plonk : Java Glossary

No one knows for sure you plonked them unless you tell them. To them, it just appears you ever after totally ignore them.

By plonking, you are notifying someone you consider their behaviour is so egregious (e.g. spamming, never on topic, empty posts, drunken word salads, mechanicaly generated gibberish, obscenity), or that their their posts so vapid that they require neither reading nor refutation, and that you are henceforth automatically filtering out everything they say.

Plonking effectively deletes that person from your virtual universe. It affects no one else but you. They become a ghost. You hear from them ever again only indirectly via others who act like spiritual mediums by quoting them. Happily, if they do say something worthy of notice in future, you will likely hear it indiretly via such a quotation. They can still hear you.

You normally only would plonk only very childish people, those who whose posts don’t require any refuting and who never say anything of interest. Don’t plonk those who merely give you a rough time, who are insufferably rude, or who strongly disagree with you. If you plonk them, they can attack you and you won’t be able to see what they are saying to defend yourself or your ideas. You don’t want to close your mind to ideas you at first reject either. However, sometimes, plonking is the only way to save your sanity when you get a stalker on your tail, even if he does occasionally say something requiring refutation.

The Buddha gives another view on whom to plonk, even though of course plonking was impossible in his time. In his view, it is paramount to avoid hanging out with evil people. There is almost no chance in reforming them, so you are best to avoid them to keep them from disturbing your tranquility or corrupting you. You have to use care in discriminating between evil people and people who simply have different views from you.

In the Agent newsreader, to plonk someone, click Message ⇒ Filters ⇒ Add Kill Filter ⇒ Kill Action:Delete ⇒ OK