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RE: Poll: Enhancing the "Mute" Feature
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 to enjoy a curated experience.
What about a whitelist for specific accounts? Opt-in lists are flexible but it would be a big effort to maintain reasonable lists across the 1000's of blogs. And frontends still have the challenge of selecting which one(s) should be default -- since the default view (say, for a non-logged-in user) should not highlight toxic comments to a reasonable extent.
In addition to a long tail, it seems like some users have a tendency to harass specific authors. It may only be an issue on certain blogs and not globally. Giving authors some power to moderate their blog greatly distributes the responsibility.
Yes this is much better
yeah
Would seem to be addressed by:
Given that consensus downvoted comments are hidden or at least end up at the bottom of the stream.
Downvoting to hide comments only works if you are a relatively high SP user. Also, reward disagreement and content visibility are separate concerns which are bundled in the current system.
It works even if you have low SP, if others agree with you and concur with your downvote by also downvoting. We see that in practice quite a bit when it is clear that content is abusive. Maybe we'll see even more of it after HF21.
I believe you are sightly misunderstanding my point re. reward disagreement and downvotes. I'm not suggesting that the issue here is reward disagreement on the comment itself, but on the post, and the comments are a way to discuss it. If the poster has unilateral control (including ability to suppress opposing views) over the comments, then it obstructs the ability of everyone to assess reward-worthiness. This is precisely the issue with @cheetah and @steemcleaners but I don't think it stops there; any critical opinions are potentially important and allowing the poster to unilaterally hide them is dangerous.
The suggestion to downvote the comments is purely for visibility, but done in a way that requires stakeholder consensus for the comment to be hidden and stay hidden. IMO this is the most sensible approach when comments, particularly critical ones, may weigh on stakeholders' assessment of the post.
I suppose it is true that the two concerns are currently bundled, and they could conceivably be unbundled (allowing stakeholders to vote separately on visibility and rewards) but that would certainly make things a lot more complicated and probably confusing. As things stand now when you downvote content that isn't being rewarded, or minimally so, that is implicitly for visibility, and upvotes on currently-hidden comment is also mostly for visibility (to vote in favor of restoring it).
If it's plain to see who was muted, and if "Reveal all" was a sticky setting, isn't this a trivial change for anyone concerned about hidden opinions?
There is a difference between one person being concerned about hidden opinions and the systemic effect of posters being able to unilaterally hide opinions from most of the readers. Defaults are powerful and there is a good chance that if the default is not showing, the most people won't ever see. That has a systemic effect on the nature of consensus, and not just an effect on individuals.
That being said, of course, these options are on a continuum. It is clearly better to have an easy place to click to see hidden comments than to have to go and dig through a chain explorer, try to find criticism in different posts altogether, or use some alternate interface. I'm still uncomfortable with the unilateral nature of it. A blog that participates in a shared reward pool is not the same as a personally-owned blog that is standalone, and I'm not sure that the same model of unilateral control by the blogger over conversations should carry over.
BTW since you brought up the issue of downvoting for reward and downvoting for visiblity being bundled, why are you proposing to bundle muting? I don't think it really makes a lot of sense. What I don't want to see is distinct from what I might want to hide from readers of my blog. Bundling them would seem to degrade the value of both. I might decline to mute someone I would prefer to mute because I have no intent to hide their comments from others, or I might decline to mute for hiding because I personally want to see it even if I think it detracts from my blog if displayed there. These are really quite distinct.
I've taken a look at how other platforms handle muting and blocks/mutes are generally just applied to your own posts (well, also prevents mentions/DMs). I can block someone on Twitter and they can't respond to me but I can still see their comments elsewhere (as well as view their feed). This also happens to be more efficient for the backend. For the sake of simplicity and efficiency, my preference would be for a user's mutes to be applied only to the discussion threads a user starts, and no longer across the site. This gives the author more control over what kind of discussion they want to highlight, at the cost of having to see comments by the same user on other parts of the site. IMO it would be a net gain.
