Follow-Up Poll: Expanding "Mute"
Thank you to all the Steemians who participated in last week’s poll. In that poll we asked whether you thought that when you Mute another user, their comments should be hidden from your blog for other Steem users, not just you.
We received a lot of great feedback from users who both wanted this feature, and those who voiced concerns like @anyx, @blocktrades, @jarvie, and @holoz0r. @anyx’s comment was especially insightful. He said:
Absolutely not.
Plagiarists, identity thieves, or other fraudsters will mute comments from anyone calling them out on their actions.
This means the @steemcleaners and @cheetah efforts would be useless, so you could say goodbye to them.
The appropriate reaction to comments one does not like is downvoting them.
A better solution to "the problem" is user opt-in mute lists that are community maintained. A community should be able to publish a list of accounts they mute. A user can opt-in to using this list, or the set union of multiple lists they subscribe to.
If one has ever used adblocking, it would function like this -- lists one subscribes to enjoy a curated experience.
The Poll
After considering this feedback, we would like to propose an alternative implementation that we believe addresses the valid concerns that were raised. If you believe that we should integrate this alternative implementation (outlined below) into steemit.com (Condenser), please leave a comment that begins with “YES.” If you believe that steemit.com should stay as it is, please leave a comment that begins with “NO.”
Alternate Implementation
- When an author mutes a user, the muted user’s comments will not appear on the author’s posts; BUT,
- A prominent note will display when any commenters have been muted by the author saying something along the lines of, “The author has hidden replies from @cheetah, @worman, @spammer99. Reveal all?”
With this alternative implementation, it would be easy to identify exactly which accounts are affected, and reveal posts with a single click. If a user is particularly malicious, then the visitors to their blog will see an extremely telling list of all the accounts that have been muted by the author, which would be an obvious red flag.
What do you think? Would this constitute an improvement over the existing UI?
If you believe that we should integrate this alternative implementation into steemit.com (Condenser), please leave a comment that begins with “YES.”
If you believe that steemit.com should stay as it is, please leave a comment that begins with “NO.”
Thank You
A special thanks again to everyone who participated in last week’s poll, with a special shout out to @anyx for his very constructive feedback. We are committed to making steemit.com a site that works for its users and we believe that it is through conversations like this that we will be able to do that.
The Steemit Team
No.
But I am +1 for what gtg proposed.
No.
The last thing Steem needs are echo chambers. I'd prefer a different option again to what is proposed. "The author of this article has muted this commenter, which is why you may not see a reply to the comment from the author."
There are genuine cases were individuals mute people for petty things, when they are attempting to constructively critique or promote discourse with that writer.
Progress is only made when people build upon their differences and disagree, and a platform like Steem should be completely transparent, showing all, and every point of view in regards to a piece of content.
Posted using Partiko Android
Constructive critique towards a person that doesn't want your critique and has muted you would technically be called "Unwanted critique" ;)
NO
I don't think the features should be merged. Hiding from seeing (muting) is not the same as wanting to hide from replies on a blog (moderating).
I think people being able to moderate their own blog (the latter feature) is okay as long as there is a prominent label indicating that poster moderation is active. And it might be debatable whether this should even be allowed on posts which aren't reward-declined, because if they aren't then it isn't really a 'private' personally-owned blog post but one which has chosen to participate in the shared reward pool.
Also consider how this will work with communities, which probably should be able to have their own rules on what sort of moderation is allowed or required for that particular community.
Great points here. It keeps coming back to communities with how best to improve the social experience on here. We can't get those shipped soon enough.
They're getting closer. And the great part is that it's not a hardfork need.
We need them done yesterday.
YES
I think this feature is crucial for Steem to grow and attract more serious content creators.
It would be nice in addition to the feature already mentioned if users could access a settings option that would allow them to turn author moderations off. Aka shows a "vanilla version" of Steem. Users could also be informed of the existence of this setting when they first click the new "reveal all button".
The point here is that authors should be able to control the default view that an outsider without a Steem account will get when they visit their blog. However, Steemians who are logged in and want to judge content and see what they want should be able to do so without needing to look for a "reveal comments" option all the time.
Finally. With hardfork 21 hopefully making downvotes more popular and accepted, it would be great if steemit also had a "filter comments by controversy" option similar to reddit. This would make it even easier for users to look also for comments that may have been fairly or unfairly downvoted/muted.
Concerning the downvotes I think a committee of elected users with some delegated Steem power from Steemit, Inc. might help, which could decide (in case someone complains) if flags are justified or not, and if "yes" just counter them with upvotes.
In addition, accounts who repeatedly misuse flags in an abusive way (instead using them against spam, plagiarism etc.) could be flagged, as well, after a decision of that committee.
Shaking my head on the way you guys set priorities........
This isn't a priority. It's just one feature we thought might improve user experience on steemit.com. Clearly many members of the community agree, however, many others clearly disagree and we can't know that until we solicit their feedback. We've learned a lot by polling the community on this issue.
What about a 'feature' cleaning once and for all the trending page as God demands for consumers outside. Enhance and revamp the chronological order of articles posted throughout every #tag here on behalf of discovery and code a proper internal search engine to really find valuable & relevant stored content within the platform at our queries to improve not just the user experience on steemit.com, but the experience of everyone worldwide?
NO
No, these changes will not improve user experience. Spam is already flagged and hidden.
Also if the user spamming under your post has more Steem power than you?
Meh
Right, especially if the author hasn't > 100 k SP like you ...
I don't think this brings anything good to the table. It's not about how much SP I have. I can think of situations where it could help clean up an author's comment section. However I can also see it leading to an author being more able to spread disinformation and removing all critical comments making it seem legitimate. Sometimes you have to accept the good with the bad.
That's one side of the medal. On the other hand I see many flags given just because of different opinions, personal animosities or even for fun.
Maybe a committee of elected users with some delegated Steem power from Steemit, Inc. might help, which could decide (in case someone complains) if flags are justified or not, and if "yes" just counter them with upvotes.
In addition, accounts who repeatedly misuse flags in an abusive way (instead using them against spam, plagiarism etc.) could be flagged, as well, after a decision of that committee.
If abusive flags could be countered like that, I would agree not to take further measures to protect the blog or an author.
Muting a user is not going to stop them from abusively flagging you. Assholes are gonna asshole. We have to accept some bad things are going to happen sometimes. However this proposal has the potential to open up abuse that is far worse. Maintaining an environment where people can't pass off bullshit as truth, where open dialogue can be had... Is extremely important (imo).
You have a valid point here, but I also insist on mine: too many people left or even didn't/don't/won't join STEEM because of omnipresent flag abuse (just recently a potential investor from Switzerland told me he saw all these flaggs, even under official Steemitblog posts, and thus won't buy STEEM for sure).
We Steemians are so accustomed to this that sometimes we aren't aware anymore how devastating the impression for people outside of our microcosm is ...
It's OK for me not to implement the new muting feature, but then there should be other solutions, like for example the idea of an 'anti abusive flag committee' which I suggested above.
Yes. This is better than nothing.
Jesus... When will you start advertising to bring in NEW USERS AND PEOPLE TO BUY THE COIN?? Why are you sitting around thinking of useless features as we slowly slide under the top 100 marketcap?? There are pure shitcoins with better marketing tactics... You have NO marketing efforts to show. WTF!!!
YES
Why "Reveal all?"? There could be the option to choose for example "Reveal @cheetah!" (only).