Should deleting comments be the standard behaviour, or can we consider a less censored approach by default?
I often stumble in to threads with entire comment chains deleted. I assume most people here have faced the same situation as well, either here or on reddit.
I'd like to see a move to locking comments rather than deleting them by default. That would mean no further replies to the comment or any other comment in that chain, no one being able to delete or edit their comments, no one being able to add or remove votes to a comment, etc.
I understand for particularly egregious comments removal is completely necessary (especially when it goes hand-in-hand with banning users), but a lot of times comments are deleted as a means to prevent long argumentative back-and-forth chains that spam and derail topics, as well as antagonize users.
In a lot of cases I feel like deleting the comment only further serves to hide what is unacceptable behaviour (even if that behaviour should be obvious), rather than setting an example for the userbase.
The rest is typically noise, and what's the point of removing noise if it still gets to take up space?
I agree as I stated in the topic text, but this isn't about repugnant comments.
I think we're still at the stage that we can trust people to get the hint that the Powers That Be have seen their squabble and preferred it not to continue in that context any longer. I wouldn't mind a bit of moderating experimentation to see which feels better overall.
Edit: One point I would say against only comment locking is that it can easily set up a situation where public shaming is used against the participants of the locking, and public shaming in a social media platform, in my experience, isn't that great of an experience for anyone involved. It makes the moderator taking the action look like a bad guy, and it feels bad (maybe even worse) compared to if the comments were simply deleted.
If keeping usernames on locked comments is an issue, it can always be hidden.
I would very much like the ability to detach my username (not implying safe from moderators).
I look at locking as a form of warning for less serious comments. If a comment is locked and they continue their behaviour then they should expect to be banned.
My biggest qualm with the site right now is who gets to decide what is removed because let's say desmos starts to hate me he could start removing my comments for no reason. Or let's say he doesn't like Nepali people and let's racism towards them slide. I think he has done a good job so far but I would like some transparency in the removal of posts and comments as well as bans just in case.
Yeah it was more of a explanation of why I want transparency. I don't think desmos will do any of that shit.
I've been reading a lot of threads that have been having their comments removed, and though I can be convinced otherwise, I honestly think deletion really is the way to go. I don't need to see name calling or any other such personal attacks in order to know they are not acceptable.
In the case where a comment is so antithetical to the culture and rules of tildes that it needs to be deleted, should the poster even be allowed to remain?
I don't need to see it either, and in a lot of cases I believe those styles of comments should be deleted, but in other cases comments can be deleted that don't necessarily involve such content. It's very hard to me to say, primarily because all of those comments have been deleted so I have nothing to base it off of.
As @demifiend said, collapsing these locked comments would allow them to be hidden by default, and they can be further shown as being locked in some way so that if you have no interest in what it said you don't have to look at it.
Even the possibility of locking a comment chain instead of outright deletion would be a step forward.
Banning a user is a separate issue. I definitely could be, and in that case, once we've banned a user, why should we continue to display their offending comments?
A bit of transparency is always nice, though not always possible, especially given our single mod at the moment. I have noticed that a reason is given in a few cases, such as off-topic debates.
I personally, don't think hiding by default is enough. We're either going to allow it on the platform or not.
As unfortunate as it is, we can't approach the issue in a vacuum. The response needed in 2018 is not the same as what would be a reasonable approach in 2010. I truly believe that the times we are in call for a more robust moderation policy than what would be appropriate in a world without weaponized internet propaganda. I've said it before, but we've already seen what a limp wrist approach gets us - insincere actors exploit the small ledge you give them and effectively use it to disrupt the entire community.
Like it or not, their disruptive tactics amount to an insidious form of censorship, because disruption allows them to hijack discussions under the guise of an "opposing opinion" which is typically insincere to start, and which inevitably morphs into outright trolling. But by the time these intentions become unambiguous, the damage is already done. Most people with something of consequence to say have already thrown up their hands in frustration. But the trolls remain, because their goal is not participation - it is disruption - so derailing a thread is not frustrating to them.
Honestly I have deleted a few comments because I get paranoid.
