A thread popped up in my feed about not being allowed to post in a certain thread because the user was muted. I'm interested in who you've muted - and why. Personally I've used it against spam accounts and I can't imagine weaponizing it.
- It allows people to 'win' arguments by replying to the person and then muting them so they cannot reply back (and I cannot think of a specific time where someone didn't reply to me and then mute). If the person wants to ignore someone, that's completely fair, but the downside should be the person being muted having the ability to make their last point. Fair is fair, and just because someone doesn't want to have any interactions with the other person doesn't mean the other person doesn't have anything useful to say, or that others wouldn't find it useful as well.
As a public disclosure, I've both hushed and muted @biltony@ and MrBo for spamming and shitposting, respectively (sorry to MrBo if he wants to come back) - but that's it. Shouldn't users be less quick to mute than to hush? Maybe it should require two-factor authentication to prevent hasty generalizations on another's character.
Interested parties: mkr, kleinbl00, mreiland, ButterflyEffect, YetAnotherAccount (who ARE/WERE you?), thenewgreen and b_b? I'd like to hear your response.
Edit: adding _refugee_ and minimum_wage to the tag list
Edit 2: أشكر! على رأسي
I muted one dude because he was being a huge asshat. Then I unmuted him because he used that one point as a method to bash the site that he seems to hate but continues to permeate for a week straight. And permeate is the word I use because it's like a fungal gas. I don't get the point as to why people are so upset about muting. You know how it works in the real world? If I don't fucking like a person, if I don't like the things they say to me, I will do everything in my power to not be in the same vicinity as them. That's muting. In what universe in the real world do you hear the phrase "I demand that you have to hear what I have to say to you, even if you don't like it! GIMMIE MUH FREEZE PEACHES." excluding your parents and elementary school teachers. Hubski is about discussion. Sometimes, you aren't welcome to a discussion. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, I AM YOUR HOST, REALITY, HERE TO TELL YOU THAT PEOPLE DON'T LIKE YOU OR WANT TO TALK TO YOU SOMETIMES. Hubski is about moderation. If you're muted from a discussion, start your own. Then we can all splinter off into a million groups and never have to see each other. This animosity isn't directed towards you in particular beezneez, by the way. To put it another way, you know shit's tired when thenewgreen is exhausted with things.
You're arguing about the ignore function, not the mute function. Ignore hides what person X says. Pretty uncontroversial option, and pretty required on any community site. Mute silences people from everyone, whether they're talking to you or not. If you've muted someone, they cannot be heard on anything you post. No one's saying that your ears should be offended by things they don't want to hear. But a few people are saying that you don't have the right to curate their experience so that they don't hear things you don't want them to hear.
So long as Hubski is based around following people, those that are followed MUST be entitled to control who can and cannot contribute to that content. Don't want to be muted? Don't be an asshat. Muted for being an asshat? APOLOGIZE. That's the thing that blows my mind - all the been-here-for-20-minutes Redditors are arguing vociferously for their "right" to piss on someone else's cheerios. Not. One. Of. You has recognized that un-muting is every bit as easy as muting, actually feels better and builds community. I moderate /r/movies. We probably ban a dozen people a day. We probably un-ban a half-dozen people a day. Do you know how good it feels to unban someone? Do you know how good it feels to be un-banned? Probably not. Because you think you have a "right" to urinate on whatever street corner you want.
Whew, that's dense! Let's break that down a little! Well, no. Doesn't follow. I'm curious about your justification for that, though! And you and you alone are the perfect arbiter of who is and isn't an asshat? Naw, let the people contributing to your threads come to that conclusion themselves, dole out points to the unasshats, and put the asshats on ignore. I can tell you for certain that your idea and my idea of what a good commenter is are a bit different - And that's likely to be true of nearly everyone you're currently curating for! I... How... nice for you? I really don't understand why you've brought this up - Good moderating has very little to do with whether doing something feels good or not. You keep the best interests of the community in mind, reasoning and making educated guesses about what the best course of actions to take are. A few years back, I ran a Minecraft server. We probably had a comparable number of daily bans, although fewer unbans and drastically fewer active users. I know what it feels like to ban and unban people - Although I wouldn't qualify either one as a good or a bad feeling. I know less about the other side of the coin - My behavior is usually innocuous enough that bans are rare. On the few occasions it has happened, though, I haven't been inclined to try to change anyone's mind about the situation. My goodness, what tasty words you've put into my mouth! I'm not sure why you keep comparing unrestricted speech to urine, but I'm not sure it reflects well on you. I've run places without restrictions on freedom of speech - Any forum for public discourse I'm in charge of, I generally provide explicit "Free speech enforced here" rules. Biggest examples of that are the minecraft server I mentioned, and the (still quite small) community for the game I'm coding. In both cases, the community has ended up being mature, varied in age, varied in type of people, etc. etc. Heck, the community on the minecraft server turned out so well that it lived past my involvement - Still running with my original pro-free-speech rules, last I checked. Cheers!MUST be entitled to control who can and cannot contribute to that content.
Don't want to be muted? Don't be an asshat. Muted for being an asshat? APOLOGIZE.
all the been-here-for-20-minutes Redditors
You say redditors like it's a bad word. I don't really get that, since you are one yourself.[un-muting] feels better
Do you know how good it feels to unban someone? Do you know how good it feels to be un-banned?
Because you think you have a "right" to urinate on whatever street corner you want.
'cuz Ragan Fox is a professor of media studies at CSULB who happened to be a contestant on Big Brother. This was one of his tenure articles. It didn't used to be. I might have downloaded it once long ago, but I'm not finding it at the moment.
eightbitsamurai _refugee_ LET ME BADGE THIS KID PLEASE PLEASE LET ME BADGE HIMklein really isn't worth your time, from what I've gathered he's a college kid who thinks he's an internet badass.
i dont have enough badges to badge ironically, I'll have to save up and then decide between that and paying for a Sugar Ray concert. Sugar Ray's ironically cool now, right?
