RE: Drama is Going to Happen, But We Need a Better Place for it.
I think mediating and communicating is always the best course of action in any dispute, misunderstanding or conflict. But these sort of things are normal. They are going to happen. It has always sort of bothered me how so often people feel a need to pretend that they are not human. That their community or group is immune to the frailties and flaws of regular people.
I used to belong to and be pretty active on a sailing forum or message board or whatever you call it. Over the years, they started to make it seem like you were welcome if you only expressed opinions about sailing. If you had so-called off topic thoughts, you were some sort of low class person. Eventually, they made it so you needed a special password to enter the off topic section and made it entirely invisible to those who weren't members.
I'm a real person. Whether I'm on line or if you walk into my shop. Sometimes I'm going to want to talk about sailing. Sometimes I'm going to want to talk about Anarchy. Sometimes I might just want to listen or read and not talk at all. But it pissed me off that they would call themselves a "community" and at the same time. Not fully accept me as the multifaceted person that I and everyone else in the world is.
Maybe there could be a header on the page that those who aren't logged in see where in it says something like;
This Online Community is Made Up Of Human Beings. Human Beings Can Be And Often Are Real Buttheads.
The Sentiments And Opinions Expressed By These Buttheads Are Theirs Alone And Do Not Represent The Sentiments And Opinions Of Anyone Else On Steemit Except For Those Who Have Upvoted It. Some Of Whom, Just Like In Real Life Have More Power Than Regular People."
That should be sufficient to inform people that Steemit isn't perfect. Just like the real world.
I think the disclaimer is a great idea.
My intentions here aren't to hide that there are conflicts that arise, especially with the vast majority of them working themselves out on the blockchain. Showing both the conflict and the resolution is very important. This really shouldn't be a place where one feels like they are 'walking on eggshells' when openly speaking their mind as it seems from reading occurred to some degree with the sailing forum you mentioned.
In the last month or so there have been a few 'high profile' conflicts that really seemed to end by flagging/hiding posts and really didn't end with a resolution. There's one that's continuing right now, but I don't want to be drawing attention in that direction, hence my lack of specifics. These rare situations that are being flagged/hidden are what imo need to be taken somewhere so they can actually come to some end, instead of users merely being resigned to silence, which the distrust caused looms and typically grows until boiling over again.
Similar to the sailing forum, I see flagging/hiding posts akin to putting certain topics behind password protection (even though many others are reblogging the post to maintain exposure.) This right here is where I feel some mediator needs to step in to move things to some agreement to disagree or ideally an actual resolution. Honestly, I wouldn't have an issue if this took place on the posts themselves. I merely see a longer term problem with issues being silenced vs truly dealt with, and being a rather steadfast optimist, I will admit I tend view others in the best light possible but I do get shown otherwise at times.
Idk, I'm open to any ideas. The only thing I know is that code won't fix these communication and (perceived or hidden) intention issues. If the parties involved can't resolve it on their own, I feel we need some other method to move towards some common understanding.