I think we're missing the obvious. Verified users should be called Libs.
DMs should be restricted to verified users, given that people have reported harassment via DM.
Edit: Also yes, I would like to see downvotes back. I was never convinced by any of the arguments against them other than that they were being used to harrass trans comrades
It should also show a blue checkmark next to their username
Absolutely disagree with allowing downvotes to anyone, even trusted users. Disabling downvotes was one of the best decision here and it didn't result in "lib content getting to the top" as another user suggested in a post yesterday regards to probably the only China bad struggle session i saw this year.
I'm also wary of limiting posts since looks at my profile but if it's absolutely necessary for newcomers, i can be convinced.
Also i think the threshold should be imposed on comments maybe 100 or 200? Those or posts are the ones that reflect if someone is a dick, maybe combined with posts removed. Like if 5% of your comments is removed, you can't have it or something
IMO, there have been a few unfortunate unintended side-effects of removing downvotes.
One of them is that controversial posts that would have otherwise gotten a lot of downvotes end up at the top of Active for longer. This is because the Active algorithm sees a post with positive "karma" getting a lot of comments, and puts it higher on Active.
The other effect is that without downvotes, people must reply to posts and comments in order to give any feedback at all. This effect was originally praised as a good thing when the change to get rid of downvotes was first implemented, but I don't think it's been entirely constructive. To a certain extent, it's fostered a culture of dunking and dogpiling, and relies on mods to sort through bad takes instead of letting them get downvoted to oblivion. This effect also creates a sort of feeback loop with the first effect, as controversial posts and comments promoted by the Active sort algorithm tend to get more engagement than they did before, leading to more dunking and dogpiling.
Obviously all of this will need to be weighed with the original issues that caused downvotes to be removed in the first place, but I do like the idea of bringing them back for confirmed non-chuds.
I mean i sort by active, maybe it's just me who doesn't mind about shit takes, though i hold out that as someone with a lot of
controversialanarchist takes i can attest that dogpiling was already a thing when downvotes were here, it just manifested in downvotes. Though there was an idea i liked suggested in the same c/userunion thread that downvotes should be tied to comments, so you actually have to express why the take is bad. I don't know what it would take to develop it, i'm just throwing things around.We should have downvotes, but you only get five each month and you can only downvote posts.
I like seeing the number only because it lets you know if a thread is popular because a ton of people upvoted it, or because of some algorithmic reason (maybe other threads just aren't active at the moment).
100 or 200 comments as a minimum would definitely be too restrictive. i've had this account for like 6 months and i only have 300 comments, think i only got over 200 last month. a considerable chunk of users are lurkers, punishing them for not posting feels weird.
I think if a community wants downvotes, like say !the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net or whatever, that could be fine, but I don't think giving individual users the ability overall is a good idea. I do agree with Bill on the rest though, there are definitely adverse effects that need to be considered
and tracking %of comments removed is interesting
I can see having downvotes enabled in specific comms like the dunk tank or maybe memes, but I agree that for most of the site they weren't necessary
Honestly I've gotten surprisingly comfy with the lack of downvotes. People can still get ratiod or :haram: ed if their takes are bad.
I like the idea of barring DMs and capping comments for non-verified users. Maybe limit /c/userunion to verified users? Then that could be a place to post surveys once that's up and running and give people a place to voice grievances where wreckers can't intrude. Then maybe verified members can be called like Rank and File of Local Posters 33 (CC for ChapoChat) or something.
I like this take, and would add in that case you'd probably want to make a seperate /c/banappeal that is accessable to new accounts.
Absolutely not, the vast majority of ban appeal posts are unhelpful meta posts that alienate casual site visitors. Unless there can be some future feature that allows for hiding entire communities from the home screen by default for users (regardless of subscribed/all feeds), I don't see a place like that being helpful to anyone but bad faith actors and debatebro/drama baiters.
edit: I should add that if every "pls unban me" poster cared as much about being a positive influence in this community as they do about getting unbanned, they would have zero fucking problems in the first place.