I propose BitBadge, where you can earn hundreds in an instant and then lose it all.
Heh you and me both here. Although I'd change " The third is that I won't shut up about my opinions with respect to the mute functionality" to just MY OPINIONS but that's whatever man, I agree 100% here. people complain about me being an asshole, but I don't drop half the bullshit this guy does. The difference is I'm new and I came from reddit, 2 red marks. The third is that I won't shut up about my opinions with respect to the mute functionality and it's effect on the site.
On his posts, and his alone. It's amazing, it's like that's why everyone has their own ability to choose who they mute. Don't like his curation? Don't follow him. Don't like the fact that some people can't comment on his posts? PM them the link and ask their opinions if you're so inclined to hear them. Congratulations, we have reached the point in the discussion where we realize that people are capable of having different opinions. translation: "God, I really don't like your metaphors, and so I'm choosing to believe they reflect on your character" ??? You get muted, you can't comment on a given user's posts. You want to keep up with the free speech? Make your own damn post. Title it "[Article Name] For Those Muted By [Submitter]" if you want, you can have a whole damn party. Upset the discussion is split? Link to it. Why is this so hard. There is no limitation on free speech site-wide here. It is on a user-specific basis.And you and you alone are the perfect arbiter of who is and isn't an asshat?
I can tell you for certain that your idea and my idea of what a good commenter is are a bit different
And that's likely to be true of nearly everyone you're currently curating for
Although I wouldn't qualify either one as a good or a bad feeling.
I'm not sure why you keep comparing unrestricted speech to urine, but I'm not sure it reflects well on you.
Ahhh, there's a point of difference. Ownership! You have a very defined sense of ownership - I suspect it's pretty obvious to you who owns what. I think it's pretty clear to you that the original poster owns their post. But my concept is... much muddier, much harder to pin down. As an example, I couldn't even tell you who owns my house. I have a certain level of interest in it. So does the bank. So do the rest of the people living in it. So do my neighbors, and so does the city as a whole. When I make decisions, I try to balance the wants and needs of all of these groups. But just like I couldn't tell you who owns the house, I couldn't tell you who ought to own a post. Clearly the original poster has some interest in it, since he took the time to post it. But then it flies out into the community, and the community adds content to it, votes on it, etc. By the time all this is done... Who has majority ownership? It's likely that the time spent working on it by the community outweighs the time spent by the original poster. A certain amount of curation is good - Put the posts largely thought good near the top, allow the rest to drop down. But here we're talking about something else. Here, a single person gets to pick and choose what I get to read. I don't want that from anyone. Doesn't matter if I agree or disagree with them, like or hate them as a person, or whatever. I want to hear what people besides that one person have to say. That's why I'm on a site that allows comments! Oh, and the PM thing is silly - I have no such list, and even if I did, it doesn't allow others to chime in after the muted people make their points, or allow upvoting, or any of the nice hubski features which helped bring me here. Hey, more words in my mouth! They're tasty, but I'm a bit of a picky eater - Mind if we leave 'em on the plate in the future, so I can just pick out the ones I agree with? Klein's urine metaphor didn't make a huge amount of sense to me. We're talking about something whose value is widely disagreed on by many people, but urine is almost universally reviled. Maybe graffiti art would have been a more apt metaphor. So you're right in that I didn't much like his metaphor : ) But when I say I'm not sure if it reflects well, I really do mean that - I can see a multitude of reasons for choosing urine for free speech. Some are innocuous, but most are less so. For example, maybe he just sucks at choosing metaphors - That's pretty innocuous. Or maybe he could revile the concept of speech uncurated by himself. That'd be a pretty unpleasant opinion. Perhaps he thinks that what he reviles is universally reviled - That at least shows a certain inability to think outside the box. Or, a small step better than that, perhaps he thinks what he finds disgusting matches up exactly with some other subset of humans, who will follow him. But the truth is likely to be more muddled, a confusing morass containing bits of each of those, and many more I couldn't think of. So yeah, I'm not sure! Well, ok, but since I have a problem with all mutings, I guess I'd have to copy and link every piece of content that comes along. That seems like a lot of repetitive work - Maybe we should set up a bot for that. Oh, but a bot seems silly, when we have a responsive site dev. Maybe we could have him stick the muted comments on a separate page, and link them from the main page. Oh, but that still doesn't allow muted comments to be made easily in response to other people's comments. Maybe we should just hide muted comments by default, and allow each user to switch them on and off at will. Oh, shucks, we've just arrived at wasoxygen's suggestion! Cheers!On his posts, and his alone.
Don't like his curation? Don't follow him. Don't like the fact that some people can't comment on his posts?
translation: "God, I really don't like your metaphors, and so I'm choosing to believe they reflect on your character" ???
Make your own damn post.
No no I talked about that though Self-moderation includes not wanting people to be in a discussion that you started. This isn't Reddit. Say I invite all my friends to talk about videogames or whatever the hell. I don't invite the dude who only has shit-talking and flaming to add to that discussion. If I don't want him there, I don't want him there, simple as that. Edit: Look, I'm not saying use mute with abandon. And yes, it could be abused to some degree. But I'd like to think that this community, regardless of what some think about it, is better than that. But I definitely don't think it should go away.Mute silences people from everyone, whether they're talking to you or not. If you've muted someone, they cannot be heard on anything you post.
If you're muted from a discussion, start your own. Then we can all splinter off into a million groups and never have to see each other.
