16
votes
Removing or editing "Exemplary" labels?
Might it be useful for our Exemplary (and I imagine Malice) labels to be removable or editable? I recently added an Exemplary label with a description that was a bit more "fuck that other guy!" than I would've liked, and despite it not being publicly visible, I still felt the need to in some way correct my mistake to not drag the other user into my hostility, but there's no option to do so. If we can't remove the labels because users shouldn't be juggling the timer or something, I get that, but editing seems like a good (yet low-priority) thing to implement.
I can't recall this being explicitly outlined anywhere when labels were being introduced, sorry if I've forgotten something. Knowing me, I probably argued against it somewhere :P
I don't recall there being any mention of editing or removing comment labels when they were implemented in their current form (but I don't pretend to have a perfect memory!).
I, for one, would assume that someone who's going to apply an "Exemplary" label would take a moment to think about it. If you're marking a comment as "Exemplary", wouldn't you want to be exemplary in the act of labelling it? :P
That said, "Exemplary" labels aren't visible to anyone other than the recipient, so it's a very low-profile mistake with a negligible effect. Is it worth implementing a fix for this?
I think it should be possible to remove an exemplary label, not just given the fact that no amount of possible forethought ever really precludes mistakes, but also because the content of an exemplaried comment can change. Currently it is possible to remove other comment labels, or to rescind votes, if a user feels the comment is no longer deserving of them. This is not the case for exemplaries.
That's a really good point about edited comments. Perhaps at the very least, if a comment is edited after an exemplary label has been applied, there should be the option for the user to undo the exemplary label.
There should be a time limit on this, though. Exemplary actually distinguishes content, having a notable effect on the comment, so it should only be removable for something around 15 minutes to prevent manipulation.
If it's worth having users not be plagued by some of the things they wished to take back later, it's worth implementing the fix.
We're all human. There's no sense in ascribing guilt to the person already in admittance of making a mistake. Helping fix that, on the other hand, may make things better.
I would say there's a difference between not taking a moment to think and having a change of heart for whatever reason (whether it's oneself changing or just the content), and I think rather than thinking about what the original person giving the label ought to have done, it makes more sense to leave an avenue for things to be friendlier, more accurate, or otherwise allow users to have as much control over the actions they take as long as it doesn't conflict with other goals. It's also a bit more intuitive to have it work like the other labels, I actually expected the ability to be there and was surprised when I noticed it wasn't. As cfabbro noted, Malice labels appear to act differently so I imagine there was some conscious reasoning behind having Exemplary act as it does, but I can't really think of why that would be.
And I totally agree that this is low-priority, but I don't see changes that impact a niche group as being entirely irrelevant...just not something to be put above most anything else.
You can remove Malice labels and reapply them with new text afterwards if you need to. I just tested to make sure that was the case. (sorry if that triggered a warning claxon going off in your house @Deimos ;)
You can't do the same with Exemplary labels or edit the text afterwards though, but I honestly don't know how I feel about that being allowed. I think your regret afterwards is kind of a lesson in itself about using it more judiciously in the future, and allowing people to remove them or edit them afterwards opens the door to way more potential abuse issues (e.g. using it for harder to detect harassment and vote manipulation), than any it might solve.
p.s. Added a gitlab issue for it anyways:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/issues/382
I don't think that regret comes from the permanence of the label, though. I had to already feel regret to even consider and seek out the option to edit or remove my label, that lesson was already learned. If I could change it, I've still learned my lesson and the website is a little friendlier. If I couldn't, then I've still learned my lesson, but that bit of extra friendliness / loss of hostility doesn't get to happen.
It is the absolute smallest of deals, but I'd still like to have extra control over what I submit. The avenues for finding and punishing abusive usage are already there, Deimos (and whoever has this power in the future) will still have access to the original message, of course, but there's a good use case there that makes the site a bit more pleasant.
Removing the label entirely would also correct the mistake in the additional text: no "exemplary" label means no additional text to accompany the "exemplary" label. (The text isn't optional: you have to type something.) And it's implied that the editing would apply to the text, not the label (you wouldn't want people editing "Exemplary" to "Execrable"!).