They do get misused sometimes, and I'll occasionally remove them if I think it was egregious (and like you said, some people have gotten upset about this happening). A few users no longer have the...
Exemplary
They do get misused sometimes, and I'll occasionally remove them if I think it was egregious (and like you said, some people have gotten upset about this happening). A few users no longer have the ability to use them, after repeated misuse.
Overall though, I think it's important to recognize that in a lot of the cases where misuse happens, it doesn't actually matter. For example, it's fairly common that someone will use an Exemplary on one comment in a back-and-forth argument between two users, and then someone else will feel like they need to use one on a comment from the other side, to "balance out" the original Exemplary on the side they disagree with.
But other than the mild annoyance of "someone shouldn't have done that" when you see it, it doesn't really do anything. The only effect is a small boost in how the comment is sorted compared to its "siblings" (replies to the same comment), and in most of these cases it doesn't even have any. Even if does have siblings, the Exemplary is almost never the deciding factor in the sorting. And even if it is, the threads on Tildes are still small enough that it's normal to read all the comments anyway, regardless of how they're sorted.
Eventually, I'd like to split Exemplary and Malice out of the labels and make them into their own mechanics that could behave differently, and also be more explicit about the right/wrong ways to use them. When that happens, I think it would probably make sense to consider some larger changes to how they work. I'm not totally sold about making them non-anonymous (I think there are valuable cases for anonymous ones too), but it's interesting and could be a reasonable possibility. In the meantime though, it's not worth fretting too much about the occasional undeserved Exemplary.
My thought is the best way to handle this is to have a threshold for Exemplary like we do with the other labels. We don't want to be taking action on any single label from any single user except...
My thought is the best way to handle this is to have a threshold for Exemplary like we do with the other labels. We don't want to be taking action on any single label from any single user except possibly for malice. Instead we want every label that becomes active to do so through community action, rather than individual action. That means multiple independent users must apply the same label repeatedly to activate it. Of course, we haven't got enough people here at present for that sort of method to work well. That problem is temporary, though.
Once we have this limbo/buffer where a label is still collecting enough applications to power up, we should be able to get past any mischief or mistakes or malice that's coming from individual accounts applying these labels. I hope.
I like this idea a lot: make a minimum threshold for exemplary to trigger that's >1, so that any visibly exemplary post reflects a small degree of community consensus rather than an individual...
I like this idea a lot: make a minimum threshold for exemplary to trigger that's >1, so that any visibly exemplary post reflects a small degree of community consensus rather than an individual user's views.
I like the idea too, but I think we need way more users for it to be viable, since in the >2 years I have been active here, despite having received a fair few exemplaries on my comments, only a...
I like the idea too, but I think we need way more users for it to be viable, since in the >2 years I have been active here, despite having received a fair few exemplaries on my comments, only a minuscule fraction of those ever got more than one.
And even if/when this >1 idea gets implemented, IMO the exemplary message should still be visible to the recipient even if the comment has only received one so far.
Honestly that message is better and more important than the blue label. Someday we need to explore that side-channel messaging concept that keeps coming up in our discussions about whisper...
Honestly that message is better and more important than the blue label. Someday we need to explore that side-channel messaging concept that keeps coming up in our discussions about whisper comments, private reply chains, all that jazz. It's related.
All of our social platforms are obsessed with one-to-many broadcast. Chasing that is all well and good, but I think people tend to forget that personal connections are also important, even if it's just something silly like a thank-you comment from an exemplary label.
I wonder if people who would otherwise have marked your comments exemplary might have passed on them once they saw someone else had already done so. Given that those comments already had the...
I wonder if people who would otherwise have marked your comments exemplary might have passed on them once they saw someone else had already done so. Given that those comments already had the stripe and emblem, adding a second exemplary is essentially invisible to all but the commenter themselves. If multiple were required to trigger the stripe and emblem in the first place, I think the likelihood of multiple exemplaries being awarded to a single comment would go up.
Also I definitely agree that the messages should still be available no matter how it's rolled out. Like @Amarok, I feel those are more important than the stripe and emblem.