Mmhmm...thought about it, no thanks. I mean, it's not like I'm muting anyone right now. I'd only ever use it if someone derailed discussions constantly, or discussed things like an asshole, as you do. Luckily you don't post in my threads, so I don't need to. But I wouldn't hesitate to drop the banhammer if needed. And that's just what it is. A banhammer. On Hubski, everyone is their own mod. And if I want to ban you, I will. And that's all I gots ta say on tha Matta. Damn, Mmkay is sittin in a hammock with coconut milk in his hand and a book on C in the other going "Holy shit I picked a good time to go on vacation."
Lol, yes, you are. The hell is with the semi ebonics, what are you trying to communicate to me, whiney mreilandbby. And I don't feel like addressing your other "point" because you lost a chance for good discourse a while ago, when you showed you couldn't do it, and don't deserve it. This, by the way, is what happens when you don't mute someone. Are you enjoying it yet? Because to be honest, I am. I may actually reevaluate my feelings on muting!
In case you were wondering when I decided to mute you.
I don't usually do this gif thing that you do, but here I am trying. http://gph.is/XLBEv5 http://gph.is/XKodLS
HOW DO I EMBED THEM
Do you think this doesn't happen on basically every website used by more than the people who created it, ever? Question dos, Do you not think that if the admins began locking down the mute function to be used only how they "think" it should be used would not be a case of the admins being control freaks themselves? Would you not find it blatant?I wonder if it bothers the admins to see people blatantly being control freaks using a feature they never planned on being used in such a manner.
people blatantly being control freaks
If peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, do you think angels pass gas? The admins are in control of what features people get to use, the question was, do you think they're happy seeing people use the feature as a weapon when that was never the intent?Do you not think that if the admins began locking down the mute function to be used only how they "think" it should be used would not be a case of the admins being control freaks themselves? Would you not find it blatant?
I agree with that, but what if there is personal friction between 2 members of a group? I think it would be good if the mutes were publicly displayed somehow, so if there was someone who the rest of the friend circle wanted to be in the dicussion they could question the muter about it, and if it was some retarded pole-sucking asshat(Couldn't think of a good word so I got one from http://pastebin.com/QEvjy8bz) and everyone was happy for the pole-sucker to be discluded, s/he would be. Just a possible problem/solution, not saying 'X SHOULD BE LIKE Y DAMNIT" only that it's something to consider. :)If you're muted from a discussion, start your own. Then we can all splinter off into a million groups and never have to see each other.
I demand this as meta commentary at some point during HUBSKI. Also, not sure if it's been clear or not today but I'm in favor of keeping the mute feature.WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, I AM YOUR HOST, REALITY, HERE TO TELL YOU THAT PEOPLE DON'T LIKE YOU OR WANT TO TALK TO YOU SOMETIMES
Which is pretty much why I made a separate post when I was muted mid-discussion. I'm not against the mute function at all, just create another post if you find it disheartening or something.Hubski is about moderation. If you're muted from a discussion, start your own. Then we can all splinter off into a million groups and never have to see each other.
So many wrong ideas about muting around here. Know who you should mute? The people that are going to drag you into pointless fights about nothing. Know who I have muted? The people who have demonstrated desire to drag me into pointless fights about nothing. Let's be clear: I have a 9th dan black belt in Internet Dickishness. I stopped counting the number of people I caused to straight-up delete their Reddit accounts. You can win fights so decisively that the other party QQs in shame. I even got good at the "thermonuclear downvote" - here's what a comment chain that delivers -400 Internet Points looks like. But let's be clear: these sorts of things are bad for the community. I'm a big fan of muting. The reason is simple. It keeps me from engaging in unrestricted warfare in a demilitarized zone. There are arguments worth winning and there are arguments worth ignoring and there are people who are primarily interested in talking to you so they can get a rise out of you. And while the zen monk approach is "wax on, wax off" I am not a zen monk. "Mute" allows me to leave the sword in the scabbard. And that is to everyone's advantage.
It might make sense that you have nearly 1K followers on this site. As for myself I've less than fifty. In my case I think I've kept to the shadows enough to not encourage active flaming. And that's definitely one thing I like about hubski: Free expression without notoriety. Understood! and myself and most of the community respects you for it.There are arguments worth winning and there are arguments worth ignoring and there are people who are primarily interested in talking to you so they can get a rise out of you. And while the zen monk approach is "wax on, wax off" I am not a zen monk.
So - you have 50 followers. You've muted two people. Let's invent a new thing - we'll call it "mute ratio." In your case, that'd be 25:1. I have 950 followers. If I muted the equivalent number of people as you, I'd have 38 people muted. As it turns out, I have 33. yet I shall always be the dick in this discussion.
teamramonycajal, to keep the flames from spreading to my posts, and one particularly boring troll I never spoke to, because I wanted to keep it that way. minimum_wage and kleinbl00 have chased off most everyone who annoyed me enough to consider muting before I got around to muting them.
Team is the one person (first who comes to mind?) that I see absolute reason and justification for muting. I never engaged with him/her, and so I still haven't had the chance to use mute for it's intended purposes. That situation / incident / drama is the perfect example of what mute should be used for, IMO.
As someone who found this site earlier today, and read through the mentioned post's comments and this one, I wonder... Isn't this a bit childish? Openly name shaming and pretty much baiting users into fights. (Mostly this thread) I understand starting a discussion around a feature you (and most other community members) consider to be broken/bad, although this thread in particular is nothing but baiting. Wouldn't we be better off without this attitude?