As for using comments to discuss reward disagreement, it's convenient but not a guaranteed ability. There's a
disable_commentsoption incomment_optionswhich doesn't allow anyone to comment. I don't agree this was a good idea, but it's one way ability to comment on a specific thread is already not a guarantee.It's hard to have any control over basic ordering in your own discussions as a normal-staked user. You can try to flag junk but there are a lot of users who can override your preferences by force, and this is often done not to bring light to valid criticisms, but rather to "mess" with the author.
On this continuum is also the option to whitelist certain accounts, like community-supported bots fighting plagiarism. Listing the muted comment authors in order of highest SP to lowest would be an interesting way to display the most interesting mutes first. Users would see patterns and if they were engaged in the site long enough I'm sure they would explore the muted side of discussions.
A large proportion of users come to the site just one time. Regardless, the impression anyone gets from the discussion may determine if they see any value in engaging further. An unordered mix of spam and harassment among the discussion may likely increase the echo chamber effect. It's just not welcoming.
Twitter has both mute and block, they are separate functions. As well as 'report' which really should drive home the inherent differences in a centralized vs. decentralized system.
As far as
disable_comments, I'd be in favor of removing that altogether (the easiest approach, and seems quite reasonable to me since no one uses it) or disallowing it unless rewards are disabled.Again, you seem stuck on the idea of unilateral control (over ordering here), vs. voting by the community, of which you as the author are still only a part, even if you did create the post at the top of the tree. My answer to that would be if you want unilateral control, don't do it on a blockchain with a global community-based rewarding scheme.
Of course, steemit.com is a centralized web site and can do whatever it wants. I hope this doesn't get implemented in the form described on the centralized web site which happens to be the most used window to the Steem blockchain though.
... Depending on how 'big' their author is, right?
yes exactly.
You will really think as "normal" (small) user if you downvote a whale … in every case if you have brain.
I disagree. Plagiarists, identity thieves or other fraudsters should not be a excuse to take away the right of regular users to mute and hide unwantes comments. Its time to stop letting those very few people hold everyone else hostage.
Downvotes are still visible and can easily be checked.
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I think the case could be made that 'the right of regular users to mute and hide unwantes comments' should only apply on rewards-declined content. Otherwise, the rewards are coming from a shared rewards pool and the user doesn't have sole ownership over it.
Id argue that the reward pool has nothing to do with the content ownership. The reward pool does not enter into the intellectual or creative property of the content in any way.
This is a frontend issue in my mind and thus not subject to any inherent mechanic or attribute Steem has as a blockchain since the steem blockchain cannot and never will be able to deal with such specific questions of content property or human interaction.
This is the next layer where community consensus and application ownership are being discussed.
As Steemit.inc says in the post, its their call what to implement, if someone else wants to create a frontend with their own rules they can....
All that being said, i support this change.
Do i think its marginal? YES.
Do i think there are other far more important things to think about?
YES.
Do i think the Steem community is very small and the loudest members of the community fall into one extremely narrow political worldview and that it would be extremely hard to get a objective, unbiased, thought out response from them that isnt subject to the echo chamber, aggressive mentality that stems from the disdain of the mainstream social media equivalents?
Absolutely YES.
But as the question stands alone. It depends how you do it. If you do it right and watch for all the "leaks", this is a superior option to the one we have now and i support it.
Yes of course that is true. Property of the content itself is a separate matter to rewarding it out of the common reward pool. Being able to reply (and not being blocked by the poster) as to why content may be more or less worthy of rewards is an important process. The points about @cheetah and @steemcleaners are a subset of this but any stakeholder may have valuable information about why the post may not be worthy of rewards, and letting the poster unilaterally hide that seems problematic.
Posters can always downvote comments they don't like but then it becomes a community decision (by others voting as well) whether those are hidden, which seems right to me when those comments are discussing the posts value or lack thereof for reward purposes.
Certainly true. I'm giving my view on what seems best for the integrity of the reward pool and avoiding abuses, which is something they very much care about, as evidenced by both quoting of @anyx's comments in their follow-on post as well as their work on EIP in HF21.
If we are going to move away from a community reward pool as some have suggested, then it becomes less of an issue and the discussion threads can reasonably start to be viewed as the private domain of the blogger to filter and moderate as they see fit. But until and unless that happens (which isn't the case now or in the imminent HF21) I don't believe that should be the case.
!dramatoken
Thanks for being on this side, the wannabe royalty here is off their chain, imo.