I think it's also important to consider how a user might be discouraged from using the exemplary label if they do not actually see it take effect after clicking on it. People might get frustrated,...
I think it's also important to consider how a user might be discouraged from using the exemplary label if they do not actually see it take effect after clicking on it. People might get frustrated, or just assume it does not work. At the very least some sort of visual indicator for the person who tossed the exemplary on the comment should be visible, in addition to the person who posted the comment still receiving the comment attached to the exemplary.
It may even be beneficial to have 'tiers' of exemplary status. A single exemplary might only display "exemplary" at the top of the comment in a small box, whereas 3 or more adds the left line. Perhaps reaching an even higher threshold such as 5 might change the blue into a gold border around the entirety of the post or something else. Having these adapt dynamically to thresholds based on exemplary usage (produce stats of the amount of times its clicked site-wide and within group per unit of time - total # of posts flagged, maximum exemplaries on a single comment, percentiles for multiplicatives, etc.) would perhaps be ideal so that it would automatically adjust over time.
Good points. I definitely agree that if one uses one's exemplary label, whatever you labeled should show as exemplary for you when logged in, even if it's not collected enough applications to...
Good points. I definitely agree that if one uses one's exemplary label, whatever you labeled should show as exemplary for you when logged in, even if it's not collected enough applications to activate and become public to everyone yet.
Yeah, I have no doubt that is a factor as well... but I suspect it's primarily a matter of user count/activity, and if we were to make it require >1 right now we would barely see any exemplary...
Yeah, I have no doubt that is a factor as well... but I suspect it's primarily a matter of user count/activity, and if we were to make it require >1 right now we would barely see any exemplary labeled comments at all anymore.
I also like this idea, and wonder if it would combine well with a delay? If the actual label didn't show up on the post until X hours after it was given (or after the post/thread is X hours old?),...
I also like this idea, and wonder if it would combine well with a delay? If the actual label didn't show up on the post until X hours after it was given (or after the post/thread is X hours old?), how would that change behavior?
Requiring that a certain number of people give an Exemplary label before it shows essentially does this as a side effect, and I wonder if that effect in itself is desirable?
The post owner should still get the message when the label is given, and the sorting algorithm could start taking it into account immediately.
I have just been using Malice for this, since it's basically the site's report function, you can reads those Malice messages before acting anyways, and IMO it doesn't necessarily have to be used...
I have just been using Malice for this, since it's basically the site's report function, you can reads those Malice messages before acting anyways, and IMO it doesn't necessarily have to be used only for something wrong with the comment itself. It's super rare that I have actually done that, but should I not be doing it, or using Malice in that way?
Malice is fine for that, it works as a way to get my attention on a particular comment (definitely write a reason saying it's related to the label though).
Malice is fine for that, it works as a way to get my attention on a particular comment (definitely write a reason saying it's related to the label though).
KK good to know. And yeah, I almost always include a message for you when I label something with Malice... although in cases where it should be pretty obvious why I am reporting something, I often...
KK good to know. And yeah, I almost always include a message for you when I label something with Malice... although in cases where it should be pretty obvious why I am reporting something, I often just put a negative emoji face instead of writing out a full explanation. ;)
I support the idea of dividing the labels into “major” and “minor” ones. I even suggest that in the course of time groups might have their own group-specific labels—both“major” and “minor.”...
Eventually, I'd like to split Exemplary and Malice out of the labels and make them into their own mechanics that could behave differently
I support the idea of dividing the labels into “major” and “minor” ones. I even suggest that in the course of time groups might have their own group-specific labels—both“major” and “minor.”
However, in the case of the Exemplary label, which can only be used sitewide once in 8 hours, I would not call it a misuse unless two or more accounts belonging the same user are involved (though other, especially those “minor” labels might indeed be misused e.g. a malicious user marking every comment in a topic, or even all comments by another user, Joke or Noise or Offtopic).
Speaking as someone @Deimos talked to about this, he did ask me to not abuse the Exemplary tag after some mischief, (used it on posts that were asked for Noise and Off Topic tags, and when someone...