First, welcome here! I agree with you that this thread is taken too personally by some people which leads to baiting. It's understandable: being muted can feel like a personal attack, even though it is nothing more than one person making it slightly harder to reach him/her. Hubski is about self-moderating, so if you think a person here is someone you wouldn't want to talk to or want to see less of, you can hush, filter or mute them by going to their profile. If you have any questions about how the site works, feel free to ask! Here are all the posts in my feed that are shared more than 20 times. I suggest you read those (and/or change the number in the url to a higher one) to find the posts that better represent what hubski is about than this one. Also, is there any particular reason you have 18 W's in your name?
It's a problem that many people are characterizing the issues myself and others have with the mute feature in this way. I defend anyone's right to prevent me from communicating with them. The issue is the way muting works currently, it also prevents me from being involved in a discussion with others when they mute me. Fix that single aspect, and most of my issues with this site magically disappear.
I'm sure if you look through my post history, mostly everything in (I think its this thread) I'm going to get muted/unfollowed a lot. You picked a helluva post to jump on. I think I'll go ahead and say it - Welcome to Hubski. (Funny I have no reason to welcome you since I've been here for ~30 days)
The problem is that this attitude is the normal response to the problem that needs to be fixed. There isn't really a way that this conversation is going to happen without first demonstrating the problem as many people in this thread are. It's messy, but it's what has to happen. This is a pretty big problem, and hopefully the fact that it's all over the place shows how badly it needs to be adjusted.
How does providing a list of people who have muted a post creator make it clear why someone was muted? I don't see that at all here. Yeah, if someone in the community tried to tell me they didn't approve with my use of the mute function, I would tell them "Too bad." I don't understand why this is a community issue. The community absolutely does not have line of sight into every interaction with every user. It is therefore impossible for the community to actually know who is "muting unnecessarily" without first seeking an explanation for the person who has muted the other person. We wouldn't just be able to pick up on that with background knowledge. In addition, the community has no line of sight into private communications that may cause a person to be muted - there's IRC and PMing, both of which could become sites of conflict that other users wouldn't witness but may cause a given user to think "I don't want to talk to this person any more." Asking a muter to explain why they have muted someone is pure drama fodder. I am against drama on Hubski. Why is it drama fodder? Well, especially if negative interactions have happened in private conversations, you're now giving the muted person the chance to lie or throw their own accusations into the mix. I'm thinking specifically about things like personal harassment. This would become a thread of heated emotions and back-and-forth. What good would that do hubski? Big deal, you can be a minority and have racist viewpoints. "I have black friends, I'm not racist." Neither of these statements means anything in reference to whether a person is racist. You can be a woman and sexist, that's a generally easy concept to follow, so I think it should be simple to extrapolate and realize that skin tone doesn't automatically grant you a "Not racist" card.it makes it clear why they were muted
it also allows the community to call to task those who are muting unnecessarily
those who are muting unnecessarily
(for the record, I'm also a minority who identified myself as such in the post).
You don't have much context, so I'll fill you in. 8bit was lamenting how terrible it is to be in an engineering school as a black man, and I responded that he needs to be careful about his frame of mind. It's all too easy to start accepting failure because you push the responsibility of success outside of yourself (they're just racist, nothing I could do...). I got muted for it, and then told he was successful because he's able to show up to class and that most of his fellow black males are in prison (which is not having a very high expectation of yourself). It was advice from one older minority to a younger, and yes, I got called racist for it. I've been called a nigger in my lifetime, I've had the experience of people following me around in the local store to make sure I don't steal anything. I too have had to deal with the police, and I was once fired for my perceived religious beliefs. Shit happens, but blaming it on racism is a mistake. Never allow the responsibility for your own success to be anywhere but outside of yourself. Everyone has challenges in life, but if experience has taught us anything, it's that a black man can become the president of the United States if he's willing to work at it. How many other races can say the same? edit: I encourage to read up on Bill Cosby and some of the controversies he's stirred up. He's a fairly successful black man whom I happen to agree with. As for your other points, the term is called 'self-policing'. Your trepidations about PM's are easily remedied by simply allowing person to mute on the PM itself, in which case the mutee still gets the communication. It certainly gives more context than randomly being muted does.How does providing a list of people who have muted a post creator make it clear why someone was muted? I don't see that at all here.
That's part of the reason why I'm arguing that the mute functionality as is actively hurts actual discourse on this site. There are always going to be those who get offended when you challenge them in that manner. Because they have the power to force you out of the conversation, you cannot challenge ideas on this site unless the person you're challenging simply has a bit of fairness to them.
As a clarification, I did not intend to 'bitch' about it, rather bring up the topic as it was relevant to a recent thread. The reason why is that I think that extracting and recapitulating discourse on a resemblance of a subject is good for the community as a whole. I agree. But it is best not misused. And, damn, is it easy to misuse it?Mute is a VAST improvement over not having it.
Is it the site's job to decide whether someone is misusing mute or not? Is it the site's job to say "Hey, you shouldn't mute that person?" Considering this site is all about the individual user experience and tailoring it to one's own preferences, I don't think it is really in line with Hubski to say "Yes here's a function, but oh by the way only use it in certain proscribed circumstances." In addition, like Redditquette on Reddit, I don't think "gentle recommendations" will be followed by the masses assuming this site becomes larger. Hell even now - you could tell me all you want about how I should use mute, but I'm going to use it the way I want to.
