I have no issues with the current muting/hiding system we have in place, but I'm not easily offended by people. I also believe people can change if they really want to so I don't use the mute feature very offten. I do sometimes miss the weigh moderators carried around the site, however. Sometimes I even miss the title system that sort of kept people in line (no one wanted to lose their hat and therefore behaved). I do believe that people focus on the words of other now rather than their title, which can be nice, but without some sort of reward system in place people will just go on being a jerk or being offensive. But, that's a discussion for another time. I have a sort of "3 strikes rule" with the mute button, and it has to be something pretty offensive for me to mute them. Thus far I have only muted 4 individuals whom I could no longer tolerate. I have since then unmuted a couple of them but then I quickly muted them once again. I use this feature sparingly because I want to give people a chance. I know damn well I'd have already muted the user I was when I first started signing onto b.net. That may be one of the issues with these tools though, not everyone has the patience to give a user a chance at redemption and that is kind of lame. I don't think it ever crosses anyone's mind to clear out their cache of muted users to offer them a second (or 3rd in my case) chance. I can agree with DD Death when he says that it hurts the overall sense of community, but it can't be helped when people mute others because they simply said something opposing their own views. As for the abuse of global mutes? Something automated [i]can[/i] be abused and it shouldn't come to a surprise. I think a better alternative to this automated global mute would to have the power be in the proper hands: the ninjas and the webteam. Let's say when a user recieves enough mutes, they would be added to a que that all ninjas can view (similar to be ban system that may or may not still be in place). The ninjas will be offered a chance to view this user's recent posts and based off of that will be given the option to vote on whether or not this user deserves a global mute. If enough ninjas vote yes, another que will appear for the webteam to allow the final verdict for said user and determine whether it would be a temporary global mute (which they would be notified of) or a perminant global mute (based off of past temp global mutes as well as bans). The later would be similar to a perma ban of b.old. Alright there's my 2 cents on that. [spoiler]Sorry for the wall o' text.[/spoiler]