Speaking as someone @Deimos talked to about this, he did ask me to not abuse the Exemplary tag after some mischief, (used it on posts that were asked for Noise and Off Topic tags, and when someone admitted that they made a fart joke.) I said okay, and I haven't really used the tag that much since then. When I have, it's been a while for an Exemplary button to appear on the post, which implies a manual approval, or that someone else has gotten to it.
I must say I do NOT support the suggestion. IMHO, when a user decides to award a comment with an Exemplary label, the user in question expresses OWN opinion—provided that there is no misuse such...
I must say I do NOT support the suggestion.
IMHO, when a user decides to award a comment with an Exemplary label, the user in question expresses OWN opinion—provided that there is no misuse such as two alts Exemplarying each other. So unless there is a very reasonable suspicion of misuse, the Exemplary labels (and other labels as well) should stay.
I agree. I think that the problem is how @hungariantoast is parsing the "Exemplary" tag. It does not mean, "This is an objectively good comment that everyone should read it and probably like it."...
I agree. I think that the problem is how @hungariantoast is parsing the "Exemplary" tag.
It does not mean, "This is an objectively good comment that everyone should read it and probably like it." It also doesn't mean "This comment has an objectively respectable opinion." It doesn't mean "Tildes as a whole endorses this comment."
It means, "This comment resonated strongly with at least one person." That's it; it's something that people can choose to give out for whatever their personal reasons are. I have my own reasons for labelling things as exemplary, and by the criteria I have for labelling comments, I've received at least one fully undeserved exmplary. I've also seen lots of other comments that I didn't find exemplary that were labelled as such. I don't think that any of these are "wrong" uses of exemplary.
The whole concept of challenging "exemplary" rubs me the wrong way, because it should certainly seen as a strong personal endorsement from an individual, and the idea of saying "no, you don't actually endorse this" feels bad to me.
It does, and for that purpose I think it's great. It's essentially a limited use super like. Also, though, we have the word itself: Which sends a much different message to someone who isn't...
It means, "This comment resonated strongly with at least one person."
It does, and for that purpose I think it's great. It's essentially a limited use super like.
Also, though, we have the word itself:
Exemplary: serving as a desirable model; representing the best of its kind.
Which sends a much different message to someone who isn't familiar with how the label works.
I see it and I think "someone really liked this post". The first few times I saw it I thought it meant (by some mechanism) that "this is the most valuable reply in the thread". The context does not give any clue that it's one random person's opinion.
Which is not to say it's bad and we shouldn't have it, but I suspect the semantics are at the core of OPs disapproval.
What I ponder is how to scale this thing. It seems like the concept of a minimum threshold to activate 'labels' (which are just special mod actions, really) is the simplest, best way to get there....
What I ponder is how to scale this thing. It seems like the concept of a minimum threshold to activate 'labels' (which are just special mod actions, really) is the simplest, best way to get there. The trouble comes when you consider what that threshold is in a community of millions rather than hundreds. It won't be a simple as setting a number in the code. We need a sliding scale of some kind, hopefully we can find one once the place is big enough for that to start to matter.
I don't have an opinion to add about handling labels but semi-related: When I first saw an exemplary label I assumed it was probably algorithmic. Possibly some calculation of upvote rate relative...
I don't have an opinion to add about handling labels but semi-related: When I first saw an exemplary label I assumed it was probably algorithmic. Possibly some calculation of upvote rate relative to to other comments in the topic. Or if not algorithmic, then something applied manually by an admin or the OP.
It was easy to educate myself about what it actually was of course, but thinking about it from the perspective of a random user: the tag stands out, similar to a "best answer" tag that you might see on a Q&A site. It looks less arbitrary than it is.
IDK. This seems like a bit of overthinking. Yeah, some votes and labels may seem undeserved for some. But that’s pretty subjective. And wouldn’t “challenging” a label have a similar effect of a...
IDK. This seems like a bit of overthinking. Yeah, some votes and labels may seem undeserved for some. But that’s pretty subjective. And wouldn’t “challenging” a label have a similar effect of a downvote anyway? It’s a good thing Tides doesn’t have downvotes, this removes a lot of friction. This proposal might add some of that friction without giving much in return. As I said, labels are highly subjective, and, like @deimos pointed out, they’re most frequently harmless.