The way I understand it, and since I'm more of a lurker/new member perhaps someone else can correct me if I'm wrong, but every user is like an individual subreddit and being muted by a user is like being banned by a subreddit. Some users here are more prolific contributors than others, and while someone probably won't be bothered by a ban from /r/pyongyang or /r/shitredditsays, being banned from somewhere like /r/news or /r/politics is more frustrating, because it blocks you from contributing to a significant portion of the discussion. There is a slight difference, though, because Kleinbloo or 8bitsamurai have no monopoly on any particular topic or issue. If they make a post which you're blocked from contributing to, you can repost their link or make a separate post to air your grievances. There is no global rule against reposting, or off-topic posting here, atleast that I'm aware of. I can see this becoming a bigger issue as the hubski power-users develop and should they choose to mute groups of people on an ideological basis, the discussion can simply fracture into multiple posts. How effective will this ultimately become for those seeking to manipulate social media discussions, or what affect will it have on those who seek opposing viewpoints in discussions? I'm not sure to be honest. While the absolute and arbitrary usage of mute may be similar to the absolute and arbitrary usage of subreddit bans, the difference here is you can't get muted or banned from "news" or "movies" or some other vague, general popular topic, just an individual's post. If you're muted for being an asshole, whatever splinter discussions you make won't gain any traction, but if you're muted for making a good contribution that the person simply doesn't like or want to see, you're much more likely to gain attention and followers by making a discussion fork. Perhaps that could be an improvement to the mute system. As someone on the outside looking in, I like to see all the viewpoints. If mute is being used to hide opposing ideas, from the muting user's point of view, that's fine and is their right, but perhaps an automated way of informing readers that a related discussion is occurring elsewhere on hubski would be nice. Like I said, I'm a new member/lurker (though not lurking this morning) so if I'm off-base or misinformed, correct me please! Or you could ignore me too, haha!
The core of the issue is really one of community. Does hubski want to be a community or a thousand small islands with monarchs? The thousand small islands approach just isn't conducive to great discussion, it's conducive to back scratching discussion. Which is fine if that's what you crave, I suppose.
But I'm not sure it is that simple. On one hand you want to empower users to curate their feed, have control over their posts, and shape the hubski community in the way they see fit, but on the other hand, this is a public site and I come here expecting to see public discussion on topics, not one which is arbitrarily shaped by the submitter's ideological basis. I still think that finding ways to marginalize trolls and other detractors from productive conversation is an important goal of mute. I'm not sure that a fractured discussion is automatically a bad solution, I think the bigger issue is one of "How easy is it to manipulate the fractured discussion?" I mean, if it is as easy as assembling a cabal of popular hubskites to mute users who express a particular viewpoint, this seems bad to me, but I don't see what stops the muted group from simply making posts of their own and resubmitting stories themselves. This can be frustrating if you're looking for opposing or controversial viewpoints, while on the other hand, it can be beneficial if the marginalized group are simply disruptive assholes. I think it is a balance that ought to be struck.
I'm going to point this out because I've seen a lot of people have this confusion. Myself personally, and I believe most of the ones who agree with my stance on this issue, don't have a problem with the mute functionality as a whole. The idea of someone 'globally ignoring' me such that nothing I ever produce will be witnessed by that person doesn't bother me. However, when that person is able to completely lock you out of a conversation such that you're forced to 'create your own small island' just to get your opinion heard, there's a problem. Not just because it's inherently unfair, but because that's where the discussion is happening, and forcing someone to create their own small island just ensures that their viewpoint isn't seen or heard by a lot of people all because a single person didn't want it to be seen or heard. There's this attitude that because the people participating are "person X's followers", person X should be able to allow/disallow commentary. Why? According to what Hubski likes to parrot about themselves, you follow someone to see the content they produce, not the moderations they produce. If someone comments on that content, and person Y doesn't want to see the comment, they can themselves moderate it, why do we need, or expect, person X to moderate person Y's experience? This is a separate issue from discouraging trolls and the like. You do not need this feature in order to be able to discourage certain people. Hell, I'd be ok with a sort order that placed the muted person's responses lower in the thread for everyone just as long as anyone who was willing to read through the entire thing would also see the responses of the person muted. It's really about taking your ball and going home because someone offended you.
Here's the hilarious thing: ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS APOLOGIZE. Literally. If you can work out your problems with whoever muted you, you're likely to be unmuted. And that's the thing that you - and everyone aligned with you - is missing. Hubski's method incentivizes civility. Try it. Say, "hey eightbitsamurai, I just realized I've been a horrendous dick to you. I feel bad. Can we work this out so that you un-mute me? 'cuz I feel like I have some intelligent things to say on your posts." I'll bet you get better results than the last ten thousand words you've typed.However, when that person is able to completely lock you out of a conversation such that you're forced to 'create your own small island' just to get your opinion heard, there's a problem.
And discourages discourse. That's the point being made. You cannot challenge someone like 8bit on his approach to the race issue because you get muted, and your solution is to apologize for it. That this is the approach necessary in order to "survive" on this site is a part of the problem. There's a difference between respect and civility. 8bit thought it was cute when he attacking me, but apparently I'm the one that should apologize because I pointed out his hypocrisy. no thank you.Hubski's method incentivizes civility.
I appreciate the sentiment Klein, but I think I'm done, beyond apologies at this point. It's just funny to me because Hubski is probably the most vulnerable I've ever let myself get in an internet community, and now in retrospect it feels like I shouldn't have done that. At this point I'm just gonna take a little Hubski break, remind myself that in the end it's just a website. Hubskina's on its weekend hiatus anyways, and I've got the latest chapter all done, soooo, yeah, haha.
This was the entirety of my point on the mute issue. Hubski is entirely a safe space where we are actually ourselves and build real life relationships. People threatening that with any actions, but especially hate speech, do not have the right to voice their opinions.
I was muted by someone for having a different opinion. It was a top level comment on a post like this one, in which I disagreed. Several people replied to me asking questions about my viewpoint, but I couldn't answer them because I'd been muted. It's absolutely insane. It was specifically used to prevent discussion and to prevent me from responding to others, it goes against the entire concept of "thoughtful discussion."
