I'm for this feature if only because it introduces the idea of ignoring as a potentially temporary action rather than a permanent one in all cases. There are a lot of cases where a tag, or a domain, or a person really needs more of a timeout than a permanent shunning. The potential for that to be automated seems a positive enough benefit to risk any potential scaring off of newbies, which, lets be honest, if someone goes away because not enough people are sharing their content in the first few days, they almost certainly have the kind of ego problems that you wouldn't want to attract anyway.

If I were to look at my own life, it's certainly not the distractions of the internet that are keeping me from long, uninterrupted bouts of reading. I would be surprised to learn if the majority of internet usage overlapped with what was previously "serious reading" time. The nature of content that you find flourishing on the internet would seem to indicate it's being consumed a few minutes at a time.

Life intrudes on serious reading much more than the internet ever will. I think a lot of the authors of these pieces decrying the loss of real reading in the modern age (and they pop up all the time) look back at their lives when they were in their 20's and read so much more, and they want to blame the world around them rather than admit that they have just gotten older and lost the free time that came with being young, being single, being without all the responsibilities that come with age and family.

I can never decide if /r/tumblrinaction has presented me with a horribly distorted view of tumblr, or a frighteningly accurate portrayal. And I have neither the time nor the stomach to dig deep enough into that site to find out the truth.

How can you even be surprised at this point? Republicans have been shouting for cap and trade on carbon emissions since HW Bush, but now that Obama has tried to put the same policy in place they can't hate it enough.