I have no idea, I’ll let you know if that ever happens.
It was not meant as dismissive sarcasm, it was a result of me using the ambiguous phrase “I feel like.” In my dialect that can mean either an emotional response or something like “I suspect,” an inchoate theory that I haven’t quite pieced together all the parts of yet. “I feel like Buster Posey is a better catcher than Mike Piazza” isn’t an emotional feels, it just means I suspect it’s true but I haven’t run the stats.
Just a reminder that there are a few specific things here that make mute workable, in my mind:
always time bound so you cannot mindlessly mute someone forever; you can reinstate the mute as much as you like, but it is and must be an explicit action. (Also topic scoped or category scoped?)
less work for mods as people can self medicate and take timeouts from each other rather than invoking mods to ask on their behalf.
mutes are implicit flags; after enough mutes from enough unique users, automatic warnings and (eventually) automatic timed suspension will ensue. There is a general lack of flagging so having another avenue to get implicit flag signal is hugely important.
I find timeouts conducive to civil discussion, whereas “screw you forever” isn’t. Sometimes people make mistakes or have bad days. It is when those bad days become bad months or bad years that I get concerned.
So if I and five of my friends consistently mute someone in threads over time, they won’t know but we can trigger an automatic lock out of them if we do it enough?
I’m sure no one here (or group of allies) would ever abuse this…
On a plus note, the eternal thread on Egyptian religion would probably end.
We had not actually discussed topic specific user mutes only time bound user mutes but that is also interesting.
Mutes could also be per category but that is less useful here.
I wasn’t suggesting topic specific mutes but people would, generally, be seeing a person in a thread and going “Hey, I’m going to mute this person.” If they do it, week after week (as it expires) and actively convince a few friends to do the same, how do you stop the muted person from showing up one day and finding themself automatically locked out of the forum?
Basically, I’m pointing out that “bad” actors could gamify this with a bloc to get rid of people.
Seems generally unlikely to me. People don’t flag that much in practice, certainly less than I would like them to.
Thresholds would be high enough that doing this would be tough. And thresholds can be changed in site settings.
Once reported, mods would just suspend all the bad actors in that case.
I find it quite likely based on some folks’ behavior in the past but obviously opinions vary.
Suspended people can’t communicate with mods, as all of us who have had time outs (and not known why) have discovered. You just try to log in today and you’re locked out, have a one line reason in the error message and a date when you’re allowed back. No appeal, no communications.
There are public email addresses to use in that case.
I’d suggest polling the number of people who have given time outs who have ever been able to get a response from anyone about it during the time out.
In any case, this is a tangent.
I distrust automated system for forcing users offline with no human oversight.
Time to cool off can be helpful, but once again that’s based upon the premise that all parties are going to act in good faith.
*lolz
Interesting way of looking at it.
Of the tiny handful of people whom I’d find irksome enough to actually block it’s more like:
*lolz
But seriously:
But those people typically aren’t the issue, at least ; it’s the ones who seem that they can never admit their mistakes or concede that others have valid points too.
And again with this paranoid strawman argument about ‘covert plots’ to “get rid” of members; the last time I checked only the mods have any such power, and they don’t seem like they’d be so easily manipulated by such fairly obvious ploys.
So, @codinghorror, my feature request would be an email on banning that listed the public address were one to want to bother to try an appeal. Ideally it would have a sentence or two on the ban, though I wouldn’t want to burden the mods too much. I got banned (for a joke about pedantry) and didn’t know WTF happened, with the ban reason given as “Annoying != pedantic.” (Given that 50% of my comments might be pedantic, and a partially overlapping 50% annoying, this was troubling.)
(Veering OT) Since we aren’t always in control of our environments, isn’t it better to develop self-control in the face of temptation? If an alcoholic’s strategy is to not keep any booze in the house, what happens when he’s on a business trip in a hotel room with a minibar? Similarly, even an occasional reflex of biting at trolley bait isn’t therapeutically addressed by disappearing the trolley.
I guess this gets into the question of whether “social media” barf has an obligation or interest in social engineering. Jeff is certainly more visibly thoughtful about community and conversation that whoever runs Disqus or Kinja barf or Youtube comments BLAAARGH.
Man, I didn’t even drink that much last night.
In terms of personal development that’s a fine suggestion. In terms of a forum with a whole bunch of participants where there are people who aren’t you, it doesn’t look like everyone’s learned to manage their behaviors, and it’s not likely we’re going to see everyone become mature people with consistent self-control when dealing with people they have gripes with. Maybe it’s possible to tailor a tool in a way that manages an environment in a way that doesn’t balkanize and spares the community from some bickering and long running fruitless back-and-forths.
So, should we start flagging in this thread?
I guess that would be dumb
Well it is pretty clear what the #1 feature request from this topic is, I think.
We are on it, just give us some time. See my last few posts in the topic here. I think we have a handle on a way to do this that is workable for everyone and keeps the discourse going, so to speak.
Damned fine.
Another thing I forgot, I still want this thing:
I missed this originally but there are official Android and iOS apps for Discourse in the respective app stores that will give you native mobile notifications. This is new as of about 6 weeks ago.
Needs specific examples…
Here’s one:
