It has been brought to my attention that the 'ignore', 'mute, and 'hush' functions do not work in the way that some users expect. This is currently how they work:
ignore: You do not see the ignored user's posts in your feed or the global feeds.
mute: The muted user cannot comment on your posts.
hush: The hushed user sorts to the bottom of comment threads that you view.
Some users were under the impression that mute would prevent a user from responding to their comments anywhere on the site. Currently mute only prevents a user from commenting on your own posts. The primary reason is because we did not intend anyone but the author to have moderation capabilites on a post. For example, if ecib muted kleinbl00, I would not be aware that kleinbl00 could not respond to ecib on my posts.
That being said, if these functions don't work as a significant number of users expect they should, it's worth reexamination. I'd like to hear if you think the functions are working as you expect, and whether or not you think they should be modified, and how.
I can't promise that we will change them, or that everyone will agree upon an implementation, but these discussions often provide good ideas, or at the least, more clarity.
My biggest issue with these functions is just trying to remember which set of functions goes with which label. (Hush does this this and this, Mute does this, etc.). If it were up to me, when I view each user's profile, rather than the labels, there'd be a series of checkboxes: [ ] Hide this user's posts from feeds [ ] Hide this user's comments [ ] Don't allow this user to comment on my posts [ ] Don't allow this user to send me notifications [ ] Sort this user's comments to the bottom of threads etc., and perhaps a catch-all: [ ] ignore/hide this user entirely Allows us more fine-grained controls and gets rid of the guessing game of what each function does.
For what it's worth I'm happy with the ways things currently are and would rather not see the above happen. If you don't like what people say that's fine, but completely stifling their speech is another thing. Extreme cases aside.Some users were under the impression that mute would prevent a user from responding to their comments anywhere on the site.
Currently 'ignored' people can reply to you, show up in your notifications, and presumably appear in your site searches (general, domain, tag, etc) and chatter (?).The whole point of "ignore" is that you don't have to deal with them on your crap.
What should happen: Yes, but you shouldn't get a notification of it. Didn't used to be that way. Something's fucked up on your end, son. That's not what's happening with me. The only way I see minimumwage's posts are if I cruise global, and if I click my own chatter, the only people I see are people I follow or people who have replied to me. Seems like there is some technical shit going wrong, because your experience should be the same as mine, and it isn't.Currently 'ignored' people can reply to you,
show up in your notifications,
and presumably appear in your site searches (general, domain, tag, etc) and chatter (?).
Yeah I've gotten reply notifications from ignored people. I was guessing on the latter based on what mk wrote above. (That is, I don't know that chatter and searches don't screen your ignores, but mk's post suggests they don't.) mute: The muted user cannot comment on your posts. hush: The hushed user sorts to the bottom of comment threads that you view. ...says nothing about search or chatter. Any clarification? Search especially.ignore: You do not see the ignored user's posts in your feed or the global feeds.
mk keeps fucking with chatter. Sometimes he doesn't tell anybody. He nuked global chatter by accident once. After four days I posted a #bugski about it and he said "oops, my bad." Apparently I'm the only one who uses it. Search? I would consider search to be kind of obligatory at this point. It's not the hottest engine.
We're constantly fucking with the site. It's not exclusive to content you use (although you do seem to be having a bad time lately.) For what it's worth, I use chatter a lot but rarely dive into the global chatter. Perhaps if I had more time to cruise Hubski. I feel like I'm never around anymore :(
The prospect of completely removing a persons ability to comment on my posts worries me from an open discourse perspective (right now). As the site scales I'm sure my opinion will change, but right now I like just pushing their comments to the bottom / not getting notifications and all that. That's enough customization for me at this point.
Both you and kleinbl00 are approaching this from an open discourse perspective. But people with opinions are not who I ignore (some do on this site, that's fine). I ignore people whose comments are consistently stupid or whose posts are consistently spam or from bad sources. It's not a question of creating an echo chamber or getting rid of viewpoints with which I disagree; it's a question of having worthless content getting in the way of viewing good content. Also there seem to be some issues specific to me regarding notifications. Not sure how to sort that out.
Ah, yes I ignore the people who spam too (I do wish they wouldn't show up on the community page, less publicity the better but that's a different story). Part of it is that my feed page and the global page are scarily similar (like, nearly identical) so I don't notice most of them anyway.
I saw the comment that (I think) inspired this post. I understand that some users may not want to be bothered by other users and a function like what was thought to exist could prevent harassment. However it can also prevent, you know, like, discussion. I currently am in favor of the way things are.
For the record, we've been discussing making this post for about a week. The fact that it was brought up on the site recently in a practical way was just good timing. While I am torn on the idea of being able to block someone from being able to reply to my comments in other people's posts, I do recognize that it could prevent someone from trolling me. Right now we don't see this often, but it could become a problem.
Wow, talk about coincidence. It's ridiculous of course to hope that harassment and stalking just "won't happen" on hubski. There would be some workarounds for those who wanted to reply to a person in a thread but couldnt; they could reply to the thread itself (as long as it wasn't also posted by the person) and then do a call out to a user, unless call outs of blocked users are also disallowed.
