I second camarillobrillo. I know that "wait it out" doesn't really give you that satisfying answer but there have been many o' trolls that have come and gone when the satisfaction is gone and half of hubski has muted them. Mute, filter, hush and don't feed the trolls. Hubski strives for intelligent discussion and as dramatic and situations like this seem in the moment, they tend to end earlier rather than later. There is one user in particular who is now incredibly active on reddit, always yelling about how awful Hubski. He (she?) was muted by 99% of Hubski due to consistently vitriolic and ignorant remarks. (S)he believes that muting will be destroy Hubski. I believe muting (or some form of it—none of us are under the assumption that every feature of Hubski is implemented with perfection) will save it in the end. I have my personal, non-Hubski related beliefs on muting and think it should go further, but we have debated and discussed it and my views were aligned to those of the greater community. As a female...on the internet...who has been on the receiving end of targeted harassment....I am grateful for any and all tools I have to block out harassers. But please, let's try not to have another scenario where all are feeds are filled with meta-discussions on moderation. Here's some past discussions on ignoring (now know as "filtering", FYI) and muting issues that can provide further insight that may help you. Feel free to restart discussions over there as well if applicable.
Also, mk, can you confirm that if I mute someone and they respond to my comment on a post that is not mine, I do not get notified. I believe that should happen at the very least.
Can I suggest a DEFCON system? Whereby DEFCON 1 blocks all PMs, replies to comments / posts, replies to replies to your comments, etc. all the way up to DEFCON 5, where users may only be filtered from view in feed / global / chatter / globalchat? On the spectrum of "control given to the user", it removes a lot of the customizability of how I block / ignore someone. But I think it would be safe to say that if I don't want someone PM'ing me, then I probably don't want them replying to my threads nor do I want to see their posts. It might also simplify the current system, as I think a few people have noted that "filter" / "hush" / "mute" are not quite as intuitive in meaning as we might hope...
Sorry I misread your DEFCON 5. I thought that meant that they would be filtered from view in global for everyone (total world nuclear war). That being said, most of that seems accomplishable just by tweaking the existing mute/filter/hush system.
Yes, just we're getting to the point of too many options, which I recall a few of the admins mentioning they wanted to avoid. Plus the added factor of being able to declare DEFCON against people (which is probably a negative, since I don't think the admins want us unnecessarily going nuclear)
Okay, I'll bite. What's your first favorite Hubski comment of all time?
That would be "Who gives a shit?", by the immeasurable regveljohnson. (You had to be there.)
Ah, geeze, I giggled. A lot. I guess his shares of Hubski stock weren't enough to influence the board of directors.The matter will be closed when you close the site...
Why not make a list of all a person's mutes public on their page? This helps prevent instances of people using the mute feature for censorship and also allows people to see people who are being hushed for legitimate reasons (to also hush them themselves). Kind of a transparency of censorship type thing. You could even put a reason as to why you muted a specific user. Then there's the possibility for "recently muted" pages or "most muted users" pages, but those are a bit less important.
Mmm, that seems so vindictive to me...Why would we want a page of Hubski's most muted users? It seems more like a tool to shame people than anything. Also, what do you mean by "people using the mute feature for censorship?" It's kind of an individual decision, I'm pretty sure that there haven't been (or at least I haven't seen) instances of people using the mute feature because they don't agree with people's point of view; educated discussion is part of the reason I keep coming back to hubski. I like having my ideas challenged. But, even if that were to happen, it's not like who I chose to mute has any impact on you. If I chose to "censor" you, it's because I, as an individual, chose not to listen to you. Censorship implies something widespread and/or systematic. There are also times where I might not want people to know I've muted someone; maybe they're super popular on hubski, or maybe they've been harassing me and I'd rather deal with it quietly.