Sure. I agree, at the blockchain level. But we are here discussing an option that is absolutely and undeniably available to Steemit.inc to do with as they wish. Im saying that them extending that choice to the creators in the community is a great addition that people should applaud
Giving a part of the power Steemit.inc has over Steemit to the content creator is a positive thing. This is a matter of social media governance that would be extended to the creator.
Why do we want Steemit.inc to father us? Here they are offering us power and most of the people here.. i think 100 out of 120 are saying:
That is supremely confusing to me.
My thought process is very simple:
You are willing to give us more power on your platform??? I will take it!
Why in the world would i say: No! We shouldnt have this choice! Only Steemit.inc should!
I just see that as a marginal thing compared to the offered. There are a huge number of ways to ensure abuse would be countered. The cheetah comment is really a minuscule thing and i know for a fact that steemcleaners are doing a poor and calculative job of fighting abuse. I mean @anyx will probably admit that openly if you ask him.
Downvotes could be made more visibile like on Steempeak, blog posts can always be made about the abuse, even abuse fighters blacklists could be used to take away features like this one from blacklisted creators which would give SFR, Steemcleaners more legitimacy and make them a bigger factor on the platform by giving them power over front end features. That is a big deal.
This would imo benefit everyone expect the harassers and trolls.
Yes and for the second and last time I'm giving my opinion on whether and under what conditions it is beneficial to the platform to do that.
If they didn't want our opinions they wouldn't even be making these posts, they would just deploy whatever features they want and that would be that.
This is exactly the sort of mindset that results in people self-voting and vote-selling to the detriment of any value the platform might have in terms of content discovery or incentivized growth. It is a myopic view that puts ones own short term interests ahead of the success of Steem. The end result is you're able to take advantage of the freedom of all these great options made available to you but it won't matter because Steem will continue circling the drain until it eventually enters it.
I'm more interested in looking at the systemic effects and whether they are overall good or bad for the platform, and I don't think this is unconditionally good. Apparently a lot of other people don't either.
Some features somewhat like this can be usefully offered without doing more harm than good but the reality is more nuanced than just "give maximum power to content creators". There has to be a balance.
You've got
DRAMA!To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.So, in other words, dig themselves an even bigger hole by muting their accuser? Warn them that if they mute your bots, they'll get in even more trouble.
You guys don't have enough SP to deal with the levels of mega-spam this feature is intended to address.
"The appropriate reaction to comments one does not like is downvoting them."
If you are an whale maybe yes, but if you are an small user and have to fear, that the whale whome you downvote will react and downvote you and maybe "destroy" your account (means f.e. bring your reputation under 0) you better don't downvote.
This is the question here, that accounts who have enough Steempower can do what they want and only the small user are affected.
Concur.
Furthermore, this option can create an opportunity for a spammer to conceal their activity intentionally.
All they need to do is piss someone off enough to mute them and then it's open season in their comment section.
Additional, we want the lay users reporting up abuse they notice and this feature will reduce that likelihood.
Imo the consequences outweigh the benefit.
Posted using Partiko Android
Not really Anthony.
It can be set up so scammers cant hide their activities.
You can introduce the community blacklist for scammers that forbids them to use this option.
Since Steemit.inc has delegated a million steem to @steemcleaners. You could basically dismiss this feature to any steemcleaners downvoted authors.
Actually implement the abuse response system into the steemit frontend and give abuse fighters legitimacy and power to remove features.
This change would be empowering to everyone. It just depends on how you do it.
Id keep downvotes still visible. And downvotes are really what matters.
You wouldnt be able to hide abuse.. Not really.
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Yeah don't block the truth! Then the scammers can block the scammed people off their posts - not smart man! LOL Maybe 4 the circle jerkers & communities, but not for steemit??
Anthony is just afraid like the rest of the bad guys that have shame and need to hide all their haters and truth seekers! lol!
I would hope they would allow anti-abuse accounts to come through no matter what.
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yes I think it will be necessary to do this
Maybe that would be an option, but everybody can create an account and call it "antiabuse" or whatever. There should be a consensus about, which accounts were accepted by the community for having special rights. Also the actions of these 'special' accounts should still be controllable by the STEEM community.