I get legit throwaway hate-comments from time to time. That's the internet. It happens. I even occasionally wish I could reply in discussions where I'm muted - that's the point. I've got a sock ready-made if I wanted to use it; not the point. That's one of the best things about this place: the social engineering functions in such a way that it encourages human discourse.
I would appear to be losing the discussion before it even begins, but here I go. What I assume when I ignore or mute someone: I will never see them again on the site. This (could be) an amazing difference from reddit, one of the most appealing things about hubski and a feature that allowed scalable self-moderation -- all in one fell swoop. Could be great. Instead, when I ignore and mute someone, I just have to hope they'll never respond to me again. Not only will I likely see them on the site often enough; it also won't be under my control at all if I do or not. Right now they have a nice small line through their name^, which is I guess supposed to do something. How does that make sense? This is a major functionality of hubski that I first took for granted, then noticed was being subverted and assumed was broken. Now I'm told it's in fact how things are supposed to work. I hate this feature, which sucks, because I don't hate a single other thing about hubski. I understand completely the argument mk made in the op. Allowing me to "moderate" what appears on mk's post is not good either. Doesn't mean we should forsake a different solution. I'd like to tentatively propose a compromise, although I'm loathe to do so because it won't exactly fix what I consider a huge problem. If people I mute, hush and ignore can still respond to my comments, so be it (although doesn't that sound a little ridiculous?) -- but I should not get a notification. That doesn't make a lick of sense. So kill that and the problem gets ... cut in half, maybe. ^this is especially ironic since we don't have strikethrough functionality in markup yet.
That seems reasonable to me. However, forgive me if I reach through the internet and slap the first person that asks me why they didn't get notified that a user they muted responded to them. :) Does anyone think that this mute behavior would be unexpected?If people I mute, hush and ignore still respond to my comments, so be it (although doesn't that sound a little ridiculous) -- but I should not get a notification. That doesn't make a lick of sense. So kill that and the problem gets ... cut in half, maybe.
I think it make sense. Also, I just want to make sure flagamuffin's calls for a way to totally be rid of interacting with someone isn't marginalized. I agree with him that this could be an important function and a differentiator moving forward. That said, muting someone does guarantee that they will not see or comment on your posts -that's pretty huge IMO. Flag, any suggestions on how to ensure you don't have people replying to you after they've been muted? I would appear to be losing the discussion before it even begins, but here I go
-come on, you know us better than that by now. This will be an ongoing discussion and we will likely test out solutions and your voice is as strong as anyone's in that process.
See that just seems obvious to me. What else would it do? But then I believe desperately in extra-strong moderation. No, no. Discussions on site changes tend to be loosely democratic. I was already in the minority when I began posting. Which is why I suggested a small and dissatisfying compromise. Democracy! Thinking on it. Nothing I can come up with that circumvents mk's problem with my choices moderating someone else's post. Which is a big problem, of course. So. Thinking.That said, muting someone does guarantee that they will not see or comment on your posts -that's pretty huge IMO.
-come on, you know us better than that by now. This will be an ongoing discussion and we will likely test out solutions and your voice is as strong as anyone's in that process.
Flag, any suggestions on how to ensure you don't have people replying to you after they've been muted?
You didn't used to get notifications when someone you'd muted responded to you. I don't. I like it that way. And forgive me while I speak out of turn, because mk can actually answer this, but I think the discussion should be brought up: The Achilles Heel of Reddit is the fact that in order to give you your page, with your friends, with your upvotes, with your downvotes, Reddit has to generate that page just for you. If you've got tags and shit that you've implemented through RES, that's client-side; it lives on your computer. The reason it doesn't live on Reddit is the site would crash and burn. It used to a lot. Reddit has long-since outgrown its code; we used to have more searching/sorting features but the use of them grenaded the site back in 2008. So apply that to Hubski. We're both hanging out here in mk's post. You've got me ignored, but mk doesn't. So now Hubski has to completely regenerate the page just for you, and for you alone... and we're back in the land of unscalability. "Never see them again" is unrealistic, in my opinion. "Never have to deal with them" seems better. Yeah, they can reply to you - but if you've got them ignored, you won't know unless you hang out in the thread (I've got a few ignored people who reply to me sometimes; I'll see it a week later through global).
You don't? Am I missing something? I have been, but maybe I missed a toggle...? I'm not sure how to get around this problem (maybe it's not as a big a problem as I thought -- if it's only me that's bothered, etc).You didn't used to get notifications when someone you'd muted responded to you. I don't. I like it that way.
So apply that to Hubski. We're both hanging out here in mk's post. You've got me ignored, but mk doesn't. So now Hubski has to completely regenerate the page just for you, and for you alone... and we're back in the land of unscalability.
