I do the same thing, Odder. I flip over to Global, and block probably 60% of the posters that appear there. Since I learned of the use of the #spam tag, I had intended to start tagging those posts, too. Devac makes a good case, and I will be sure to use my power wisely. :-)
hubski - Here's a real-world case where I'm curious about the algebra. Let's take radio_24, who only posts stuff from offiziere.ch, probably because they really liked the bump they got from this: I found offiziere.ch over on /r/credibledefense, back when it was worth following, and really appreciate having their stuff in my feed. radio_24 has one comment but by and large, they mostly post stuff as part of their linking strategy (I think). It's a defense site. They cover satellite photos and geopolitics. By and large, the vast swaths of content within Hubski aren't going to suit them: WORTHY OF NOTE: Nobody has tagged offiziere.ch as spam yet but it'll happen. SO WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FOLLOWING HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION: 1) I follow offiziere.ch. 2) multiple people tag offiziere.ch as spam. 3) I see an offiziere.ch link, that has been tagged as spam, and I share it (without un-tagging it). QUESTION 1) Do people who follow me, but filter spam, see the post? QUESTION 2) Do people who don't follow me, but filter spam, see the post? QUESTION 3) Is there (or should there be) a mechanism such that filtering people who share "spammed" content erase the "spam" label?
I post only stuff from offiziere.ch, because that's my site. On reddit, they demand that I have to post other articles from other sites -- but why should I do that. So I stopped to post my stuff on reddit and moved to Hubski. I don't see why that should be tagged as spam. All articles on offiziere.ch are free, it isn't a commercial site, you don't have to got there ... If Hubski would tag my site as spam, I would stop immediate to post anything here. I don't know if a overenthusiastic tagging of spam really serves the community in sharing their content.
And I appreciate it. And in case you aren't following along on this page, there's a lot of discussion at the moment as to how we, as a bottom-up, leaderless community, handle spam. To be clear - I appreciate your content, and follow it. I'm asking for clarification from the coders on how that content would be shared if someone decided to tag your content as spam. We're all figuring this stuff out; now is a great time to chime in (as you did).
QUESTION 2) Do people who don't follow me, but filter spam, see the post? QUESTION 3) Is there (or should there be) a mechanism such that filtering people who share "spammed" content erase the "spam" label? This is a tough nut. As it stands, filters trump follows. The reasoning is that if you don't want to see something or someone, you really mean it. I don't want a filtered user showing up in my feed due to a tag they use, and I don't want #thebeatles showing up in my feed because someone I follow happens to have poor taste in music (ducks). The real issue here is the community tag. The upside of the community tag is to put posts where they ought to be, whether it is #writebetterdammit or #spam. The downside is that people can disagree on where things ought to be. I've been thinking a bit on this. Perhaps giving #spam special treatment was not the best approach. It pushes the balance towards the notion that we need people tagging things that are bad more than we need people tagging things as good. I am thinking that a different approach to the community tag, and/or a better display of global might produce better results.QUESTION 1) Do people who follow me, but filter spam, see the post?
So I'm not particularly interested in beating you about the head and shoulders on this, but as it's one of the few splendid examples where you're actually exploring the utility of tags, I feel I oughtta make an effort. I think filters should trump follows, but I think that the fact that they're binary always means you end up with boolean bad acting. I think "spam" has to get special treatment because it's the most divisive trivial issue faced by people on the Internet. Some people freak out about one bad message; some people get 400 spam messages a day, buy software to deal with it and move on. Considering I've been pushing a more refined taxonomy for years and you've been resistant, let's try spam as a special case. Let me set my spam "tolerance" and let spam messages get wiped away when more than one person tags them as spam. So for example, if I have my spam tolerance set at 3, it would take 3 people tagging something as spam before I stop seeing it. Likewise, since I have given 3x the strength to spam than anything else, that filter no longer trumps the follow... unless something has been tagged 3 times. Set everybody's spam tolerance at more than 1 - maybe it's 2, maybe it's more - and let's see what happens. That gives you one tag with an affinity fader, like I've been hammering on about for like three years now, without you having to completely reorganize the site hierarchy. What do you think?