Yeah my first instinct was quarantining these to a single comm with that sole purpose (so it doesn't clutter userunion which has other useful functions). An ideal solution would probably be implementing some kind of ban appeal system that shows up in the modlogs or something, that way only modlog watchers have to see it (of course the problem there is dev time). But yeah it's true I don't think I saw a single productive non-wrecker ban appeal in userunion (At least the wrecker ones were the most visible).
I remember getting banned from the subreddit. I was banned for a week and the only mod justification I got was "shut the fuck up liberal" and that's okay. (I did post liberalism after all.) Bad actors have kept on posting about appeals and reforming and being better users or whatever as if taking care of them is the focus of this site. It has never been like that, and we shouldn't accept that framing. It's okay if they get burned a little. They always have the chance to get a fresh account and be better. If they can't cope with that, it's on them.
Yeah temp banning getting implemented will probably help out. Also, if someone gets permd and wants to keep going with a new account, they have to work there way back up to trusted which will hopefully encourage them not to be such a liberal the next time.
I'm a fan of keeping downvotes disabled permanently. It's way too easy just to click "downvote" and move on without actually engaging in the content of the topic.
What would you think of:
- You only get five downvotes per month
- You can only downvote posts, not comments
Completely against adding downvotes back for anyone even trusted users. They do nothing but discourage conversation. People should learn to speak up voice their opinion and not just passively judge people.
Reposting my reply from another comment thread on this post
IMO, there have been a few unfortunate unintended side-effects of removing downvotes.
One of them is that controversial posts that would have otherwise gotten a lot of downvotes end up at the top of Active for longer. This is because the Active algorithm sees a post with positive “karma” getting a lot of comments, and puts it higher on Active.
The other effect is that without downvotes, people must reply to posts and comments in order to give any feedback at all. This effect was originally praised as a good thing when the change to get rid of downvotes was first implemented, but I don’t think it’s been entirely constructive. To a certain extent, it’s fostered a culture of dunking and dogpiling, and relies on mods to sort through bad takes instead of letting them get downvoted to oblivion. This effect also creates a sort of feeback loop with the first effect, as controversial posts and comments promoted by the Active sort algorithm tend to get more engagement than they did before, leading to more dunking and dogpiling.
Obviously all of this will need to be weighed with the original issues that caused downvotes to be removed in the first place, but I do like the idea of bringing them back for confirmed non-chuds.
Dividing people further into tribes so they can produce more hatred aimed at one another.
Which is what this will do.
Because regardless of what people have been saying for months, the split of communities and waves of bans have not stopped, further entrenching this site as a place only for a very limited group that is extremely online, very easily offended by things that are either meant in jest, would be commonplace on the sub, and almost always not meant with malintent.
The algorithm is optimized for anger and refreshes every 30 minutes, emphasizing comments and arguments over actual votes on a post. So that leads to the culture cultivated here where the entire site fights over some new shit every week and it's the entire front page. Then the admins act shocked and disable downvotes to reduce toxicity while neglecting that they have designed a site for it. Then we get a wave of saccharine "love everyone" posts as if that can pave over the culture of the remaining users.
It's a bad site experience when most of the posts are people yelling at each other, that's almost never what made up the front page of cth, and it's because just being a casual viewer here you see posts with 10 upvotes over posts with hundreds, checking once a day. Sorting by top of the day is not a replacement, because by not being the default, those posts die when hidden from most users.
This should be a single-board to replace the single board that CTH was, with a flairing system to distinguish posts. Adding in super users that have the ability to control the posts over the rest will not improve things, but if you do it you'll surely get praise from them, further reinforcing your idea that this direction is a good one.
This is just creating a privileged class of posters who get a little ribbon and something to lose.
We must consider the effects on behavior such a condition will make. It may achieve its goals or it may not, but I'm not even sure what the goals of this site are anymore, so whether the effects of this move would achieve ends in line with the greater project of the site is something I can't answer.
For my part, I do not care for the idea, although I understand what it seeks to address in allowing people into the site while strictly maintaining a comfortable environment. My feeling is that it will achieve neither of these things well.- Allowing people into a site with limited functionality while explicitly subject to the discipline of senior members is not a broadly appealing offer when we must admit that there is, earned or unearned, but certainly real, resentment towards hierarchies present on the site.
- While this may result in a more secure-feeling environment for established and marginalized users, it is predicated on a trust between established users that will be difficult to maintain in the presence of more weight behind what has become a serious wedge issue.
