Is the buddy/ignore list all that useful anymore?

[E-Man]

I've been thinking about the buddy/ignore feature this site has. For the buddy list, all it feels like is just an easy way of PMing certain people when the task is hardly any trouble at all to begin with. Also, since there's no way to publicly show who your buddies are automatically (as in not editing your signature manually or something like that), I don't see that much of a point to it. I know it also keeps track of their activities, but I could generally do the same thing with the "Who's Online" bar at the bottom of the screen.

As for the ignore list, I don't imagine that getting a whole lot of use anymore. From what I've seen, I don't think any of the users here blocked anyone before. I assume that because they still read the posts left by other users and they handle the users who are acting immature with patience and let the admin deal with it. The only users I was put on the ignore list by are users who are actually rather immature. Since the ignore list feels generally like the DA block system, I have a reason to believe that it would be abused in a way that would cause members to tune out meaningful advice and critiques. As a result, it would stunt the mental and emotional growth of these users.

I can't speak for the people who actually use it (since it's not a question I bring up normally to others on this iste), but is this feature worth keeping around anymore?