Notification to a user if their comment is hidden due to comment tags
The new comment-flagging feature is in place and is starting to operate: some comments are being hidden based on tags applied by users.
The irony is that everyone knows a comment is hidden except the person who posted the comment. If someone's own comment is being hidden, they should know that. I assume that part of the motive behind these tags is to teach Tildeans what is and isn't acceptable here. If someone doesn't know their comments are being flagged and hidden, they'll just keep on doing what they're doing.
There should be some mechanism to advise a user that their comment is hidden - like happens when their comment is removed by the admin.
EDIT: It's not just about educating people not to post more shallow comments in future. It's also just letting them know their comment has been hidden, as a courtesy.
As far as I'm aware,
noiseis the only tag currently with functionality. Going by the definition in the docs, noise are just comments that don't further a discussion. Just because something doesn't add to a discussion, does not mean it's behavior that ought to be unacceptable. A comment like "thank you" would be noise, but should comments like that really be discouraged? A high-quality discussion space still has room for courtesies or acknowledgements.Even if it's not about discouraging certain content, shouldn't a user at least have the courtesy of knowing other users tagged and hid their comment?
Maybe. I could certainly see the argument from both ways.
Personally I think it's probably fine the way it is. But I'm definitely among the more nonchalant as far as these types of tweaks go.
My general feeling is that I don't think people need to be notified unless it's happening so often that it seems to be a pattern in their behavior.
I'm thinking about it similarly to how I'd notify people about posting low-quality comments manually. I don't need to send someone a warning every single time they post a comment that I think is low-quality, but if it's consistent and a significant portion of their activity, at that point it's probably worth warning them about it and encouraging them to think more carefully about whether the posts they're making contribute anything to the discussion.
You notify people when you remove their comments manually, even though that's not always a pattern in their behaviour: there's a big red message on those comments saying "This comment has been removed and is not visible to other users". Why not put a similar message on hidden comments? "This comment has been hidden as a result of tags applied by other users."
A comment being removed is far more drastic. A collapsed comment isn't even "hidden", it's just displayed in a single-line format, which is even likely to still be showing the entire text of the comment for almost everything that gets tagged as "noise".
I disagree but, after my recent performance regarding the labelling of "tags", I think I don't need to build up any more ill-will right now, so I'll drop this.
There's no ill will. We disagree about some things, and I'm sure that we're going to disagree about a lot more as the site continues evolving. Sometimes I'll change my mind, sometimes I won't, but it's helpful to understand why people think something should be different, and make me justify (even if it's just to myself) why I'm doing something a certain way. I still like discussing it.
I don't see any reason why the poster shouldn't be able to see their comment the way others do, it's like shadow banning but without serving any actual purpose. Wasn't there even an update recently so that people who get their comment removed will have some text in their comment saying as much when they view it?
Comparing a comment being displayed in a compressed format to a shadowban is a bit ridiculous.
I disagree. Yes of course a shadowban is a much harsher punishment, but they are similar. They both treat a user's comments in a way that is not default behavior and do not have a system in place for a user to see the effect (excluding browsing to your comment in incognito mode for shadowbanning). I don't think a complete notification is necessary, especially for something like a noise tag, but the user should see an indication of some sort when they go back and view the comment.
I think you misunderstood. I'm saying the effects are the same (assymetrical information) but the reasoning isn't there (shadowbans have an actual purpose, this doesn't)
The purpose is avoiding "Edit: wtf noise tags, are you serious?!" and people getting stressed out about one of their comments being displayed in a slightly de-emphasized manner but still being otherwise completely visible and functional.
It's definitely worth mentioning that one of the reasons comment tags were disabled temporarily in the first place was because of that exact issue, too. People would get their comment tagged, which at the time had immediate visual indication of the tags applied, and as a result they would then make inflammatory edits and/or also make assumptions about who tagged them leading to them slinging around accusations of tag misuse against anyone who replied to them or they had just replied to, all of which totally derailed many threads.
Yes, there was. That's what I was referring to when I wrote "There should be some mechanism to advise a user that their comment is hidden - like happens when their comment is removed by the admin."