I have moderated a particular person who has blatantly been using hubski to incite hatred. Multiple users are calling him out on it but he still seems to feel vindicated here no matter how people tell him otherwise. Maybe because people are following him out of, I choose to assume, morbid curiosity?
mk insomniasexx thenewgreen et al fixed a bug that made us see muted folks posts in tag feeds and I'm genuinely thankful for that, but the aforementioned person has now discovered they can reply to my comments on others' posts and I thus now feel significantly less comfortable about commenting. So far this has been merely used for simple mockery, but I am loathe to find out how far it will escalate. And yes, I am aware this post itself will likely escalate it, but I think it's more important to speak up than be intimidated as I trust this isn't supposed to be a site exclusively for the thickest skinned.
I'm not sure whether this has a technological answer. There's obviously a practical limit on how much personalized moderation can be implemented before it weighs the whole site down with the complexity. There's comments on others' posts, comments other people make on muted posts that show up on their user page, there's the posts and comments on the community page, and there's certainly more.
I'm going to keep participating for now; this isn't a him or me ultimatum. His nonsense is so obviously ridiculous and ridiculed though apparently not filtered enough, and so far it is successfully highlighting others on hubski who don't deserve my eyeballs. I'm just documenting how it's making me as a newcomer feel, and wondering what the long term solution is.
If there is one.
I second camarillobrillo. I know that "wait it out" doesn't really give you that satisfying answer but there have been many o' trolls that have come and gone when the satisfaction is gone and half of hubski has muted them. Mute, filter, hush and don't feed the trolls. Hubski strives for intelligent discussion and as dramatic and situations like this seem in the moment, they tend to end earlier rather than later.
There is one user in particular who is now incredibly active on reddit, always yelling about how awful Hubski. He (she?) was muted by 99% of Hubski due to consistently vitriolic and ignorant remarks. (S)he believes that muting will be destroy Hubski. I believe muting (or some form of it—none of us are under the assumption that every feature of Hubski is implemented with perfection) will save it in the end.
I have my personal, non-Hubski related beliefs on muting and think it should go further, but we have debated and discussed it and my views were aligned to those of the greater community. As a female...on the internet...who has been on the receiving end of targeted harassment....I am grateful for any and all tools I have to block out harassers.
But please, let's try not to have another scenario where all are feeds are filled with meta-discussions on moderation.
Here's some past discussions on ignoring (now know as "filtering", FYI) and muting issues that can provide further insight that may help you. Feel free to restart discussions over there as well if applicable.
Also, mk, can you confirm that if I mute someone and they respond to my comment on a post that is not mine, I do not get notified. I believe that should happen at the very least.