And if/when you get muted for a difference in beliefs? Should one apologize for having a different opinion than another?
If you and a power user have some deep divide in beliefs (like pro-Obama and anti-Obama) and they have you muted, presumably you can just repost whatever news story you wanted to comment on, or make your comment on someone else's post. Right? If you want pro-life commentary, follow pro-life submitters, who mute people who are pro-choice, and vice-versa. Am I missing something about how Hubski works?
That doesn't help in the slightest for the case of "user responds to you then mutes you", among others. Also, reposting when you're muted a) doesn't scale and b) ends up being equivalent (if a lot clunkier than) making mute just the comment equivalent of ignore.
Can they remove your first comment? Can't you just edit it and add "Thanks for muting me so I can't respond"? To anyone reading the thread, seeing the mute feature used in an aggressive way is a huge red flag. Being able to see when people are muted seems important, to understand what is going on in a thread. Certainly, there are assholes who deserve to be muted. We've all seen them. And certainly, there are assholes who will mute decent people who only want discussion. We just need a system that lets users differentiate between the two. I agree, simple reposting doesn't seem like the best or most elegant solution. It obviously favors power users over sock puppets, but as long as there is a easy way to find discussion forks, I don't see it as being inherently worse. Lets say in a hypothetical situation, some power user submits a news article about Generic Wasteful Government Project X and I really want to make an well written, researched and informed comment about it but can't because I was muted many months ago for an unrelated comment and they never responded to any of my "apologies" (unlikely, but could happen to someone). I would have to make my own post, with my comment on it. If it was a great comment, discussion could occur there, completely outside the ability of the original user to stifle or censor. The way I see it, there are two issues that should be addressed. One, it should be as visible as possible to observers when mute is being abused. That user should have far fewer followers if abusive muting was apparent. And two, as long as outside observers can at least find discussions started by muted people, those doing the muting can't stop what is being discussed. There is no censorship, just a new discussion that people either feel worthy of sharing, or not. I suppose the issue might come up if a muted user just wants to make a short or snide comment about a post, but perhaps in those instances, when you're not bringing a comment worthy of discussion, it's probably best left unsaid. Hubski still seems pretty small, and I think it's hard to figure out what things will look like when/if the community grows much bigger. I'd hope that as the core group of power users grows, they become ideologically diverse and the site's features allow for transparency. That doesn't help in the slightest for the case of "user responds to you then mutes you", among others.
Also, reposting when you're muted a) doesn't scale and b) ends up being equivalent (if a lot clunkier than) making mute just the comment equivalent of ignore.
I don't know. If you can edit it, a) that doesn't affect any other comments / posts later (especially if they are a power user), and b) that means that mute is even less effective for its stated purpose. This is (strongly) subjective. What one person believes to be a perfectly valid reason to mute someone another will strongly believe is not a valid reason to mute them, and wants to respond to them. Reposting on mute does not scale And, even besides that issue, there isn't an easy way to find discussion forks. Especially when it's a fork off of a comment as opposed to a fork off of a post. And if one was created, then you've just reimplemented "mute as ignore for comments", only clunkier, and more prone to fragmenting the community. Can they remove your first comment? Can't you just edit it and add "Thanks for muting me so I can't respond"?
when mute is being abused.
as long as there is a easy way to find discussion forks, I don't see it as being inherently worse.
I think as long as it's clear when mute is being used, people can make up their own minds about the validity of it. I may want to follow a particular user who mutes people who are disruptive or try to derail discussions, while on the other hand, I want to be sure not to follow people who use mute in an aggressive way. You're right, the determination there is subjective, so whatever mute interface is implemented, it should be clear how it's being used. I'm not sure what exactly should change, though. As for scaling, I agree with you, something should be changed. If I want to see discussion about a particular news story, I don't want to have to search through five or more different discussions because some gun rights activist muted a gun control advocate, who wanted to respond to pro-life commenter who muted a pro-choice person, in a post by an atheist who muted a very reasonable non-denominational Christian, who were all muted from the original discussion by a feminist. It's fine if they all want to have separate discussions, but as someone who likes being exposed to diverse ideologies, I would at least like to easily find and read them all.
I'm good friends with several Serious Southern Baptists, and we have almost nothing in common aside from being major geeks. We have good discussions about pop culture and politics, and we stay respectful all the way through. Differences in beliefs shouldn't keep two people from being friends and having good discussions.
Shouldn't isn't the same thing as won't, though. Just in my brief experience on Hubski I've seen multiple cases of people being muted where I do not believe the person who was muted should be obliged to apologize.