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I'm aware of the related questions, but I feel that this remains an issue.

I occasionally encounter "bad" users on SO. They are the exception! But it would be nice to have a way to keep track of them, so I can avoid future arguments.

Looking at the user info visible next to the post, I can see:

• Handle
• Reputation
• Badges
• Accept rate

Taking these in order:

I'd like to use my brain cells to remember good handles, not bad ones.

A user with low rep may be a newbie, a doppelganger, a non-contributor, etc. Newbies are not evil, and I don't wish to penalize them (especially when they take the time to contribute). A user with higher rep may be a good citizen or a troll. As has been noted before, downvotes seldom affect your rep significantly and may trigger the reverse effect. Argumentative threads may be popular.

Badges are fun, but aren't a good indicator of personality.

Accept rate is a useful indicator, but may also be low for newbies.

Yes, I could drill down to the user's page and examine them more closely. But that takes time away from more useful activities.

One solution might be to come up with a metric of behavior (Alignment? ;) and display that, possibly color-coded. This could be based on the number of flagged posts, suspensions, ratio of positive-to-negative reputation earned, etc. It still wouldn't detect doppelgangers (they'd show up Neutral, like newbies) but would help.

Displaying "member for" time would also help - long-standing members with low reputations might be questionable. Factoring this into the metric might be a better solution.

EDIT: Another possibility would be to allow individual users to "tag" other users as offensive, but only allow the tagger to see the tag. This would be similar to blocking/hiding a user on other sites. On SO hiding might be confusing; perhaps they could be grayed out. This might be the fairest option; if people find me boorish (which is subjective), they could ignore me without affecting anyone else.

...and it appears that this has already been thought of.

I'm aware of the related questions, but I feel that this remains an issue.

I occasionally encounter "bad" users on SO. They are the exception! But it would be nice to have a way to keep track of them, so I can avoid future arguments.

Looking at the user info visible next to the post, I can see:

• Handle
• Reputation
• Badges
• Accept rate

Taking these in order:

I'd like to use my brain cells to remember good handles, not bad ones.

A user with low rep may be a newbie, a doppelganger, a non-contributor, etc. Newbies are not evil, and I don't wish to penalize them (especially when they take the time to contribute). A user with higher rep may be a good citizen or a troll. As has been noted before, downvotes seldom affect your rep significantly and may trigger the reverse effect. Argumentative threads may be popular.

Badges are fun, but aren't a good indicator of personality.

Accept rate is a useful indicator, but may also be low for newbies.

Yes, I could drill down to the user's page and examine them more closely. But that takes time away from more useful activities.

One solution might be to come up with a metric of behavior (Alignment? ;) and display that, possibly color-coded. This could be based on the number of flagged posts, suspensions, ratio of positive-to-negative reputation earned, etc. It still wouldn't detect doppelgangers (they'd show up Neutral, like newbies) but would help.

Displaying "member for" time would also help - long-standing members with low reputations might be questionable. Factoring this into the metric might be a better solution.

EDIT: Another possibility would be to allow individual users to "tag" other users as offensive, but only allow the tagger to see the tag. This would be similar to blocking/hiding a user on other sites. On SO hiding might be confusing; perhaps they could be grayed out. This might be the fairest option; if people find me boorish (which is subjective), they could ignore me without affecting anyone else.

...and it appears that this has already been thought of.

I'm aware of the related questions, but I feel that this remains an issue.

I occasionally encounter "bad" users on SO. They are the exception! But it would be nice to have a way to keep track of them, so I can avoid future arguments.

Looking at the user info visible next to the post, I can see:

• Handle
• Reputation
• Badges
• Accept rate

Taking these in order:

I'd like to use my brain cells to remember good handles, not bad ones.

A user with low rep may be a newbie, a doppelganger, a non-contributor, etc. Newbies are not evil, and I don't wish to penalize them (especially when they take the time to contribute). A user with higher rep may be a good citizen or a troll. As has been noted before, downvotes seldom affect your rep significantly and may trigger the reverse effect. Argumentative threads may be popular.

Badges are fun, but aren't a good indicator of personality.

Accept rate is a useful indicator, but may also be low for newbies.

Yes, I could drill down to the user's page and examine them more closely. But that takes time away from more useful activities.

One solution might be to come up with a metric of behavior (Alignment? ;) and display that, possibly color-coded. This could be based on the number of flagged posts, suspensions, ratio of positive-to-negative reputation earned, etc. It still wouldn't detect doppelgangers (they'd show up Neutral, like newbies) but would help.

Displaying "member for" time would also help - long-standing members with low reputations might be questionable. Factoring this into the metric might be a better solution.

EDIT: Another possibility would be to allow individual users to "tag" other users as offensive, but only allow the tagger to see the tag. This would be similar to blocking/hiding a user on other sites. On SO hiding might be confusing; perhaps they could be grayed out. This might be the fairest option; if people find me boorish (which is subjective), they could ignore me without affecting anyone else.

...and it appears that this has already been thought of.

I'm aware of the related questions, but I feel that this remains an issue.

I occasionally encounter "bad" users on SO. They are the exception! But it would be nice to have a way to keep track of them, so I can avoid future arguments.

Looking at the user info visible next to the post, I can see:

• Handle
• Reputation
• Badges
• Accept rate

Taking these in order:

I'd like to use my brain cells to remember good handles, not bad ones.

A user with low rep may be a newbie, a doppelganger, a non-contributor, etc. Newbies are not evil, and I don't wish to penalize them (especially when they take the time to contribute). A user with higher rep may be a good citizen or a troll. As has been noted before, downvotes seldom affect your rep significantly and may trigger the reverse effect. Argumentative threads may be popular.

Badges are fun, but aren't a good indicator of personality.

Accept rate is a useful indicator, but may also be low for newbies.

Yes, I could drill down to the user's page and examine them more closely. But that takes time away from more useful activities.

One solution might be to come up with a metric of behavior (Alignment? ;) and display that, possibly color-coded. This could be based on the number of flagged posts, suspensions, ratio of positive-to-negative reputation earned, etc. It still wouldn't detect doppelgangers (they'd show up Neutral, like newbies) but would help.

Displaying "member for" time would also help - long-standing members with low reputations might be questionable. Factoring this into the metric might be a better solution.

EDIT: Another possibility would be to allow individual users to "tag" other users as offensive, but only allow the tagger to see the tag. This would be similar to blocking/hiding a user on other sites. On SO hiding might be confusing; perhaps they could be grayed out. This might be the fairest option; if people find me boorish (which is subjective), they could ignore me without affecting anyone else.

...and it appears that this has already been thought of.