Are you feeling that because of possibility of your comment being deleted by the mod?
Ah I can see that. I've been on here for a few months now, but definitely was pretty careful about not giving too much about myself away in the beginning.
Although this philosophy doesn't seem too common in the modern internet, I still subscribe to the idea that it's a bad idea to put any personal information on the internet. It's why I don't use any social media that requires a real name. I'm not so extreme that I use TOR or anything like that, but I prefer to keep my screen name(s) and my true name entirely separate.
Definitely agree. There's some really obvious things like your name, address, and workplace that no one should ever give out in a public form like this. But there's also a lot of easier ones to sort of loose track of, such as general region, race, gender, profession, and age range.
I have to admit that I'm hesitant to even state stuff like my age. It's definitely limited my participation in some situations though, so sometimes I'll fudge (lie about) the details a little bit, just in case of... I'm not sure exactly what. Just in case of unforeseen consequences I guess. Maybe I'm a bit overly paranoid but better safe than sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh you're not being overly paranoid. I think people would be surprised how little info you need to find someone in real life.
But it definitely does change your ability to participate, which why I've revealed a bit more about myself.
Yea I really dislike the way modern social media handles removing comments or banning users. I wish it was handled more like the forums of old. When you as a mod deleted someones comment you usually would put a reason below the comment that was removed and you wouldn't remove the actual post itself, just the offending content (like a dox). And sometimes, if it were just breaking the rules, you could leave the message and include a moderator note that the user was warned or suspended for breaking the rules with that post. It serves a lot better than just censoring the post and would actually show people what kind of behavior is not tolerated.
I forgot forums were a thing, they definitely handled this stuff better.
This seems like a nice way to do it.
USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST
I think transparency is a great way to look at it. Knowing what's going on is really valuable as a user, especially as you said when tildes starts growing and we see more trusted users with more moderating power across the entire site.
The ability for mods to explain their actions seems like a useful feature for better transparency, Deimos has on occasion explained why and when certain users have been banned. In the future trusted users could use this to provide context for the userbase (and if necessary, be contested/appealed). I'm unsure if this would be any better than leaving a comment though, or some kind of subgroup for handling moderated actions.
I certainly agree that the ability for a mod to explain the deletion of a comment or thread is very useful. But, depending on how large things get, putting it all on a moderator could be overload.
Like you suggest, that job could go to trusted users. I'd also argue that a "report" feature for regular users could work as well. Allow users to report unwanted behavior, have it verified by a mod or trusted user, and then the comment can be deleted, with a note in its stead listing the report reason, reporter, and mod/trusted user. Perhaps the reporter's name should be left off that note, though. Not sure.
This topic here discusses moderator tools https://tildes.net/~tildes/5dw/moderator_tools_what_do_you_have_and_what_should_be_the_immediate_priorities
Hopefully we will see plenty of moderators, so the load on an individual should be relatively low.
Thanks for the link on moderator tools. Much appreciated. Time to read up!
On reddit it is much easier to just click two buttons and remove an entire comment thread without having to sit and sort through. Same as here, it's easier to cut the head off the snake so to speak.
And then you get rules lawyers who derail the thread into whataboutisms and trying to find the line instead of moving on with their day. As the site grows, is every thread gonna need hand holding? "Listen sweetie, it's not okay to be a piece of shit." "But mod, they started it!"
What's that? Please tell me it's just a typo and not what people are calling the Tildes' users or groups.
Otherwise, fully agree with your comment.
It's from this suggestion of what to call users of the site. Some people have latched onto it and are trying to make "fetch" happen, so to speak.
I sure hope it doesn't. Or that we get a RES equivalent soon so I can filter out comments with certain keywords.
I like squigglers
Can girls be tildettes?
Comments problematic enough to merit locking should require a conscious decision to view them. Maybe we should automatically collapse them as well?
This is something I hadn't considered but very much agree with, just because it's not deleted doesn't mean it needs to be directly visible.
I'd prefer that comments worthy of deletion are actually deleted.
