thenewgreen et al., I have followed the moderation discussion with interest but haven't spoken up because (1) I didn't have any constructive suggestions and (2) I was muted on the most relevant posts. But eventually I came up with a suggestion.
The "ignore" features seem to give little offense. "Filter" is recognized as useful, and "hush" seems pretty innocuous. Most of the angst has been over muting. I feel that kleinbl00 was on the right track in looking at the feature from multiple perspectives. For every user who mutes, another user is muted, and we should consider what's best for everyone.
In my view, moderation should have three goals:
1) Encourage contributions from those whose input is generally valued, while if possible not letting it annoy those with minority tastes.
2) Discourage contributions from those whose input is generally shunned, sheltering those who don't want to be exposed to such content, without making it hard for new arrivals to find an audience.
3) Strike a balance for those who are charming to some and annoying to others, with a compromise that gives the best value to the community.
The site has been aptly likened to a cocktail party. People are milling around, some clustered in little groups, many participating in multiple dialogs at once. For every conversationalist, there are many more nearly invisible lurkers who don't speak up but enjoy following along.
When someone says things you find annoying, at a real party you have to wait for them to shut up or else leave the conversation. On the site we have the miraculous power of the TV-B-Gone, which we can point at an oaf and shut them up directly.
Right now the tool does not work well, and neither side is happy. The Muter cannot make the oaf shut up everywhere, only in those conversations the Muter happens to have started. If conversation drifts to new topics, the oaf is still locked out — unless the oaf knows about the back doors that allow breaking in to conversations where they are muted. If the Muter joins a conversation somebody else happens to have started, the oaf is free to spout irritating nonsense and there is no recourse but to walk away or endure it.
We need a better remote control. Suppose the Muter can make the oaf's idiotic drivel inaudible, and also fast-forward them so their nonsense takes no time. Anyone else in the conversation who cares to can hear and respond to the oaf. If everyone in the conversation has muted the oaf, no one will see or respond.
Wherever the Muter goes in the party, the oaf's contributions are automatically inaudible and therefore far less irritating. If others respond to the oaf and the conversation looks interesting, the Muter can choose to rewind and replay selected bits of the oaf's dialog, to see what the fuss is about.
Here's how it might look if I mute thenewgreen.
Let's see how well this compromise accomplishes the goals.
1) Valued contributors are free to add content anywhere they like. The rather arbitrary circumstance of who happened to post an article first does not restrict them. Anyone who doesn't want to see these contributions, anywhere on the site, is automatically (but not irrevokably) protected from seeing them.
2) Spammers and pinheads will be able to pollute wherever they like, but in the worst case scenario this is unavoidable, since they have the nuclear option of creating new accounts. The approach above makes it easy to follow correct procedure for dealing with these types. Some widely-shunned users have been extremely vocal in complaining about the current mute behavior.
3) For the middle cases, there is benefit for everyone. The muted user can still express the ideas that many want to see, wherever they like. The Muter suffers the minor inconvenience of knowing that unwanted contributions exist from that user, but this was already the case for conversations started by others and via back doors. The Muter might even enjoy seeing friends deliver staggeringly witty rejoinders to oafen stupidities.
Lurkers far outnumber contributors, and we should look out for the interests of the silent majority. At present the mute feature has no effect when they use it. Users they want to hear from may be blocked by others. And they have to see content from users they don't want to hear from when it appears in conversations they want to read.
There used to be a function to collapse old comments from newly-muted users. I say we make this the entire result of muting, and nothing else.
insomniasexx, b_b, forwardslash, mk
Thanks for the thoughts on this and more importantly for some suggestions on how to improve it.
When mk gets back we will discuss these things.
This is the damage of muting.
Klein and I disagree, and despite my attempts to address the problem in the way he wished, he refused to actually discuss, instead suggesting I don't understand what an apology is. As a result, we muted each other. This is the result, my complete and utter inability to respond to any post on a major discussion. This is why muting must not affect one's ability to communicate with anyone else other than the person doing the muting.
Keep in mind, Klein is a major user, and this will thus remove a decently sized portion of the site from my ability to communicate. Was this likely a place I'd communicate with anyway? Perhaps not, as I did not follow Klein. However, the effects are unequal, as being a small user, Klein will likely never see any content I push anyway, and thus can mute me without fear of losing the ability to discuss openly. Yet another reason why muting must not affect one's ability to communicate with others.
- This is the result, my complete and utter inability to respond to any post on a major discussion. This is why muting must not affect one's ability to communicate with anyone else other than the person doing the muting.
Which is why you're fucked (epically) if someone like him (KB) mutes you. Might as well pack your bags and leave, especially if he takes to muting everybody ~30 days and under "fresh" (which was something he discussed a while back, like with in the last month).
* EDIT: I guess to get places on this site you have to get muted by a few people and piss off a few people. Oh well. (In non-gibberish - I got muted with walls of text as the mute by like four people!)
Additional thought - I really don't give a damn either way.
I like this suggestion. I guess it comes down to what the purpose of mute should be. I think in its current form, it's much more akin to literal shunning, which has a long history of use in social groups as a way to modify member's behavior, and limit the influence of outsiders. I think your suggestion is similar to the Reddit system of auto-hiding downvoted posts, except here muted users would always automatically be "downvoted and hidden" so-to-speak, and only from the point of view of the muting user, which is much more forgiving to the person being shunned. I'm curious to see what the hubski veterans think about this idea.
Thank you for thinking about those of us who choose to stay quiet. It is much appreciated. :) I can't speak for other lurkers, but I at least (do I still count now that I'm writing this?) would greatly appreciate a feature along these lines. I come to this site because I enjoy reading the articles you all post and the conversations that result. I don't come here in hopes of finding long comment chains filled with passive aggressive arguments over nothing. That is why I would not enjoy this:
- The Muter might even enjoy seeing friends deliver staggeringly witty rejoinders to oafen stupidities.
Thank you sir or madam, I tip my hat to you as you retreat into the shadows. I didn't post for over 600 days after creating an account here, and still like to think of myself as a lurker at heart.
I am not the first to mention the idea of hiding comments from muted users, and I have also seen your idea of collapsable comment trees before. There are examples of the structure using JavaScript and DHTML.
Being able to collapse and expand branches of the conversation tree might be helpful by itself; I get lost sometimes trying to remember who is responding to whom. You suggest a good additional idea that branches started by a user you have muted be collapsed by default, so you can choose to see the passive aggression.
Everybody likes choice, right?
- In my view, moderation should have three goals:
1) Encourage contributions from those whose input is generally valued, while if possible not letting it annoy those with minority tastes.
2) Discourage contributions from those whose input is generally shunned, sheltering those who don't want to be exposed to such content, without making it hard for new arrivals to find an audience.
3) Strike a balance for those who are charming to some and annoying to others, with a compromise that gives the best value to the community.
Alternate way to meet the same criteria more or less:
Three strikes and you're out policy? First time you're muted, it holds effect for something like 10 days. Then you're back in the game with a yellow card (YAY MIXED METAPHORS). Second time same user mutes you, out for a month. Third time, the mute is permanent until muter chooses to un-mute (i.e. as it is now). Muter shouldn't be notified when mutee steps out of penalty box, to dampen the chance of just knee-jerk re-mute as soon as possible.
Think this would keep in line with your criteria, and also, it would re-shift the focus of the mute from punitive to correctional.
Other alternative, because OH MY GAWD is anybody else tired of this week's focus on muting: from here on in, "mute" is the secret word and whenever anybody says it, they're automatically muted. This might be my favorite option at this point.