Has xenForo thought of this democratic form of spam-moderation

[jelley]

To give a precedent: Remember how (prior to its discontinuance which brought a halt to educational-exchange of info), Amazon product-review commenters had the option to vote as follows?

"Do you think this comment adds to discussion?" Yes/No​

Then - if a certain # of members clicked "No" - that comment became invisible. But - it was still able to be made visible at either my (or your) end, if only out of curiosity, such as to see if the voters were fair in voting "No".​

​

Based on the above, let's take it one step further, as applicable to xenForo (or any discussion forum).

Isn't it the most fair to consider an Original Poster (OP) similar to a host/hostess? So shouldn't the OP of any thread be enabled (by aforesaid method) to render invisible any post they wish to, on the thread which they "own" by dint of having created it (as long as the post they created wasn't itself reported by others as spam)?

On the other hand, all thread-participants (who are basically "guests" on the OP's thread), should be enabled to Re-Visibilize any post which was Invisibilized by the OP - so that its visible at their end only. And BTW all non-participants who are just browsing, would not be able to Re-Visibilize. They would actually not even get to see that a post was invisibilized by the OP. Or if its preferred that even non-participants get the privilege of re-vizibilizing, that can be arranged too, I guess.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Isn't it the most fair to consider an Original Poster (OP) similar to a host/hostess?

No.

 

[jelley]

quoting Mr Lucky: No.

Why not? (see, regardless what level Mr Lucky is, it's precisely due to replies such as this, that i created my OP). I'd prefer Mr Lucky's post to be Invisiblized for practical purposes, to keep this thread logical and readable. But thanks so much for helping me prove my point via your live-demo, because, democratically speaking, and based on the Amazon precedent, assume I'd have Invisiblized the above comment by Mr. Lucky, fellow-browsers would still be enabled to personally Re-Visiblize Mr.Lucky on their personal computers, if only to satisfy their curiosity. They can then pull out their popcorn whilst being entertained by the most interesting word "No". So its not as if Mr Lucky would be deleted. Rather only publicly invisible, in order to keep the thread neat and logical, thus maintaining democracy, way more than if moderators have to deal with a zillion posts to moderate, delete, ban, you-name-it, causing lots of fallout and disgruntled feelings of unfairness.

P.S. If anyone here thinks the term "democratic" in the subject-line is too "charged" for today's polarized atmosphere, and should be changed to something less "charged" I'm open to suggestions.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think it’s rather unfair to pick on me. You asked a question:

Isn't it the most fair to consider an Original Poster (OP) similar to a host/hostess?

And I answered it honestly and succinctly. I was not rude or demeaning, it wasn’t passive aggressive.

Why ask a question if you don’t want people to answer it, or if you want the answers you don’t like to be deleted?

Your question was answerable with a simple yes or no, which is what I did.

I would have been happy to expand on my reasons if requested in a reasonable manner however you seem to have jumped on it as if I committed some huge crime that means my answer should be invisibalized.

 

[Kirby]

Why not? (see, regardless what level Mr Lucky is, it's precisely due to replies such as this, that i created my OP). I'd prefer Mr Lucky's post to be Invisiblized for practical purposes, to keep this thread logical and readable. But thanks so much for helping me prove my point via your live-demo, because, democratically speaking, and based on the Amazon precedent, assume I'd have Invisiblized the above comment by Mr. Lucky, fellow-browsers would still be enabled to personally Re-Visiblize Mr.Lucky on their personal computers, if only to satisfy their curiosity. They can then pull out their popcorn whilst being entertained by the most interesting word "No". So its not as if Mr Lucky would be deleted. Rather only publicly invisible, in order to keep the thread neat and logical, thus maintaining democracy, way more than if moderators have to deal with a zillion posts to moderate, delete, ban, you-name-it, causing lots of fallout and disgruntled feelings of unfairness.

Your reply is a perfect example why this is generally a bad idea.

You asked for agreement with your statement that your though (to consider the OP a host) - @Mr Lucky doesn't agree and you want this opinion to be hidden from the general public.
I am pretty sure many admins running forums for a long time are aware of that problem - some users tend to only accept replies that they agree with, some just belittle everything posted by users they dislike, etc.