I see no reason to have racism, xenophobia, personal attacks, bigotry and so on left visible for all to see.
I agree, but in some cases comments are deleted that don't lead to bans, indicating the content that was deleted wasn't bad enough to do so. In such cases, locking the comments makes more sense to me, and it also doubles as a warning to those participating.
Transparency is super important but I believe there is a compromise between deleting everything and making it always accessible; some stuff should be removable (with checks in place)
I think it's time to float an idea someone brought up a couple months back.
Whisper comments.
The idea here is that the thread of a topic is for public consumption, and yet it's hopelessly cluttered with garbage like replies of "Thanks!" or "Saved!" or "lol" etc. These comments don't have much value except between the parent and the child. Why do we need these to all be fully public, fully visible, cluttering up the thread?
Digressions are also a big part of this. Two people get into a back-and-forth that causes most of the people reading it to roll their eyes. It takes up literal pages of space and just ends up annoying people.
There are clearly some elements of threads that should only be visible to the people directly involved. Everyone else should be seeing perhaps the top of those chains, but not expanding them unless they are interested. The recent comment changes will help with that by letting people browse with all but the top comments auto-collapsed.
Perhaps if we build a system to help manage the comments better, we'll end up with less of a need to censor anything, less moderation work, and less conflict.
Would someone mind posting some examples of how deleted comments are currently displayed? Do they vary in any way or are they all the same? I’m particularly thinking it would be good to indicate whether a comment was moderator-deleted or self-deleted, but I’m not sure whether it’s already done this way.
There is a difference between comments that are moderator-deleted from self-deleted.
It'll basically just:
Thanks! I'm glad that distinction is made. I think my preference would be to add more detail to those messages. Something like these:
A couple helpful things in here: Timestamps for comment submission, last edit, and removal. Brief reason for moderator removal in the spirit of transparency. Attribution for both who wrote the comment and who deleted it. If the user deleted their own comment it can be completely scrubbed, but I think it should remain accessible (hidden by default) if it was removed by a moderator. Certain removal reasons would probably qualify exemptions from this rule, like doxxing, posting of illegal content, or outright spam. Post attribution could also be completely scrubbed if a user completely deletes their account.
I'd also like to see deleted comments presented this way on a user's page. Right now I don't think there's any indication of moderation activity there. Likewise if a user has been banned that should be displayed with a timestamp and the ID of the admin who did the banning.
Thanks! That's helpful. I'd been avoiding clicking into that thread because it smells like more drama than I need in my life. I've posted more thoughts under @Catt's sibling comment to yours.
Show deleted comments as
[deleted]but let users click them to see what was written originally. It's the best of both worlds. Anything else is just asking to have a censorship tool on Tildes, like how mods use it on reddit.That's what some people suggested and I like it though I'd prefer something other than deleted to describe it, deleted comments should be unavailable and a more extreme tool compared to locking/hiding
I personally think there should be a soft-deletion and a hard-deletion. Hard-deletion would mean anything that would be illegal to host within Canadian borders (where Tildes is hosted) would require the comment to be eradicated from any view, as how it is right now.
I think that anything else should follow under soft-deletion, where the comment is automatically collapsed and identified as a removed comment but can still be read should the user be curious.
Yes, there is issues with users having their points still addressed and viewable on a platform should it be nasty, I still believe that it should not be totally removed from view should someone request it, similar to how ceddit is an option for removed comments on Reddit.
Comments that break site rules regarding bigotry and personal attacks should absolutely be removed. I stopped using Twitter and most of Reddit (except for /r/AskHistorians and other subs with good moderation) because I was tired of seeing people saying terrible things. It's incredibly depressing to watch a community be corrupted by hate while mods refuse to do anything about it. When I say hate, I'm not just talking about outright slurs and blatant prejudice. Users who are "Just Asking Questions" and engaging in other bad-faith behavior must not be tolerated. Comments like these are not only distracting, but deeply damaging to the community and are never worth reading.
For comments that are innocent but contribute nothing (one-word comments, low-effort memes and the like) I would be fine with a moderator simply collapsing them or hiding them in some way.