I think you suffer if you're completely unaware of the shit that bugs you. I also think you suffer if you're forced to interact with the shit that bugs you. I'm not sure why you're seeing something other than I am, but your experience would annoy me, too.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought there was some functionality at some point wherein: - A muted person could not comment on a post from the person who had muted them. - A non-muted person could shout-out that muted person. - The muted person could respond to anything in the hierarchy tree underneath the shout-out. It was sort of like being a vampire - once you invite them in, there's nothing you can do. I thought that was pretty cool. As far as the feeds, I've always thought it was a little weird that ignored users don't show up in global feeds. That's kind of the point of "global feeds" - to see the stuff that isn't specific to you. As far as "hush" I think it's pretty subtle. You want to make it obvious what it's doing, screen that text back.
That's interesting, because AFAIK, you use global more than most. It's one of those issues where I can see a reasonable desire for each. Part of my reasoning for default culling is the way that the site will appear to logged out users. Of course, we could show everything once someone logs in, but that might seem odd when the global feed (the one that a new user must begin with) is fraught with what the rest of the site sees as garbage. Of course, looking at posts with more shares will help, but I don't think it would be too long before spammers start sharing with puppets.
I'm a corner case. We both know that. But you build for the corners so that the middle is more stable. If I'm using "global" more than most, you should probably pay attention to me more than most. It means I've found more use for global than most, which means I'm predicting the future for everybody else. Default mod, here to help! Know what Reddit only started doing recently because it fucked with their made-up traffic numbers ('tis true: if you look at a paid traffic report for Reddit as opposed to Google Analytics, they're overestimating by 15-20x): Domain bans. I can already ignore domains. So can everybody else. You have the ability to track how many times a domain has been ignored, right? Set a threshold. Hell, set a threshold/alexa rank ratio - that way even if 20% of your users have huffingtonpost ignored, it'll still show up in Global because it's huge. ahametals? that threshold could be a little lower.Of course, looking at posts with more shares will help, but I don't think it would be too long before spammers start sharing with puppets.
Here's someone that hit the threshold fast: https://hubski.com/pub?id=146772
So build out your non-global feed. That's the thing about "global" is it's made up of the intentions of everybody, not just you. If I click on "community" I see: - 3 strikethroughs in "recently badged" - 5 strikethroughs in "most badged" - 4 strikethroughs in "active posters" - 3 strikethroughs in "popular commenters" - 3 strikethroughs in "active commenters" ...which, to me, demonstrates that my own little corner of Hubski is veering towards "echo chamber." That's fine - so long as I can venture forth into the great unknown and see what everyone else is doing. Some of those guys I got ignored and muted come up with interesting content sometimes, I just hate talking to them.
Hmm. We ignore and mute for different reasons, is what I'm getting from our last few exchanges. I ignore people who always have low-quality content that I would never want to see -- you're more heavy-handed it sounds like, so I can understand why you might want to "venture forth" occasionally. I probably never would.
I ignore people who engage me in flame wars. I've nearly ignored theadvancedapes a few times because his content is entirely too pie-eyed popular science for my tastes, but he's earnest, he's polite (far more polite than I am), he's trying hard, and he's sharing the stuff that interests him (and clearly interests others) and it's good to keep an eye on that stuff. I ignore obvious spammers. Doesn't gain me much but I figure mk's got some secret sauce back there to detect spam and I assume I'm helping.
That is pretty cool, but unintended. I'll have to test if that remains to be the case. I am going to be creating a toggle where you can select the ignore behavior on global. I'll be making that moderation post I mentioned after I implement that. There are some community-based signals that can get you pulled from the global feeds (mostly a very high ignore-to-follower ratio, i.e. 10 ignores and 0 followers), but people should have the option to see everything that passes through. I'll probably roll personal ignoring into that. Do you mean decrease the contrast on the hushed user's text? That would make sense.It was sort of like being a vampire - once you invite them in, there's nothing you can do. I thought that was pretty cool.
As far as the feeds, I've always thought it was a little weird that ignored users don't show up in global feeds. That's kind of the point of "global feeds" - to see the stuff that isn't specific to you.
As far as "hush" I think it's pretty subtle. You want to make it obvious what it's doing, screen that text back.
'K. 1) Mute my ass. Reply to this comment. 2) Leave my ass muted. Reply to this comment again, but with a shout-out. I'll try to respond to either and let you know what I see. Hey - you could even leave my ass muted! It'd probably make your life easier... ;-) Better yet, try it the other way for a couple weeks and then ask people which they like better. I'm a big fan of keeping UIs and preferences as simple as possible and I'm pretty strongly of the opinion that "global" should pretty much show you the same thing you'd see as if you were logged out. That's the point. Your community signals are all well and good, but if I'm cruising "global" anything with over 1 share is likely to not be a spammer anyway. Si, senor.That is pretty cool, but unintended. I'll have to test if that remains to be the case.
I am going to be creating a toggle where you can select the ignore behavior on global.
Do you mean decrease the contrast on the hushed user's text? That would make sense.
CURSES! FOILED AGAIN! Not sure if this is even something you care about, but your login page kinda confuses 1password. The box you guys have designated as "username" is actually "email" which means rather than going ZIPPIDYBAM with my lazykeys I have to copy-paste. That's why we're now in a fight.
Don't worry too much about the 1password thing. I think there was some re-jiggering that screwed some stuff up globally; I deleted the login and re-added it and it's behaving now.