INSTEAD, I PROPOSE THIS SOLUTION: If a select few people are uncomfortable with a topic in the shoutbox that is a perfectly okay topic to have, they can leave or deal with it.

OR, ANOTHER SOLUTION: Implement an ignore feature, or a temporary silence feature. So users can pick and choose whose posts they want to see. Staff, obviously, should not be able to be ignored or silenced by users, since they always need to be heard. But an option like this would be excellent solution so people can continue to discuss what they want to discuss without hearing what they don't want to hear.

"Ignore [username]"

"Temporarily ignore [username] for [number] minutes"

I agree completely with all of this. Serious issues are a part of life
and very important and dear to some people. I see no reason why we
shouldn't be allowed to discuss them when
it is doing no harm and there is no rule that says the SB has to be all
sunshine and rainbows 24/7. Serious discussion is not bad. Heated
discussion is not bad either. None of it is bad as long as we are being
civil and respecting one another.

The users in the SB are all at
 least 13 (and the majority are older) so they should be mature enough
to handle discussion like this or, if not, at least mature enough to be
able to step out when they're not comfortable.


I like the
option of an ignore feature. On top of allowing users to ignore
discussion, iit would help users ignore someone who may be hassling them
 personally (for a sale, pet etc.).

I can see problems such as
"Omg Dustfeather I asked you for help, why aren't you responding :((" or "I offered way
higher for Dust's pet, but they didn't see"  arising though. But at the
same time it would cause drama for it to be public or shown to the
ignored user when another user chooses to ignore them. Any suggestions
on going around that? xD;

EDIT: No idea what happened to the format of my post. Sorry if it's difficult to read. :U

I've seen discussions being stopped when they weren't even remotely
intense and no one was being rude, and I think that's a little over the
top.
I can understand that
something needs to be taken elsewhere if it's the whole shoutbox that is
 uncomfortable with a discussion between two users or so. That's easy to
 take elsewhere. That's what Rmail is for. But it's not easy to take a
discussion somewhere else when five people are involved.

A while
ago Broken and I talked about something similar, and she said that if it
 was just one or two users then it was no problem and the discussion didn't need to be stopped. The "Ignore" feature
would help those couple of users. I don't think it's a bad idea.

I,
 personally, would love to be able to have serious discussions with
people on Res without giving away my Skype to do so. The serious things
that come up are often very important to me and other users so being
silenced when I'm trying to defend it is pretty annoying, and sometimes
downright upsetting. Some users in the shoutbox may be uncomfortable with
 a discussion going on, but I'm uncomfortable with certain things being
stopped.

Until then, you do still have the option of the Off-Topic forum. I am really not understanding why that is such a horrible option unless it's just because it isn't in real-time?

Please don't try to derail the main point by saying "well you can just talk about it in the forums so stop complaining."

[edit]

on the other hand yes, it sounds like the new chat system would probably remedy that. do we have an ETA or any snapshots or deions of progress with that or are we going to continue to be kept in the dark and told "just keep waiting patiently while nothing happens in the meantime and if you don't like it you can leave res :)"

I do not have any more information than you do about the next site version. That is a problem with our current staff structure that needs to be solved; there is very inadequate communication between departments.