I rarely even see an exemplary label, to be honest. The time limit seems to be working fine.
I want to echo others that I really don't think it's too much of an issue, in the sense that each user only gets one label every 8 hours, its influence on sorting usually isn't too pronounced, and...
I want to echo others that I really don't think it's too much of an issue, in the sense that each user only gets one label every 8 hours, its influence on sorting usually isn't too pronounced, and it usually doesn't really drown out any other comments. Of course, I agree that objective misuse (e.g. coordinating use of exemplary labels to dominate discussion) should be disallowed, but I don't agree that there should be some review or challenge process for something that is fundamentally my opinion. Why should someone else, like a group of users or an admin, get to say "Actually, no, you did not think this comment was exemplary". There have often been times that I have seen comments I don't particularly think are notable with blue labels, but I'm approaching the comment in a different context and experience than the person who awarded it. Maybe they did think it was exemplary in that moment.
There are potential methods of misuse that aren't as blatant as the example I gave above, such as using the labels to "balance out" a perceived misuse of another one in a back and forth chain. But those types of things I think are a social issue in which people view discussions here as something to be won or lost, and labels as a way of gauging that. I don't think its particularly an issue with the mechanic itself. Sometimes social/community issues arise because a mechanic lends itself to being misused or misunderstood, but I personally don't feel that's the case here.
This type of scenario is why I made the design decision to make every post, comment, reply, vote, and profile an "item" of equal standing, which can itself be replied to, voted on, reported, etc.
This type of scenario is why I made the design decision to make every post, comment, reply, vote, and profile an "item" of equal standing, which can itself be replied to, voted on, reported, etc.
They do get misused sometimes, and I'll occasionally remove them if I think it was egregious (and like you said, some people have gotten upset about this happening). A few users no longer have the ability to use them, after repeated misuse.
Overall though, I think it's important to recognize that in a lot of the cases where misuse happens, it doesn't actually matter. For example, it's fairly common that someone will use an Exemplary on one comment in a back-and-forth argument between two users, and then someone else will feel like they need to use one on a comment from the other side, to "balance out" the original Exemplary on the side they disagree with.
But other than the mild annoyance of "someone shouldn't have done that" when you see it, it doesn't really do anything. The only effect is a small boost in how the comment is sorted compared to its "siblings" (replies to the same comment), and in most of these cases it doesn't even have any. Even if does have siblings, the Exemplary is almost never the deciding factor in the sorting. And even if it is, the threads on Tildes are still small enough that it's normal to read all the comments anyway, regardless of how they're sorted.
Eventually, I'd like to split Exemplary and Malice out of the labels and make them into their own mechanics that could behave differently, and also be more explicit about the right/wrong ways to use them. When that happens, I think it would probably make sense to consider some larger changes to how they work. I'm not totally sold about making them non-anonymous (I think there are valuable cases for anonymous ones too), but it's interesting and could be a reasonable possibility. In the meantime though, it's not worth fretting too much about the occasional undeserved Exemplary.
My thought is the best way to handle this is to have a threshold for Exemplary like we do with the other labels. We don't want to be taking action on any single label from any single user except possibly for malice. Instead we want every label that becomes active to do so through community action, rather than individual action. That means multiple independent users must apply the same label repeatedly to activate it. Of course, we haven't got enough people here at present for that sort of method to work well. That problem is temporary, though.
Once we have this limbo/buffer where a label is still collecting enough applications to power up, we should be able to get past any mischief or mistakes or malice that's coming from individual accounts applying these labels. I hope.
I like this idea a lot: make a minimum threshold for exemplary to trigger that's >1, so that any visibly exemplary post reflects a small degree of community consensus rather than an individual user's views.
I like the idea too, but I think we need way more users for it to be viable, since in the >2 years I have been active here, despite having received a fair few exemplaries on my comments, only a minuscule fraction of those ever got more than one.
And even if/when this >1 idea gets implemented, IMO the exemplary message should still be visible to the recipient even if the comment has only received one so far.