Exactly, and people responding that they don't use mute in that manner doesn't really mean anything, because there are some that do. reddit went through the same growing pains, except it involved when/where/how/why to up/downvote. it goes against the entire concept of "thoughtful discussion."
You can reply to people even if you're muted by OP by either replying in your inbox, or in a comment permalink where the muter isn't the root comment. There's a way to do it, I reply in kb's threads all the time. And yeah it was me, quit whining. It should be obvious I've muted you cause my posts will all say "muted here". You may think all your opinions are interesting and warrant discussion but I don't have to agree or put up with them.
No, you can't reply in the inbox. It will say, "You are muted here." If you don't like my opinions, don't listen to them. That doesn't give you the right to stop me from responding to others who asked questions. ---- First person who can describe to me how minimum's actions don't curtail "thoughtful discussion" gets ten points.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it was minimum_wage who muted me, but I have no way of knowing who it actually was (that I know of). There was no content in my post that warranted a muting. I disagreed, and I was punished for having a different opinion.
I only use the mute button if a user is clearly belligerent and/or offensively uninformed. Otherwise I usually just ignore people if they annoy or offend me, which happens rarely.
I want to make a statement to pretty much everyone in this thread. First off, mreiland, there were a group of us that had a real case for getting rid of muting that wasn't based on content. Now, it's completely muddled because you are arguing and provoking people about it. Everyone for muting: you are generally using ad hominem attacks against mreiland as your basis for supporting muting. I can understand why, he's not really productively discussing this subject. The only other argument I hear is that you are using it properly, so it is a valid feature. I'll address this issue at the end of this post. Everyone against muting: it's over. Muting is going to remain. We lost. I will make my final case against muting here, and I am completely dropping it from this point onward. I refuse to respond to any comments made on this particular comment as well. I am firmly at the belief that whatever we say is useless, it will not change, and muting is going to remain, but I want to sum up my final point because I believe that I have the right to speak my mind. I personally live by a philosophy of you can do whatever you want as long as you do not adversely impact me, and I should be able to do whatever I want as long as I do not adversely impact you. When someone posts crap onto a post of mine on hubski, this can be considered an adverse impact on me directly. So, my action is to 'ignore' you, and you are no longer a problem to me. When someone posts crap onto a post of yours on hubski and you decide to mute them, you are impacting me, the third party observer, from hearing what he has to say. Yes, you are impacting the user you are directly trying to impact, but you are also impacting me. When you make a post on hubski, it is a public post. People keep comparing posts and muting and "not inviting" people to the party, but honestly, everyone is invited. I don't even have to be logged in to see the discussion, and anyone can sign up to join your discussion whether you like it or not. This is not a private gathering of people, we are not in your house, we are on a public website. If you want a private place to talk, then really that is not the design of hubski, I'm sorry. It may have seemed like a private respite for yourself, but due to the design it is not and never was. It was a public park that nobody knew about except a close group of friends. Now, a bunch of douchebag kids have shown up and won't go away. The ignore and filter features do make them go away, though. They literally vanish from the park as far as far you are concerned. So why go and say that I, someone who may actually want to talk to those kids AND you about the same subject cannot speak to those kids on this topic? I think people are rejecting social networking to an extreme here. I reject social networking because I find the concept to be dumb in relation to the internet. That doesn't mean that social networks cease to exist just because I no longer have a Facebook account. Social networking, though, is a real thing whether or not you like it or not. It's a way of describing human interaction conceptually. If we use the solution of "go to another post to talk about that", we will fragment discussion and divide the community. By separating out content into user based discussions, we essentially form the things I hate most. Groups. Groups create hatred and conflict, not resolve them. Think about it, we create nations, what do we get? War. We create political parties, what do we get? Arguments and baseless attacks. We create corporations and what do we get? Patent fights. We create sports teams: arguments and fighting..... it just goes on. So back to why you, the responsible mute user, want to keep your mute feature. This is probably very related to the second amendment and gun rights, for which I am in favor of. You have a gun (mute), and you use it responsibly, so why blame the gun when the problem is with the serial killers? A responsible gun owner does not fire his weapon at people unless they are actively threatening their life. What is life in regards to this site? Your account and your ability to post. This is something that fundamentally is impossible for another person to remove from you on this site. It's just not possible. So let's go back to the park. For the sake of proper analogy, it's actually a cluster of parks, each one about a specific topic (a post). The douchebag kids are there, do you ban them from one of the parks? Do you have the right to? No, it is a public park. But in this futuristic society, you have a tool even better than banning them from a park, you can make them cease to exist in your reality (ignore and filter). I have made comments trying to solve this issue, but nobody really seems to care, so I think I'm just done trying to make peace. I gave peace a chance, though, I'll say that. It just seems like everyone here wants to fight even though they are the champions of a peaceful community of times past. The problem with becoming the champion of anything is that you essentially gain power in your own mind. This power then corrupts you into thinking that all your new ideas and wants are for that noble cause that you once fought for, even if those new ideas are directly opposed to it. I guess why I'm fighting this is that I've been jumping from site to site for decades now because the communities keep changing. I'm sick of it. Hubski has the potential to be the final resting ground for all discourse if done properly, but if things aren't going to be done properly even here, I think I'm done with discourse on the internet as a whole. The fact that we have such a great starting point for something that can be greater than all of us is intriguing to me, and this is my last attempt to make this happen. Maybe you guys just see this as a community, but I see something in the design that maybe you don't. This will not be your garden of eden forever, so take precautions to preserve it without compromising your morals. My final point is, the mere existence and attitudes towards this feature make me, the new user, feel unwelcome here. If that is what is supposed to happen, then I will go. You are trying to keep trolls and people like mreiland out, but I can assure you he will remain as will anyone else you choose to mute. I am the one considering leaving, not him. You guys have too rigid a community here and it makes me uncomfortable how much you don't want new users. The trolls will keep coming, but you are going to repel people like me. I guess that's probably a goal for most of you, so whatever. I will say that my reasoning has nothing to do with mreiland but it has to do with you guys, the established users. Is this post even on topic anymore? I doubt it. I don't really care. It's the middle of the night (morning I mean, shit...). What was my point? I forgot. Whatever. I don't think any of this rant makes any sense I apologize. I haven't slept very well recently and I'm running on fumes. Oh right, good riddance. I forgot. The end of my discussion on the topic.
