Hey all. syncretic is right about us implementing some mod functionality. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need to do it at all. However, I do believe that abusive moderation would be self-correcting, as people would likely choose to not comment, or unfollow that user. I do get what littlebirdie is saying. Good threads can be encourage by design, but users are just as important.
So, I was mumbling about this on the IRC channel last night. I personally dislike banning users from commenting on a thread and the re-posting just seems like it'll fragment our community. If a controversial news article comes out, users will have an incentive to make their copy of the post to gain power over who can and cannot comment in the discussion. It's still pretty faulty, but I propose that all users comment are put into the same thread pool, and then comments are hidden, a la reddit, based on the preferences of those who shared the article with you. If users X, Y, and Z all share the article with me, and 2/3 of them ignore commenter Ω, then hide Ω's comment from me as well. It still leaves plenty of room to play around with. You could adjust ignore percentage threshold, "save" commenters that receive full rings, and partially gray out the test of users that are close to the threshold. I'm not too good at being critical of my own suggestions, so what are your thoughts on this?
I think it's possible that some sort of ignoring scheme might work. However, I'd like to keep it very simple if we did, such as making the ignoring specific to the user. Not unlike forwardslash's script. I think sometimes those shared effects can lead to a diffusion of responsibility. However, one of the problems that disruptive users pose is the ability to disrupt the thread by engaging others. So, even if I ignore oscar, oscar could troll/bait others in the thread, and still lower the discussion. Still, if there is abusive moderation, I'd like one person to own it, and for it to be obvious. For example, if I blocked oscar, people should be able to see that, especially if oscar is someone that you follow. We are brainstorming a type of commenting-based affinity between users, and something like that would probably play into it as well. For example, you could see the number of people that I block, then clicking on that number, you would get the list, and at the top of the list would be anyone that you follow or have affinity with. There is a reason why I am not rushing into this.