I have my own ideas and opinions on this, but I'd like to hear yours.
On the other hand, I get the concern of regulating trolls and spammers. Unfortunately, I think humans being humans, they will not use a ban option for those purposes, and will ban people they merely disagree with, or whose tone they do not like. It's like the Reddit down vote. It was never supposed to mean 'click if you disagree with the comment above you' but that is EXACTLY what it means in reality. Moderation is a tough nut to crack, but I'd sooner be in favor of posts authors having the ability to demote posters to the bottom than outright ban, but even this is really just a ban of sorts. What about letting the author flag a post making the poster/post appear in another color (or otherwise mark it), with the ability to place a text message in a tool-tip so that if you hover over it users get to see why the author flagged it. This tool tip or text-flag could contain a 'agree/disagree' option, basically inviting users to vote. If enough disagree, nothing much happens, but if enough agree, the post gets demoted to the bottom or even banned or otherwise sanctioned. This way, there are no down votes for Hubski per se, but rather the ability for the author to 'turn on' down votes with an explanation for very specific posts. I've not heard of this before, but it is an interesting idea to me.
- What about letting the author flag a post making the poster/post appear in another color (or otherwise mark it), with the ability to place a text message in a tool-tip so that if you hover over it users get to see why the author flagged it.
- On the other hand, I get the concern of regulating trolls and spammers. Unfortunately, I think humans being humans, they will not use a ban option for those purposes, and will ban people they merely disagree with, or whose tone they do not like. It's like the Reddit down vote. It was never supposed to mean 'click if you disagree with the comment above you' but that is EXACTLY what it means in reality.
Just to be clear, this block would be across all of the user's posts, not just that post alone. That's why I wonder if it would be self-correcting in action. If you block a lot of commenters, you simply might not get much participation on your posts, both because you block them, and because others might stay away. -I know that I would be less inclined to comment when I know the author blocks a lot of users. I think your 'turning on a downvote' idea is interesting, but I'm not sure that it wouldn't be abused any less. Is it better that the author need the community's approval? At any rate, I am on the fence with this. I'd almost like to see it in action just because I don't know if it would work or not. Even so, I don't think we'd see much use of it right now. Thanks for the ideas.
Storytime! There are these two nutty, quasi-sophisticated old ladies who frequent the local cineplex and go theater hopping weekly. They usually go early in the week, Monday or Wednesday (but not Tuesday!) when it's not crowded, starting with the first showing of the day (10:30ish), which, at six bucks, is a bargain (although for them it's probably like five and a quarter). I've seen and heard them so many times, and have talked with them on occasion. They are a hoot and a half. Like most Regal regulars, I will not sit anywhere near them, because they talk and crack up and act a fool during most movies, unless the story engages them, which it hardly ever does, and but not in a manner that's so overly obnoxious and clamorous that it ruins the picture show for everyone else; they always sit as high up and in the far back as possible, and as long as you're not within their viewing vicinity bubble, you'll never even know they're there. Probably. They've been doing this for years, make no effort to hide their theater hopping ambitions, have withstood god knows how many turnovers in theater personnel and management (rumor mill says they got a General Manager ousted a few years back for trying to put an end to their feature film freeloading; a second slightly dissimilar speculation suggests the GM ouster was related to his Gen. managerial decision to replace the flavor of Coke Icee with Cherry Coke Icee even though they already carried both Red and White Cherry flavored/colored Icee, and on some special promotional occasions a third cherry-centric variety, the "for a limited-time only" Black Cherry Icee, and an alleged fourth flavor few filmgoers, if any, have observed in existence, the illusive Green Sour Cherry Icee, which could easily have been the Green Sour Apple Icee misconstrued, and but also -- and this is where it gets ridiculously preposterous—the flavor/color Blue Raspberry Icee that one-half of the biddies contended was actually an unpopular cherry flavor in a blue guise because, really, there is no such thing as a blue raspberry (or blue cherry)—a recurring conspiratorial accusation she lobbed at counter concession and box office staff and Mr. Manager whenever the cineplex featured any of the unknown/undeclared inscrutable berry likely Icee flavors dubbed Berry Blast, Golden Punch and Country Red—and so like if someone really wanted a Cherry Coke Icee why couldn't they just mix half Coke Icee with half White and/or Red Cherry Icee, let the old ladies have their Coke Icee and drink it too, and call it a day), and are well known for their shenanigans around town; they nosh at a local casual Italian dining hotspot every Tuesday (used to be Monday until the establishment started closing on Mondays due to slow business, which, let me tell you, did not go over well with this crowd of two) for lunch and sit at the same table, the one by the column that blocks the freezing breeze of conditioned air, and order iced tea with extra ice and a bowl of fucking lemons, the same Isabella insalata (split—and in the kitchen, don't you dare make them do it themselves—half with almonds, half without) with SOS (sauce on side, or in this case, dressing on side) and a twelve-inch deluxe pizza on stretched ten-inch whole wheat dough, extra crispy (but not too black! — they’re kind of racist) and cut into ten thin slices, and then, post-ingestion, proceed to sit and marinate and gabby gab gab for up to five hours, or until the dinner crew comes in, whichever or whomever comes first, while continuously consuming ungodly amounts of iced tea in total reckless abuse of the free refill policy, lemons and Spelenda until urinary crest is reached and begins to dribble over the tops of their inner levees, just about breaching britches, forcing the reluctant breaking of the seal, and culminating in the cyclical cross-legged antsy scurrying to and fro the ladies' room in turn-taking shifts, because someone has to watch their bulbous handbags (assumedly filled with lemons), before their wee bladders burst forth (and if they do, watch out, urine trouble) all the while fending off their usual waiter's (yrs truly) many attempts to refill their beverages, always with the same joke about how any additional iced tea would make them float away. But yeah, this tandem menace fucking loves me.
