The only kink in this solution that I can see is viewing unmuted replies to the muted user. If the parent comment is a muted user, will all the following comments not be shown as well? Or would every comment appear except the muted user's? If the current system (as I understand it) is kept, then the conversation wouldn't take place at all. But if your solution is used, how can you follow a half-sensored discussion without lifting the mute?
You can't. He's a user with at least 1K users. If he censors you, you're done for. Short of "apologizing" for having a different view than his, there's nobody anywhere on this site who would see what you said. His goal, apparently (stated in another thread) is to make anybody less than half his account's age, feel very fucking unwelcome here. Killing the idea the site was built on (a place for thoughtful discussion). Edit: Cleaned up this comment some. Turning this into a wall of text. Funny thing is, if he muted me, there would be no way in fuck I'd be able to "apologize", considering I think we don't have any mutual followers / friends. A true power user if I ever saw one. You know what? CashewGuy just said it best in a lower part of the thread (and I'm going to badge it when I can just on this) - If the current system (as I understand it) is kept, then the conversation wouldn't take place at all. But if your solution is used, how can you follow a half-sensored discussion without lifting the mute?
Let's turn that "Have you tried apologizing?" sentence into a hyperlink. And when the user clicks on it, they see a list of 'follows' that the muter and mutee have in common - 'mutual friends' if you will that could intercede on your behalf.
I don't care if people mute me, that's fine. I care that people can remove my ability to talk to others. That, to me, is a problem. No one should have the ability to stop me from talking to someone else. Sure, I could go start another post. But that's a band-aid, not a solution. I'm much more in favor of the several proposals of "mute as comment ignore" where the muter simply doesn't see the comment anymore, but doesn't remove that person's ability to communicate and have discourse.
There's a remarkable amount of butt-hurt about a feature that nobody has attempted to understand, including you. Here - let me show you the posts that my "mute" setting are even effective on: BAM. That's it. My "mute" settings ARE ONLY EFFECTIVE ON MY POSTS. What is so hard about this?
Are you referring to this thread or the other similar posts made around that time? If you are, you'll see that kleinbl00 has no goal to "make anybody with less than half his accounts age, feel very fucking unwelcome here." I know this thread has come up in discussion recently and I haven't really seen anything else from KB about muting new users, especially not in this recent turn of events. If that is the thread you're referring to, I do think it's important to accurately represent what you reference. If there is a comment somewhere that I've missed that your summation does accurately reference, I wouldn't mind seeing it - especially as KB does not have 1000 followers. (I mean, close, but your representation of "at least 1k" makes it seem like you believe he has perhaps substantially more than 1k, which is definitely wrong.) I also think it's important to remember when discussing "mute" that "mute" only works on content posts. KB's share/content ratio is about 50%. He is by no means a "power submitter." He may have a ton of followers, who see both what he posts, and (perhaps more importantly) what he shares - and what he shares his mutes don't apply to. It's not 100% of the things you see in your feed from KB that you can't reply to. I just feel like that's important to remember because we are talking about the impact of having hundreds of followers as if all the followers only see your content posts and as if that is the only thing followers follow a user for, when really one can choose to follow a user because they like what is shared by that user - and kb's mutes have no impact on that portion of the feed that he generates. To be completely clear, I just did the math, and for the number of days kleinbl00 has been here he posts an average of a little more than two posts a day This whole brigade is getting out of hand because users feel they are censored because they can't comment on what comes out to two posts on this entire website a day (on average). If you consider the sheer number of posts put to Hubski on a given day, don't these proclamations of "if he mutes you you're fucked" and "if he censors you, you're done for" seem a little out of hand now that we've got some math behind them? For sources: kb has been here 1,051 days. Add up the number of his personal tags (since now they have been applied to every post, ever). I got 2,191, aka 2,191 posts. Number of posts/days. Basic. (I wouldn't have to do this part if I just knew how many posts were submitted to Hubski a day but I don't so we're gonna extrapolate) To get even more math-wizardy up in here, let's consider the Hubski community page which features, among other things, a list of the most active posters. kleinbl00 is listed as #18 currently. That means that there are 17 users on Hubski that post more frequently than kb, which is to say that they post more frequently than 2.08x/day. Now I'm going to do you two favors here that should help show you exactly why kleinbl00 can mute as many people as he wants and it's not total Hubski annihilation or even close. 1) We're going to forget every user that posts less than kleinbl00. Yup, that's right, I realize that there's about another 32 names on that list, but fuck 'em. So we're just going to talk about the 18 most popular posters on this site here. 2) We're going to assume that everyone who posts more than kleinbl00 barely posts any more than him. I'm going to be very generous here and we'll say that every user above kb on that list only posts 2.5 posts, on average, a day. I think it'd be more fair and accurate to split the 17 in the middle and say half do 3 and half do 2.5, but you know what? I really don't have the math or stats for that. I do know that kb's coming in at 2.08 though so really, assuming that all 17 above him only each post an average of 2.5 a day is a pretty thin margin. 17 users * 2.5 = 42.5 posts a day, just from these 17. We'll add in kleinbl00's 2 now for a total of 44.5 posts a day. Again, totally disregarding anyone outside of the top 18 posters, we can already very easily see that kb is responsible for less than 5% of content posts on any given day. So kb's mutes apply to less than 5% of all posts on any given day - using averages and extrapolating, of course. I understand some people consider this censorship - but it's certainly not the extreme "new user kill" or "ignore death" that people are making it out to be. I'd like it if we could get off of that ridiculous thought.
My idea is to not show the muted user's comments, and the entire reply tree under that comment. Yeah, I agree that it would be tough to follow a half-invisible discussion. Probably as annoying as listening to a stranger talk loudly on their phone. To the muter, it's the same result as muting works now. As far as you know, nothing happened.
Have a showdead option in the users profile. Off -> don't display any of the tree. On -> display the full tree, but with any comments by the muted user in a font color with less contrast
A heads up that mk is internet free for a while in Northern Michigan.
Works for me. Naming things is a hard problem, and one I personally don't even try to figure out.