Honestly that message is better and more important than the blue label. Someday we need to explore that side-channel messaging concept that keeps coming up in our discussions about whisper comments, private reply chains, all that jazz. It's related.
All of our social platforms are obsessed with one-to-many broadcast. Chasing that is all well and good, but I think people tend to forget that personal connections are also important, even if it's just something silly like a thank-you comment from an exemplary label.
I wonder if people who would otherwise have marked your comments exemplary might have passed on them once they saw someone else had already done so. Given that those comments already had the stripe and emblem, adding a second exemplary is essentially invisible to all but the commenter themselves. If multiple were required to trigger the stripe and emblem in the first place, I think the likelihood of multiple exemplaries being awarded to a single comment would go up.
Also I definitely agree that the messages should still be available no matter how it's rolled out. Like @Amarok, I feel those are more important than the stripe and emblem.
I think it's also important to consider how a user might be discouraged from using the exemplary label if they do not actually see it take effect after clicking on it. People might get frustrated, or just assume it does not work. At the very least some sort of visual indicator for the person who tossed the exemplary on the comment should be visible, in addition to the person who posted the comment still receiving the comment attached to the exemplary.
It may even be beneficial to have 'tiers' of exemplary status. A single exemplary might only display "exemplary" at the top of the comment in a small box, whereas 3 or more adds the left line. Perhaps reaching an even higher threshold such as 5 might change the blue into a gold border around the entirety of the post or something else. Having these adapt dynamically to thresholds based on exemplary usage (produce stats of the amount of times its clicked site-wide and within group per unit of time - total # of posts flagged, maximum exemplaries on a single comment, percentiles for multiplicatives, etc.) would perhaps be ideal so that it would automatically adjust over time.
Good points. I definitely agree that if one uses one's exemplary label, whatever you labeled should show as exemplary for you when logged in, even if it's not collected enough applications to activate and become public to everyone yet.
Yeah, I have no doubt that is a factor as well... but I suspect it's primarily a matter of user count/activity, and if we were to make it require >1 right now we would barely see any exemplary labeled comments at all anymore.
I also like this idea, and wonder if it would combine well with a delay? If the actual label didn't show up on the post until X hours after it was given (or after the post/thread is X hours old?), how would that change behavior?
Requiring that a certain number of people give an Exemplary label before it shows essentially does this as a side effect, and I wonder if that effect in itself is desirable?
The post owner should still get the message when the label is given, and the sorting algorithm could start taking it into account immediately.
I have just been using Malice for this, since it's basically the site's report function, you can reads those Malice messages before acting anyways, and IMO it doesn't necessarily have to be used only for something wrong with the comment itself. It's super rare that I have actually done that, but should I not be doing it, or using Malice in that way?
Malice is fine for that, it works as a way to get my attention on a particular comment (definitely write a reason saying it's related to the label though).
KK good to know. And yeah, I almost always include a message for you when I label something with Malice... although in cases where it should be pretty obvious why I am reporting something, I often just put a negative emoji face instead of writing out a full explanation. ;)
The latter isn't really that hard. Open signup page, with an on/off switch. Let's give our lurkers the ability to sign up first. ;)
I support the idea of dividing the labels into “major” and “minor” ones. I even suggest that in the course of time groups might have their own group-specific labels—both“major” and “minor.”
However, in the case of the
Exemplarylabel, which can only be used sitewide once in 8 hours, I would not call it a misuse unless two or more accounts belonging the same user are involved (though other, especially those “minor” labels might indeed be misused e.g. a malicious user marking every comment in a topic, or even all comments by another user,JokeorNoiseorOfftopic).Do those users know?
What determines misuse?
Speaking as someone @Deimos talked to about this, he did ask me to not abuse the Exemplary tag after some mischief, (used it on posts that were asked for Noise and Off Topic tags, and when someone admitted that they made a fart joke.) I said okay, and I haven't really used the tag that much since then. When I have, it's been a while for an Exemplary button to appear on the post, which implies a manual approval, or that someone else has gotten to it.
EDIT: Clarification.
I must say I do NOT support the suggestion.
IMHO, when a user decides to award a comment with an Exemplary label, the user in question expresses OWN opinion—provided that there is no misuse such as two alts
Exemplarying each other. So unless there is a very reasonable suspicion of misuse, the Exemplary labels (and other labels as well) should stay.I agree. I think that the problem is how @hungariantoast is parsing the "Exemplary" tag.
It does not mean, "This is an objectively good comment that everyone should read it and probably like it." It also doesn't mean "This comment has an objectively respectable opinion." It doesn't mean "Tildes as a whole endorses this comment."
It means, "This comment resonated strongly with at least one person." That's it; it's something that people can choose to give out for whatever their personal reasons are. I have my own reasons for labelling things as exemplary, and by the criteria I have for labelling comments, I've received at least one fully undeserved exmplary. I've also seen lots of other comments that I didn't find exemplary that were labelled as such. I don't think that any of these are "wrong" uses of exemplary.
The whole concept of challenging "exemplary" rubs me the wrong way, because it should certainly seen as a strong personal endorsement from an individual, and the idea of saying "no, you don't actually endorse this" feels bad to me.
It does, and for that purpose I think it's great. It's essentially a limited use super like.
Also, though, we have the word itself:
Which sends a much different message to someone who isn't familiar with how the label works.
I see it and I think "someone really liked this post". The first few times I saw it I thought it meant (by some mechanism) that "this is the most valuable reply in the thread". The context does not give any clue that it's one random person's opinion.
Which is not to say it's bad and we shouldn't have it, but I suspect the semantics are at the core of OPs disapproval.
What I ponder is how to scale this thing. It seems like the concept of a minimum threshold to activate 'labels' (which are just special mod actions, really) is the simplest, best way to get there. The trouble comes when you consider what that threshold is in a community of millions rather than hundreds. It won't be a simple as setting a number in the code. We need a sliding scale of some kind, hopefully we can find one once the place is big enough for that to start to matter.
I don't have an opinion to add about handling labels but semi-related: When I first saw an exemplary label I assumed it was probably algorithmic. Possibly some calculation of upvote rate relative to to other comments in the topic. Or if not algorithmic, then something applied manually by an admin or the OP.
It was easy to educate myself about what it actually was of course, but thinking about it from the perspective of a random user: the tag stands out, similar to a "best answer" tag that you might see on a Q&A site. It looks less arbitrary than it is.
IDK. This seems like a bit of overthinking. Yeah, some votes and labels may seem undeserved for some. But that’s pretty subjective. And wouldn’t “challenging” a label have a similar effect of a downvote anyway? It’s a good thing Tides doesn’t have downvotes, this removes a lot of friction. This proposal might add some of that friction without giving much in return. As I said, labels are highly subjective, and, like @deimos pointed out, they’re most frequently harmless.
I rarely even see an
exemplarylabel, to be honest. The time limit seems to be working fine.I want to echo others that I really don't think it's too much of an issue, in the sense that each user only gets one label every 8 hours, its influence on sorting usually isn't too pronounced, and it usually doesn't really drown out any other comments. Of course, I agree that objective misuse (e.g. coordinating use of exemplary labels to dominate discussion) should be disallowed, but I don't agree that there should be some review or challenge process for something that is fundamentally my opinion. Why should someone else, like a group of users or an admin, get to say "Actually, no, you did not think this comment was exemplary". There have often been times that I have seen comments I don't particularly think are notable with blue labels, but I'm approaching the comment in a different context and experience than the person who awarded it. Maybe they did think it was exemplary in that moment.
There are potential methods of misuse that aren't as blatant as the example I gave above, such as using the labels to "balance out" a perceived misuse of another one in a back and forth chain. But those types of things I think are a social issue in which people view discussions here as something to be won or lost, and labels as a way of gauging that. I don't think its particularly an issue with the mechanic itself. Sometimes social/community issues arise because a mechanic lends itself to being misused or misunderstood, but I personally don't feel that's the case here.
This type of scenario is why I made the design decision to make every post, comment, reply, vote, and profile an "item" of equal standing, which can itself be replied to, voted on, reported, etc.