I'm not muddling anything, there has been a lot of talk about how the mute functonality isn't actually being abused, and I've given several concrete examples of it. If the admins don't consider that abuse, then the site as a whole will never be above being a good old boys club, the mute feature just is not acceptable unless you're an old hand who has more to gain than to lose with it. Most of your reaction reads pretty closely to mine honestly. This could be a site for a good community, but it was designed from the get-go to protect the old hands in a way that reddit didn't do, and I do react fairly negatively to that. I have a very strong sense of fairness, and quite frankly it offends me to see that fairness so blatantly disregarded. I'm not really a part of this site, and haven't been since first couple of days. I come back every few days to a week to see if anything crops up that I may be interested in, but this is not a site for me. I'm not appreciated here, nor is my personality one that will ever fit in with the culture here. I'm just too outspoken and blunt for that to ever be the case. It happens, it isn't good, it isn't bad, it just is. Sometimes there are places you just should not be. That strong sense of fairness means no one who ever attacks me will never have to worry that I'll remove their ability to involve themselves in the discussion because I find that to be far more egregious than the attacks themselves. Just because someone thinks I'm an asshole doesn't give me the right to prevent them from speaking their minds, yes, even when they gloat about dropping the 'banhammer' on me (8bit) or talk about how they're wielding the mute feature specifically to get rid of me because they have a black belt in internet badassery or some such (klein). I believe both of these posters are college age kids, so I can forgive them the foolishness. But not the muting itself, that needs to go. Because you're right, it does make a lot of new users feel unwelcome (I became an outspoken critic because of this issue). It was specifically designed to. As I said in my other post, hubski was borne out of the frustration the 'old timers' had on reddit when they started fighting the new users and lost because the new users out numbered them (and reddit is a level playing field). What we got was hubski, where the old users wield more power than the new users, meaning they have a better chance of winning that fight. Most of the content on this site is on reddit and/or HN already anyway. There's a lot of talk about Hubski not being reddit, but it doesn't seem to want to differentiate too heavily from the content being shown on reddit. The good thing that has come out of my experience with Hubski is that it's solidified what I like about Reddit and what I want out of a social aggregation site in general. It's caused me to really consider implementing my own because there are things that Reddit needs to fix as well (the power wielded by subreddit mods in particular), but a site for actual discourse Hubski is not, nor will it ever be while that Mute feature exists.
Unambiguous spammers, and no one else, ever. Assuming I stick around, I will consistently push for the elimination of mute as a feature. This website is based around open, intelligent discourse - Silencing speech you dislike is exactly the opposite of that. Cheers!
Agreed, although I think the idea of "hide this person" is an ok one, the preventing of that person from replying on any posts is something I disagree with. What is important is less often the person trying to mute, they will ignore it anyway, but the passerby who see the thread.
No one that would ever likely comment ever...let along on my posts. I see the use cases for mute. But I personally don't think I should control who can and cannot comment on my posts so I don't use it. Thus far the mute feature has not been abused even though it is a feature that may be prone to abuse. It's probably time to take another look since people are not using it for its intended purpose. We all knew there would come a time. What I think I may want for mute moving forward: muter users are pushed to the bottom of the comments globally, a slightly lighter shade of gray text, with a note muted here and the OP or anyone that they respond to on that thread doesn’t get a notification in their email or their hubwheel? Last part I'm still unsure about. For sure the person who muted them shouldn't get a notif but other's probably should.
Exactly this. The muting itself isn't an issue, it's this aspect of the muting that's the issue. Just implement mute so that the person in question is no longer a part of the persons world within hubski. If the mutee replies, the muter just doesn't see it, and doesn't see any conversation below that threshold. That would uphold Hubski's idea of 'curating your own experience' without having it negatively impact other users. If someone says something that you consider controversial, but others are interested in the conversation, it's completely unfair for the muter to be able to end that entire conversation for which they've explicitly stated they don't want to be involved in by muting in the first place. If they don't want to be involved in it, fine. But don't let them stop the discussion. If you really want to make it social, place a tag-line on the comment. person X muted person Y here. This tells other people that someone found it a mutable offense, and if others join in, let it turn into a list of people who muted said person based upon that particular comment. Suddenly it becomes a social phenomenon again, and not a systemic enforcement of someone's level of offense. Personally I don't like the idea too much, Hubski is one big popularity contest, and getting muted by someone who is popular is going to cause others to mute, but it also has the chance of allowing people to call others to task for abusing mute too much. It's transparent.I see the use cases for mute. But I personally don't think I should control who can and cannot comment on my posts so I don't use it.
Is there really a way to codify that in JS? Edit: novice web coderWhat I think I may want for mute moving forward: muter users are pushed to the bottom of the comments globally, a slightly lighter shade of gray text, with a note muted here and the OP or anyone that they respond to on that thread doesn’t get a notification in their email or their hubwheel? Last part I'm still unsure about. For sure the person who muted them shouldn't get a notif (cf. notive) but other's probably should.