It could be nice to have a little message left beneath a removed comment explaining why it was removed, but I can take it or leave it. Of course, we only have one moderator site-wide right now (and they're doing a great job!) so this would probably be infeasible at the present moment.
I assume you are referring to removed comments, as opposed to comments deleted by the author. I don't think there is a clearcut solution, but locking a particular chain is a possibility. What I think would be helpful for the site as a whole is if a reason was shown as to why the comment was removed, so we can all learn how to better form our contributions. I'm guessing @Deimos has a plan for this aspect for the future.
So... instead of picking up litter in the park, you'd prefer that we spray a see-through plastic coating on it, so everyone can still see it. That seems like the opposite of stopping people from littering.
The park has signs that say 'no littering' hopefully everyone knows what that is.
Tildes has docs which too few people read that leave an exceptionally wide range of possible desired and acceptable behaviour.
Obviously harassing users or acting in bad faith is out. Obviously overt racism is out. But Would the Dalmore memo be bannable? Would posts about the nature/nurture split in Jewish rates of Nobel prizes be? How about the nurture/nature split in White Fragility? Only Deimos could know at this point and perhaps even he hasn't even decided.
Personally I think he should pick whatever the hell line he likes that can be enforced with the least stress to himself whilst the mod tools are built. Meanwhile we can discuss any of the near infinite number of non-dumpster-fire inducing topics until then. No doubt we'll still have a bloodbath when some emacs zealot turns up but that'll probably be rarer.
And how is leaving the litter in the park helpful in enforcing that? Why not clean up the litter (i.e. remove the rule-breaking posts/comments)?
So people can learn what the rules are since they're not clearly specified. At the moment we have signs that say "I found litter here and burnt it" and posts saying "this persistent litterer got banned". But there's nothing that tells you if you're dropping litter or.. zen garden stones?
If you collapse the threads (HN style) it won't take up any more space. And users could maybe learn what gets moderated.
Not really a huge fan of this as a priority btw, seems like making more work for Deimos when clearly we need tools to let him spread the work around.
I wanted to bring up two issues that are tangentially related to the topic of deleted comments/posts.
r/AskHistorians and I think r/AskScience has a strict policy which I like but highly visible topics will end up having multiple "Comment removed" and a mod will sticky a comment as an explanation and as a warning to folks. I feel like there should be a better way to prevent users unfamiliar with the rules from flooding a post.
There is at least one site that archives deleted Reddit posts
(e.g. Ceddit). This is then brought up usually when an author deletes their post but others are still commenting about it and other people wish to know what was originally said. How does everyone else feel about that? I think it might have a place, for example there was a comment made by EA which ended up being the highest or one of the highest downvoted comments ever made. It is still there but if it was deleted, would the comment not have some sort of historical value?Also I wanted to emphasize that I know Tildes is not Reddit nor will it be like Reddit (I hope not), but I felt that this might be something we could consider.
Edit: I was wrong about ceddit/snew as the creator has explained below.
That's actually really cool. I should have looked into it more carefully, my apologies.
I can appreciate your statement
much more, knowing now about the stuff you've created.
I think I have to agree, and I can see that leaving a comment/post in place but collapsed with a message from the moderator who marked the comment/post might cut down on others repeating the same thing that I mentioned in the first issue.
It would be nice if comets that are so bad their getting deleted where;
taged with something indicating it's against site spirit, automatically collapsed and put at the bottom of the queue for sorting.
I share your frustration with coming to a thread and seeing a bunch of deleted coments. I would not invisage this a a replacement to deleting but a soft step in that direction.
I think shifting all the stuff you don't like to a different category used specifically as a showcase of what isn't accepted is the best idea. Obviously you delete stuff if some guy is just yelling the N word at someone or something, but for a "race realism" discussion it is more helpful to have a spot for it that is out of the way enough to not bother people and so that most of the "on the edge but not obviously bad" stuff can still be allowed to exist.
Plus, then people know what to expect to be removed. Otherwise people just see removed comments and have no idea why.
The "red tilde" district.