Having seen the post by b_b, I suppose this is a moot mute discussion, but I did want to offer you my response to a few of your points, which I hope is okay. I don't wish to be disrespectful to you or anyone else in this community. Go ahead and question. What solid, evidence-based arguments do you care to make? Because then we're having a discussion, not slinging mud. It was a poor choice on my part to bring that up without qualifying where I was coming from. I've been increasingly frustrated seeing comments and submissions (particularly related to news and politics) deleted, pigeonholed or marginalized by vague rules or nontransparent moderators. It feels like many Reddit participants are not interested in discussion, but rather, manipulating, distracting, or otherwise preventing discussion. I suppose the quality of the discussion is as much a result of the individual participants as it is the framework of the site that it takes place in. A news story posted to Reddit is filtered through different subreddits to reflect different community's interests and proffer their group's opinions. Obviously Hubski simply hasn't grown large or diverse enough to mirror the same effects with users as subreddits. I'm growing to like the idea of following individuals whose contributions I value; there is some inherent transparency that comes from developing a personal rapport with other users. I suppose the more time I spend here, the better feeling I will get for individual Hubskian's world views and can feel more confident in offering my opinions while not unduly offending or stepping on a person's toes. I wouldn't really consider myself as either one of your polar factions (literally Hitler or cocktail party), although I get the sardonicism in your use of the "literally Hitler" meme to represent the outsiders. I do understand your point that a "mute as global comment ignore" or whatever that side was pushing for (I think I unfortunately made a comment in tepid support of it), neuters mute too much. I like the idea that the creator of the post is the moderator of that post, and anyone can post whatever they want. Perhaps the biggest point of disagreement that I would have with you is that an apology is always necessary, or would work in every circumstance. For example, I think it was minimum_wage (please forgive me if I'm wrong!) who mentioned that even if someone apologized to him/her, it wouldn't make a difference, which is fine. If some libertarian (or any other ideological label) is distracting, attacking or trolling my posts without adding any value, I would be within my right, and perhaps expected, to mute him, regardless of an apology. I suppose my considerations of the mute feature are borne from imagining how it would look in 2016 when Hubski has grown (10x, 100x, maybe even 1000x?) and popular users are submitting pro-Hillary for president content with rampant astroturfing while muting users who are offering critical discussion. How will regular users be able to navigate that type of thing? I suppose the Hubski model makes astroturfing more difficult, and the lack of global moderation would allow the real discussion to spill elsewhere. In the end, I guess it's pie in the sky to wonder about these things; it's better to go along for the ride rather than to knock over the apple cart out of some perceived threat. List them and explain why you think they merit. It then becomes a debate rather than slander. Honestly, I'm not friends with any of the people involved, nor was I part of the discussion, so I wouldn't really hold my opinion in high regard. I came to this, and other threads, to discuss the mute feature specifically, not some past disagreement between people I don't know. I regret even mentioning that I have an opinion on that. At any rate, I appreciate the time you spent discussing this with me. As someone who is relatively new to Hubski, it feels daunting to become a member of the community; there is no tutorial for getting to know people."I question how it could be abused after watching Reddit's decline and manipulation."
"I've seen accusations of abuse, with varying degrees of merit, in my opinion."
So this is a direct illustration of the problem at hand: Reddit has become a shit community and prompts occasional diasporas to Hubski. Most of those refugees frame their Hubski experience in terms of "how is it like Reddit." The fact that there are no moderators on Hubski is visible if you're looking for it, but if you're not it's just another link aggregator with comments, except you can't downvote. I moderate /r/movies and moderated /r/politics for about 10 days (that mess where they banned Mother Jones) and I know exactly the frustration you're speaking of. However, I also know that Hubski doesn't function anything like that... and that most of the problems new users to Hubski experience are a direct consequence of coming at it with a Reddit mindset. For example, I created a firestorm by suggesting I wanted the ability to ignore new users until they were no longer new. From a Hubski standpoint, this makes perfect sense - "ignoring" is something that lots of people do, because they aren't interested in reading articles from Buzzfeed or Gawker or that spammer that always posts links to their click farm. From my perspective, I didn't want to ignore "reddit" because I'm a damn default mod with like 30 trophies and a couple hundred comments in /r/bestof that's been to the offices a couple times and has the cell phone numbers of three admins. BUT i didn't want to have to wade through eighteen duplicate posts about how much reddit sucks. "Ignore new users" solves this problem without censoring anybody - yet all the new Redditors were looking for censorship, so they shaped everything they saw in terms of censorship and jimmies were rustled. Once jimmies were rustled, all the Redditors adopted a "jimmies always rustled" war footing and here we are. Meanwhile, an attempt to understand the dynamics of the site they're adopting would have resolved the problem immediately... and the feature I asked for, if implemented, would have prevented any conflict at all. I personally talk about Hubski and growth all the time. This is why I think the mute function is vital, as is ignore. Let's say I'm a pro-Hillary astroturfer. I can mute everyone that is anti-Hillary. But anybody paying any attention will quickly notice that the commentary is one-sided and shallow... and that any dissent tends to be short-lived and highly voted. At that point the onus falls on the reader to judge the quality of the content - and there's nothing stopping him from posting something lambasting Hillary and getting an entirely different set of comments. Mute and Ignore allow disparate factions to exist on the same website without the raiding exemplified by SRS and 4chan. "Ignore users newer than 24 hours" would even shove new shill accounts to the bottom of the comments without the reader having to do a thing... and if implemented correctly, would re-configure things the next time the reader viewed the page (assuming it had been 24 hours). It looks like censorship, when in fact it's simply vote ranking. Mute users newer than 24 hours (which I did not, have not, and probably will not ask for, ever) would solve the raid problem entirely. Right there, there are two aspects of Hubski's architecture that solve dire problems with Reddit's structure without any human moderation whatsoever. I suggest you re-read my post. nowhere did I say that an apology is always necessary, and nowhere did I say that an apology would work in every circumstance. What I said was that apologies increase human contact and on a site that values community over conflict, could be a feature that benefits everyone. I did not intend it as a panacea nor do I think it will solve every problem. Honestly, I posted it as a talking point amongst a crowd of butt-hurt Redditors that steadfastly refuses to understand the purpose of "mute" because they want to gripe about their freedoms being trampled wherever they go. The whole discussion quickly became tiresome, but not as quickly as the posts where they weren't muted. Which, to me, is the entire point of the function. Perhaps the biggest point of disagreement that I would have with you is that an apology is always necessary, or would work in every circumstance.
As someone who is relatively new to Hubski, it feels daunting to become a member of the community; there is no tutorial for getting to know people.
Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I remember that little ignore shitstorm; I thought you had a good point from the start and I figured as a new user myself, I probably didn't have the perspective to contribute an opinion worth anyone's time. Perhaps I should have maintained that on this issue as well, but I guess ultimately, talking about things is the way to get to know people. It's easy to get trapped on one side or the other of a polarized debate, like I did, spending energy framing the other's argument as opposition to my own. I see the nuance of your point. Apology (and openness, I think) isn't really a clear-cut solution, but a good general approach. I appreciate the welcome; in my time spent lurking, you came across as prickly, insightful, and yet now, friendly.