Everyone fucks up. Does this policy intend to give greater latitude to established users and treat them charitably when they transgress our norms? Then it will alienate new users and reinforce the hierarchy. Does this policy intend to treat everyone equally in terms of moderation, save for giving privileges and moderation tools only to established users? Then established users will still be wary of transgression and hesitate to disturb things or question any orthodoxy; however, they will still have the power to act against each other, and especially new users. In fact, it would be prudent for someone who seeks to control this community (for whatever trivial reason) to exercise this power and ensure that the only people with the power to moderate are those who agree with them. I suppose at that point, you could have a nice, comfy forum of whoever's left, if the bad taste of struggle sessions wherein there is a privileged class doesn't turn them away, too.
These are my concerns. They paint a picture specifically of potential problems resulting from this policy. The actual outcomes would of course be different in some way or another, but I contend we must seriously consider these concerns and whether the outcomes of this policy would be in line with what is desired for the project of this site.
if the metrics are objective (and not too hard to attain) and anyone who's here in good faith can achieve it I don't see it as a bad thing. this would allow for users to have more say in what goes on with the site while also enabling mods/admins to more easily discern people who are trying to stir up drama from those with legitimate grievances.
if we need to in the future, this would also allow us to more easily hold mod/admin elections, referendums on site decisions, etc.edit: oh fuck you edited more stuff into it
Sounds like more hierarchy. That's not a good thing. We don't need to build a classfull forum online that dreams of a classless society. This whole idea is totally counterproductive. What problems are we trying to solve with this? We should discuss the problems and then come up with solutions as a community rather than... this
Thanks for your response. I responded at length to screamobmo because their response was longer but I think it covers your points too if you want to read a novel.
The short version.
I think my main concerns are around how power posters lead to a more insider/outsider feeling, which I think we already struggle with. I think the issues of wreckers and bots are absolutely real issues and need to be addressed, but I think that making this strata of powers among posters is going to lead to other issues which I think are less easy to solve for. Whereas I think solving for bots and wrecker can be solved with better tools and more mods, so efforts should be focused there.
Either way I think you are all doing things well here and I know if it's not working you'll be happy to reverse course, but I just don't think this is the best answer.
This is a website, not an actual socialist project. And if it were, this site would be under a state of siege socialism. Of course we want to make things as fair as possible, and thankfully the stakes are a lot lower than in a real life socialist project, but the point of this measure is to combat spammers and wreckers form bombarding this place from new accounts. This measure is a much better alternative to logging ips and doing ip bans, which would be very fed indeed. But yeah, this is a proposed solution and we are discussing it.
Not to debate bro, and if this is debate broing I'm happy to remove, but I did want to lay out my thoughts to each of your well thought out points because you put a lot of time and thought into this response and I think I owe you some of my own explanations.
A) I pretty much agree, but I used that language specifically because I think it sets up the rest of my thoughts on the topic.
B) Yes, agreed mostly in principle. Of course someone has to own the site...we live in a society that demands that. But I think it's wrong to abstract posting away from society fully in a way that renders the concept of heirarchy meaningless. This site can be and should be used (I think) for community organizing, even if that community is just a community of the chronically online, and I think that community organizations work best with as little heirarchy as possible. Of course some is unavoidable...we need mods and we need owners, but that's a side effect of the type of society this organization is within rather than the goal.
C) I agree this is a problem. I disagree that power posters are a solution to that problem. In my mind and in the internet communities I have been a part of, power posters would solve this specific issue but would cause or exacerbate new ones. This community (rightfully in some ways!) has a lot of insider/outsider feel already. Amplifying that feeling is going to make it harder for good faith actors to find their home here and find their voice here. I think that a concept of power posters will lead the expanding that insider/outsider feeling, leading new users to feel unwelcome to participate. This is what heirarchy does. It's good because it will make it harder for bad actors, but it cuts both ways and makes it less welcoming to newer, good actors.
D) I'm back to mostly agreeing. I think a site like this in the world it exists in demands some level of heirarchy. As much as my anarchist partner would protest...yeah, we do need some level of gulag, and some folks with the power to do it, because we are under constant attack from other communities who want to see us fail. I am always though skeptical of too much centralized power. Yes sure, it's a website, but it is still a community and I think that communities like this need to have as much freedom as possible to be what they need to be while causing as little harm as possible.