Glad I did. I used to be a waiter too and it's a really interesting way to see peoples idiosyncrasies, isn't it? I had a couple that would come in 5 days a week for lunch and order a salmon caesar salad and two waters with lemon. The restaurant had high ceilings with big fans. They would always make us turn off the fans because she was... get this, "allergic to wind". They were very nice people though and one day they invited me and my wife (then girlfriend) out for dinner. We went with them and they turned out to be very friendly. Haven't thought of them in years. Thanks. I used to love waiting tables. Your two ladies sound like a couple of characters, thanks for sharing. Also, I love me some blue raspberry icee. If that flavor doesn't occur naturally in nature... it ought to.
- IMO there are upsides and downsides.
When you started this endeavor, the primary distinguisher between Hubski and the others was that there was no "down vote". Moves like this sort of sneak the "down vote" in through the back door. Right now the most popular posts on Hubski receive between 20-40 comments. If you were the author of one of these posts and you "ignored" a user, then their comments automatically fall to the bottom of the comment chain, right? This may not seem all that significant now, but when Hubski has a larger community of commenters, this will be enough to manage this situation. Perhaps if the "author" of the post ignores you, then your comments fall to the bottom of the comment chain in that post for all users that view this post? I'll think on this more. There's no doubt that their will come a time when trolls will troll Hubski and such a move will seem more necessary. It's good we talk about this now.
Another way of maintaining order is by making ignoring a 2-way street. What I mean is this: If user 1 ignores user 2, then user 2 also stops recieving posts from user 1. This way you sort of take away the users right to read your posts (at least directly) and makes Hubski less functional as a punishment for being ignored. User 2 is then less likely to get into the discussion, because it takes a lot more effort to find the post. I don't know if this is a good idea, since it still has some problems. But it is what people do. They don't start to talk to people they don't want a discussion with in the first place, unless the other person talks to them. Anyway, my two cents.
If we were to enable blocking of specific users from commenting on your posts, I think we would also need to make the list of users that you block public. Also, I think the block would only function on your own posts, and not on replies to your comments on other’s posts. The question IMHO, is whether what is gained from this is worth what is lost. Trolling will be greatly diminished, which would be a boon; however, I wonder if people will avoid users that ban too liberally, which would be an important counter to abusive blocking. I like that the system puts power in the hands of hubskiers, but I wonder to what extent the community would allow it to be abused. Importantly, I don’t think a poster should be able to delete another’s comments. The most they could do is prevent future ones.
One other thought: although you might not see the ignored comment, everyone else does, and therefore it can still disrupt the conversation.
The plan is to have ignored user's comments fall to the bottom. However, the disadvantage of that is that it would only work well for top comments, and less so for replies. Also, since the ignore is just a filter, the trollish comments are still there for most users to deal with. Blocking a commenter has it's own problems, and there is a bit of Wild West to it. But if it came down to it, I'd prefer it over top-down moderation. A user could get power-hungry, but only within his/her own posts.
For a long time, my feeling was simply that open discussion should be held above all things. However, I also hold the philosophy that Hubski should enable self-correcting of bad behavior, based not upon top-down moderation, but upon the community's actions. For example, currently if you don't like a user, you don't follow them. If you don't want to see their posts at all, you ignore them. This allows users to see the kinds of posts that they want to see. I am sure that some users will be over-zealous with banning comments, and some won't. It's possible that over time people will simply choose not to follow over-zealous moderators. However, there may need to be some mechanism to keep people honest, such as making the list of users they ban available.