I have a lot of friends here that submit things I don't want to see on my feed (no offense kjoneslol, soupyhands, lolsail, SaltyChristian, ytknows, NotaMethAddict), but I enjoy reading their comments and I talk to a lot of them via pms. Yes a lot of these people are probably on many of your ignore lists. They are redditors who have created hubski accounts after all of the buzz in the metasphere surrounding the deletion of my reddit account. I was, ahem, kindofabigdeal.jpg on reddit (not that it's anything to brag about, and I kind of feel bad about all the silliness following me over here).
I would like to add them as a 'friend' (and notifying them of this just like gaining a follower would be great!), but not actually follow their submissions. mk, could this be done? I'm sure I'm not the one who has friends on hubski that they really like & enjoy talking to, but really don't want the type of things they regularly share & submit cluttering up their highly refined feed page.
Although I could see some benefit from highlighting certain users, I am not too keen on any communicable 'friending' type of interaction. There are always awkward situations that come with this. He friended me, do I need to friend him back?, etc. Although the seed interactions are genuine, I think a lot of disingenuous behavior encompasses it. People already feel some of this with following. So to me it comes down to whether or not privately highlighting a name is worth it, and I don't really feel like it is. I think it's worth taking the time to notice someone's name. The most interesting comment might be the one you gloss over because you notice your friend's name.
I don't think tagging him will actually make my submission seen by him more quickly... in fact, I would think that one of the first things he does when he logs in is check to see if anything has been submitted with the tags #bugski or #suggestions. I more often link to people because it makes their name clickable & people can more easily find their user page (for example, so new users can follow them). I talk to mk about hubski several times a week at least, and if I thought that tagging him in my posts was bothering him in the slightest, I wouldn't do it.
I was just thinking this today! I dismissed the idea because it's kind of silly to follow people's comments and not their posts, and I'm not quite sure if it's a good enough idea to implement. Shouldn't features only be implemented if a majority will use them?