You mean codify the sorting in JS? It really depends on how it's done, I haven't really paid attention to know if the entirety of a thread is always loaded, or if it's done piecemeal like reddit. If it's all loaded, then js is enough as long as the server tags things properly for the JS to identify it as muted/not-muted, etc.
I muted mreiland, but he was still able to reply to me. I didn't really mind, it might be fair to allow one last rebuttal/response. Actually, I've unmuted him now, and will be striving to be less hot-headed in the future. There was one guy, I think he was a 15 year old kid, but he was quite vocally pro-NSA. It sounded like trolling, but I don't think it was. Ended up that I never got around to muting him because he realized no one appreciated his contributions and straight up left the site. So... no one's muted for me. The only person I even have filtered is ahametals, but that hardly counts.
ahametals is probably one of the most intriguing accounts on Hubski. I can't figure out their end goal or purpose and so I've left them unfiltered to stimulate an occasional slice of curiosity. I swear their content has become more targeted for the Hubski audience over time. Why anyone would think that a knowledgable / internet-savvy community of this size would be worth tailoring content for...well that's part of the intrigue.
True. Wow, I'd love for he/she/them/it to come into this thread and reply to me, even angrily. Color me intrigued as well. One thing that may play into their strategy is that there is definitely some wealth here on Hubski. On average, we're probably better off monetarily than 99% of internet communities. Not me or you, necessarily, but in general. Regardless, the target audience is just so small.Why anyone would think that a knowledgable / internet-savvy community of this size would be worth tailoring content for...well that's part of the intrigue.
I called him out once for being spam and he was sad about it. I don't think he would reply angrily to someone, I was very blatant about identifying him as a spam account. He essentially asked me why I thought he was spam and that he tried to post things he thought we would like.
When corporations make Hubski accounts... well, it's just funny.
It was you... My apologies for that, you are by all means entitled to contribute to this community. Just don't expect anyone to agree about the NSA business. Sorry man!
I have zero users muted. I am vocally against it, and I do not believe it is a good thing to use a feature you do not believe should exist. Hypocritical. As for who am I? I would prefer not to say. Suffice to say I have accounts on Reddit (although I've basically given up with Reddit), Slashdot (yes, still), Hacker News, the XKCD forums, the Bay12 forums, KSP forums... And all are different usernames. Hence, "Yet Another Account".
I like reddit. I don't much like proggit as it tends to be snot-nosed kids who think reading a blog post here or there gives them some expertise, but if you can deal with the stupidity, you can still get some valuable information/insight/discussions out of proggit. To me reddit is amazing for the sheer breadth of content you can experience. I can laugh at a stupid cat gif, involve myself in a deep discussion about type theory and why monads in haskell are amazing/suck/are-kinda-ok/what have you. I'm also on HN, never could really get into slashdot (not sure why, something about the way the site looks and works turned me off of it).
Each persons metric for what does and doesn't constitute "muting" someone will be different. For me, it's for spammers, people that have been overtly offensive (i.e. racist, sexist etc) that I don't want in my posts. For the record, I have 29 users muted and I guarantee you've never heard of them nor would they even know they're muted. I made some points in this post today that you can read. There were some suggestions from people in that thread as to how to better implement a mute function. I'm tired and am clocking out.I've both hushed and muted @biltony@ and MrBo for spamming and shitposting, respectively (sorry to MrBo if he wants to come back) - but that's it.
-One mans shit-post is another mans treasure. Thing is, what is offensive to me may be totally fine to you. If I mute someone, they can no longer comment on my posts. It's simple, and guess what... it works. People are upset because it works. I think there is something to be said for someone not being able to mute someone mid-conversation or without someone getting the chance to make a last comment, but once you are muted, you should no longer be able to comment on my posts. Period.
I pride myself to be in a community of largely left libertarian relativists :) But hey, it's been kind of worrying me lately that my own voice wasn't being heard due to my being muted, but I don't think I've ruffled enough feathers for that, TBH. Hence the reason for the tag - get some good sleep on it. Thing is, what is offensive to me may be totally fine to you.
I made some points in this post today that you can read.
I muted someone who said it should be legal to kill babies. Other than that, mostly spam accounts.
I've already used it on several users here who've demonstrated their immaturity allows them to blow up so easily. I've got enough shit to deal with in life as it is, no need to add more morons to the mix. However, I know everyone here likes to lament about how Reddit is epitome of vitriol, but I think the way Hubski is set up is inevitably going to make for an even worse community.
I don't think I have anybody muted, but I think I have been muted (or filtered... something) because I made a shit post just to see what would happen. Very unHubski like I know, but again, I think everybody has done that at least once or twice. No worries I've learned from the mistake and dealt with it. I think muting as a whole, can be useful only if you're dealing with spammers. Muting somebody just because and I quote from the post which I recently deleted "a total authoritarian asshole" because you implied that a person who didn't take a course of action should suffer the same punishment as someone who follows through on a course of action. Anyway apparently if you think that somebody who makes a tasteless joke about terrorism, should suffer the same consequences as a terrorist, you're worth muting. God forbid I say something that pisses people off, eh I think it's a fact of my life. Anyway I think I'll cut down on voicing my opinions since people find them too radical or "authoritarian" for this site. For the record I was also compared to Joseph Stalin from post, from somebody I've never had any interaction with...
EDIT: apparently OP has me hushed. this is interesting.
Nobody, but I've ignored a few tags because they don't interest me at all.
First off, thanks for the shout-out. I appreciate that you care to hear whatever I may have to say. As for who I've muted? I've muted twenty something people that once upon a time came over from (I believe) SRS, and went around trolling everywhere for a couple of days. That's it though. I don't mute the spammers, ignoring them works just fine since they don't really comment anyway.