A system for "starred" posts on sensitive/advice topics
This was inspired by this post.
I was thinking, as a platform gets bigger we're going to end up with more situations where people are asking for advice about fairly serious stuff. In some cases, that advice needs to come from experts and taking guidance from any random Joe on the street can be risky/dangerous. (For the record, I don't think the post I'm referencing is an example of this, it just got me thinking about it).
In cases like this, I think it's important that the actual good advice get some kind of clear designation that THIS is the guidance you need to take first. I notice this in communities like /r/Fitness a lot where people will post about what sound like pretty serious health concerns and you get a fair number of posts that suggest toughing it out or whatever and the more critical "You need to see a doctor" posts can kind of disappear amid the discussion. Similar things in /r/relationships where you can't always count on "This is abuse. Make arrangements to get your kids and yourself somewhere safe. . ." to be the top post.
Even in cases where the poster themselves is smart enough to take "YOU NEED TO SEE A DOCTOR" type advice to heart, not every schmuck searching the topic on Google will. To that end, it might be good to give certain posts with good, holistic advice or by a known expert some kind of visual indicator that it deserves to be taken more seriously than other posts in the thread. It wouldn't be censoring anything really, just providing a little nudge about what ought to be consulted first or taken to heart.
Now obviously it gets hard to decide how to give a post this attribute. It could possibly be awarded by the OP, though that has some obvious issues where the OP themselves might not be in a position to credibly vet the advice they're getting. We could also just do it through ranking by vote, which is the default paradigm. But like I said, it doesn't always work so well on Reddit. And the Exemplary tag is invisible to others, so that doesn't work either (and the post itself might not be worth giving up your "Exemplary" for the day besides). Moderators could do it, but there may not be enough and the skillset to be a Mod might not overlap with the skillset to know what advice a person needs in a particular situation.
I don't actually have the answers. Maybe it just comes down to creating an attribute for some users to be "wisened elders" or something and empower them to star certain posts to separate good advice from bad. It would basically be a trusted user system. It's got it's own problems, but I guess we can open the floor for other ideas. Maybe it's not a real concern. Maybe it's better addressed by tinkering with the sorting of posts.
Firstly, the Exemplary label is not invisible to others. While general readers might not see the text which accompanies an Exemplary label, comments labelled as Exemplary get a blue highlight, and also get sorted higher up the page (thus providing the higher visibility you want). It's very clear to general readers when a comment is exemplary.
Secondly, you get three Exemplary labels per day: 1 every 8 hours. You have more Exemplary labels than one per day. You can use them more freely than you think.
Finally, "providing a little nudge about what ought to be consulted first or taken to heart" is almost exactly what the Exemplary label is intended for.
While there might be a future need for some sort of "expert" or "trusted" flair for comments and/or users, the Exemplary label is a great feature to use in the meantime.
I didn’t realize it was just an 8 hour gap. Even in that case, the exemplary tag on its own I’m not sure makes the difference if they can’t see why it was tagged that way.
An "Exemplary" label tells people that a comment is extra-good. Does it matter why? It pushes the comment higher and gives it more visibility - which is what you want. It highlights the comment as more noteworthy than other comments - which is what you want.
I'm not denying your suggestion. As I said, there might be a future need for some sort of "expert" or "trusted" flair for comments and/or users.
However, in the meantime, the "Exemplary" label can fulfil your needs quite well.
I think the basic problem here is that for most vital topics the only viable and correct answer is "go see an expert", and for the rest votes and tags might cut it for the majority of cases. One should not consult health or law &c advice with strangers in a forum anyways, it'd be wrong even if we had many great doctors, lawyers and whatnot here, and even on dedicated sites they give a general overview and strongly suggest actually consulting w/ a certified expert.
With this suggestion we may end up inadvertently giving a false sense of dependable/actionable advice which we may regret later.
It's an interesting idea. /r/history and r/science have flair on users that the mods have vetted and you can be reasonably sure they know what they're talking about if the topic aligns with the field they're tested with. It could possibly be an extension of the trust system in some way.