responsible for not providing adequate safeguards. A lawsuit is filed. Win, lose or draw, one lawsuit could involve more overhead cost than having to do the programming three times over (once; for the lost time dealing with the suit, twice; for ending up writing the program anyway, thrice; the lost time you could have been doing something else instead of having to writ the dang thing now!).
Given the litigious nature of this society, the above scenario is not that farfetched. Remember someone sued McDonald's because she spilled coffee in her own lap!

The Bird of Prey