So to sum everything up...I basically agree that we need to have the correct amount of power users to help ensure the site stays a safe welcoming place. And I think there is definitely such a thing as too many. That balance is going to be key and I'm not convinced this is it. I guess in closing it sounds like you just need better automod tools and / or more mods, and I wonder if working on those is a better more sustainable solution that causes less of the issues with insider/outsider.
Just going to expand on what you asked me to expand on, although I appreciate the insight on the rest.
This community very naturally is in an insider/outsider space...it's a niche community built off a niche subreddit built around a niche community. As we try to link the former niche with the latter niche in the absence of the subreddit itself, there's definitely plenty of things that are lost in translation. We already have a big problem of (jokingly or not) people looking at account age, asking how long they were on the subreddit, etc, etc. I think it's a dumb problem in leftist spaces generally, folks trying to "out intellectual" each other (how much THEORY have you read BRO), but that's amplified by the nature of this particular community being leftist, online, and branched off of a no longer existing community. Creating a measure for people, in good faith or not, to hold over newer members is going to exacerbate that problem. Imagine you're a new member who is pretty lib but maybe you've been a to a DSA meeting once, and someone hits you with a :PIGPOOPBALLS: , and you have no idea what they're on about, and you think they're doing some bad faith thing, and you say as much. Someone being a dick about you "not getting the meme" is already likely to dissuade a new member, but someone being a dick with a blue checkmark of "I've been here for 9 months, am a Verified Pre-Subreddit Ban User with over 10,000 posts" means that new member is just never going to come back. It's similarly aligned to why I can't go anywhere and see my "karma" or anyone else's...creating a kind of space around points, badges, tags, whatever...just leads to people farming for those things and using those things as a cudgel more often than people using them in good faith. Sure, for every bad Verified Poster or whatever there will be plenty of good ones, but as we all know 1 bad actor can easily harm an entire community if they want to, and 1 bad actor with power can do so tenfold. I also generally think that any tool that leads to sidewide cliques is bad for new members, and more power users is definitely something that can lead to more cliques. I don't think it really helps the old members either...as power posters leave (or are banned because they abused their power poster privilege, which is going to be a whole new kind of fun mod activity) , they need to be replaced, and its new members with new bits that are going to replace them.
Hopefully that all makes sense. Again I really think you all are doing this (and other stuff) in the best interest in the community, I'm just worried that this community is in a fragile state and riskier things like this could be the catalyst to really pushing it off the cliff. I think there are better options.
Sure thing! Never really expected a response, just wanted to voice my opinion. Thanks for giving me (and others!) the space to do so
My mind went to comrade immediately as well and had the same thought process. We could call all verified users or whatever Russian bots, that could be fun.
This is essentially the system we used on the discord at the very beginning when it was just constantly hundreds of people pouring in, if someone who had comrade asked for comrade to be given to another user we'd give it to them too, so we could organically verify folks
It was a great way to handle that situation at the time, or at least if there were big risks we got lucky and it went fine. The problem was we had no other system planned, and even if we did the sheer volume was just too much considering it was just me at first. But that being said, I do think it worked very well considering the circumstances, I don't think it lead to any real issues but I'm not sure how useful it was in the grand scheme because the role was deleted and replaced with a new system in the first couple weeks.
I'm not so much suggesting that exact strategy as I am offering it up for analysis and to see if we can pull any interesting ideas from it
Also, what are some alternative names for this role? Citizen feels a lil “starship troopers”-esque to me, but I might be overthinking it.
I agree with this. On its own, it kinda reaffirms the notions of nationality and nationalism, and aside from that, Parler had a "citizen" feature on their website which was literally tied to immigration status. I can't think of anything offhand, but we definitely should seek better framing IMO. Aside from that, it would be nice if we could have somewhat trustworthy polling on here and I don't have any major issues with the idea.
This should not be given out based on meeting thresholds but by nomination by other community members or 'trusted users', kind of like that "invite chain" idea folks were talking about before
That would be a lot of extra work for the mods though