The reason I added that last part as a "possibility" was that I wanted a discussion about it and not to have it as part of the actual idea. I think you're right about that, it would end up being vindictive. Every time in Hubski's past that we've discussed the mute feature, instances come out of the cracks of the feature being used for censorship and the people being censored are reluctant to come forward about it. A more recent example was this: I made a post and as you can see it has no comments on it. Grendel PM'd me saying that he thought it was ironic that he wished to make a reasonable disagreement with me about censorship yet the poster had muted him, so he couldn't. The title of the post was actually Censorship, and it was in defense of no censorship at all. I don't really know what his view is as a result, and I wish I did. I like hearing opposing viewpoints, it helps me understand others, develop my own points, and having them public helps others hear opposing viewpoints and prevent sounding chambers (cough reddit cough). Grendel is pretty clearly not a troll, so this is clear censorship of his ideas. Maybe it makes more sense to also make a mute something that prevents only direct commenting. I know that shout-outs are a way to bypass a mute but how do you know who to shout-out if someone is being censored? I think that only direct comments to someone should be considered something that can be muted. Two layers deep seems a bit excessive. One layer deep (direct comments to your post or your comments) prevents harassment just fine. Anything 2 layers deep would by necessity be trying to prevent someone's views from entering the discussion entirely. A troll that posts on someone else's comment can easily be muted by that person or filtered by others, because at that point he isn't harassing the original person but the person below, which that person would WANT to know that someone is out there like that and he needs to mute them.Also, what do you mean by "people using the mute feature for censorship?" It's kind of an individual decision, I'm pretty sure that there haven't been (or at least I haven't seen) instances of people using the mute feature because they don't agree with people's point of view; educated discussion is part of the reason I keep coming back to hubski. I like having my ideas challenged.
Nothing prevented him from giving that view in that private message. He chose not to for whatever reason. He wasn't censored, he just could not use OP's post as a platform for what was a derailment of that topic. Op isn't obliged to listen to him, or host him.
Is it really free speech if you are whispering it behind closed doors? What happens when someone else views the same thread and wants to see an opposing viewpoint to mine? What if they are never exposed to the opposing viewpoint in their lives, ever? They can't read our private messages, and this builds a closed public discussion on a narrow set of viewpoints. That policy creates the public image of a discussion that is controlled to be exactly one viewpoint, and all the real discourse is in private. That is practically the definition of a sounding chamber. Lock your subversive thoughts up in private.
There is not and can not be a dichotomy of free speech or censorship. If someone wants to see more of what Grendel wants to say, they click on his name. There they can currently see him posting a video about feminists deserving to be whipped, and decide if they still want to see his idea of "reasonable disagreement". If they do, they can follow and/or mail him. OP muting him doesn't prevent this. A user who actually wants to hear from Grendel and is capable enough to find hubski isn't too stupid to figure this out.
How can you click on the name of someone you don't know exists? You only currently know about him because I told you about him in this context. If you visited the original thread, you would not have known he existed, and there would have been no name to click on. You seem to be blinded by the specific example of Grendel, let's take it to an abstract. When republicans visit a democratic convention or vice versa, imagine if they were just blocked from entering the building (which they are, usually you have to be a registered democrat/republican to go to those things). This creates a sounding chamber for all democrats to think democratly and all republicans to think republicanly. Now imagine if you didn't know the other party existed. Let's take the Mendelssohn party for example. It comes around, gets blocked at the door from all political debates, and never reaches public knowledge that the party even exists or what its ideals are. I, the average person, can't just go to the Mendelssohn party's homepage if I don't know that the Mendelssohn party exists.
Trust me when I say you didn't introduce me to Grendel. There are plenty of his thoughts hosted by Hubski. Your political party example confuses me. Political parties and politicians do not exist in a void. Mainstream media isn't in a void. People browsing the internet aren't in a void. People setting boundaries around their participation in the few places where there are tools to do so, is not going to create an echo chamber as dramatic as the one you are imagining. Nor is excluding someone from hijacking your platform.
Wait it out has always won the day long term in the past. I think the meta discussion, even when it's been extremely heated, has in the end been beneficial to the way Hubski operates. I hate a big meta storm but it's probably just the cost of maturation.
Very true cgod. Perhaps we can settle on a tag (#meta , #muted, whatever) that's easily ignorable that I can visit and respond to when I'm in that sort of mood without becoming meta-distressed when I'm taking a work break. ;)I think the meta discussion, even when it's been extremely heated, has in the end been beneficial to the way Hubski operates. I hate a big meta storm but it's probably just the cost of maturation.