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.