- Specter Wolf
- |
- Senior Legendary Member
I spend too much time here.. too much time indeed.
I tweet?
There's one thing I've noticed that most of these ideas and suggestions have in common, a huge inconvenience on new users. Punishing those who never even have a chance. Hell, some ideas even would punish existing users (anything based on titles). And that's the problem with any discussion like this, most of the time the suggestions are just simply unreasonable.
With that in mind I once created a thread that well that discussed an alternate take on controlling the spam, bad links, trolling, and flaming. It was to actually give you, everyone, the power to control what you saw.
It would incorporate the already existing report system and add an ignore/block list and personal content filtering.
For example once you reported an offended post it would automatically be minimized and hidden from your own personal view like it would be if it was reported multiple times as the system stands now. This would lead to an immediate case of personal satisfaction for the user, seeing that post get hidden.
To expand on these, the system would log the user of the post you reported. Keeping tabs on this user's posting habits. If the system determines this user has become a problem that user's name is submitted to a separate queue for "User Reviews" where the account would be look into with more depth by a moderator who will determine if the user is fit to continue to be a part of the community or not. This would also work along side the existing report queue and ban system, working as a way to catch those little trolls and flamers who always claim are "missed" as it is now.
As for the ignore/block list, it's pretty self explanatory. However I pictured both manual and "automatic" input. Manual is of course where you personally add a name you'd rather not see content from. While the automatic system would be keeping track of those who've you've personally reported, once the number of reports hits a preset thresh hold (set by the system, not the user) that name is then automatically placed in your ignore list.
However, rather than out-right removing the post from view (because I'm against removing content and one for second chances) all posts from these users are just hidden rather than removed, appearing minimized like when they're currently reported enough times.
As for the content filter system, next to each post would simply be a little icon you can click that straight up hides the post without the need to report it. This is is for those kinds of posts you don't want to see while you're on the site, but since they aren't breaking the rules, you can't report them. Literally giving you control of what you do and do not want to see. The system would also track the number of times you've hidden an individual's post and once the that thresh hold is met a popup would occur and ask you if you would like to place the user on your ignore list.
The overall idea what be that the user has direct control over the content they see and the forums wouldn't be as reliant on a moderator always being here. All parts of the system would also work coherently with one another as well, to provide hopefully an enriched experience for the end user.
As before when I posted this, there are probably going to be mixed feelings towards a system like this. As before this is only thought put into text and criticism is welcome. I've heard praise and I've heard people who believe a system like this would hurt discussion here on the site by abuse, in the long run I believe the only one that would be hurt by this system is the end user. As the rest of the forums would be completely unaware of how you use your own power to control your content.
In conclusion I hope my thoughts aren't too jumbled, I'm trying to get this out while the topic is still reliant, so I may have made some mistakes in trying to explain my self. I just hope that I at least have shown there's a way to deal with the problems this thread is about without punishing new, existing, and innocent users.