It isn't coincidence that YouTube just recently decided.

Therefore, "blindly" hiding content based on user reaction is IMHO a bad idea, but it might be useful with more fine-grained algorithms (that take "user trust / objectivness" into account).

Generally giving OPs moderation control over their threads is an even worse idea, but again - might be useful in some screnarios (for which there are already Add-ons to achieve this).

 

[FTL]

What you're asking is to give, by default, certain mod permissions to an OP on their own thread. As a forum owner, I can't agree with that no matter how well intentioned as it can and will be abused by that thread owner. Much better to keep the existing system where a user clicks the report button and the mods decide what to do.

Also, it looks like you haven't bought a license yet, so your question could apply equally to any forum software, hence I don't understand why you're asking it here.

EDIT: your attempt to silence @Mr Lucky here is a fine example of what's wrong with your idea.

 

[Alpha1]

You can already have crowd moderation trough this addon:

Crowd Moderation

Crowd Moderation allows your user base to assist your moderation team. Reporting content can now result in content being soft deleted or added to the moderation queue. Once installed, the "Crowd Moderation Report Limit" permission must be...

xenforo.com

A suggestion for it is made here:

Automatically moderate, report or delete content rated with specific Reactions

Now that Reactions are in XF2.1 it would be extremely useful to extent this functionality to automatically moderate content. This would allow communities to remove content even when there is no staff online. Let's say that we add two Reactions: 'spam' and 'flaming' Bad member 1 posts a spammy...

xenforo.com

This suggestion includes some crowd moderation functionality:

Better functionality to report and moderate illegal hate speech

As the first EU nation has now approved a bill to impose hefty multimillion fines on communities for not removing abusive content within 24 hours, we are in dire need of better functionality for content flagging, reporting and moderation. More information below. We need to have functionality to...

xenforo.com

 

[Mendalla]

Isn't it the most fair to consider an Original Poster (OP) similar to a host/hostess?

In a regular discussion thread, I do not think so. I would prefer they report issues and let mods deal with them. Avoid some of the concerns others mention above such as people deleting all critical responses rather than just ones that break the rules. Also, I have had users that I wouldn't trust with any degree of mod authority, even in their own threads.

However, in something like an article forum thread, where it is basically their "blog", I could see giving them some control over the "comments" on their pieces. We only have one going right now and the person running it already has mod powers so it has not been an issue yet.

 

[Mr Lucky]

However, in something like an article forum thread, where it is basically their "blog", I could see giving them some control over the "comments"

I can also see it working on for sale threads.

 

[beerForo]

To answer your title question, unless XF answers, we have no idea if XF has considered this. Your best bet it to post a suggestion to see if it tracks, or if they chime in:

XenForo suggestions

Please post any suggestion that you'd like to see as part of XenForo here. If you have a suggestion for an official add-on, please use the correct add-on suggestion forum. If you have a suggestion for a third-party add-on, please post it in the add-on's thread.

xenforo.com

 

[FTL]

To answer your title question, unless XF answers, we have no idea if XF has considered this. Your best bet it to post a suggestion to see if it tracks, or if they chime in:

XenForo suggestions

Please post any suggestion that you'd like to see as part of XenForo here. If you have a suggestion for an official add-on, please use the correct add-on suggestion forum. If you have a suggestion for a third-party add-on, please post it in the add-on's thread.

xenforo.com

Or could tag a developer like @Chris D and see what happens. Oops, I dunnit!

 

[jelley]

BeerForo, thanks for your suggestion to post on the Suggestions forum, and I hope to do so soon. I actually didn't expand fully on my above idea, which would have addressed some of the above concerns. I was going to, but then I got a notice stating that I was "banned". The reason stated was "spam". But then I got further eNotices, and when i checked them out, voila! I seem to have become Un-banned. Totally confusing.

So as I said, I hope to soon post on Suggestions (unless of course by some weird glitch, the Un-ban becomes toggled into a ban again.)

P.S. Just one more thing. I must emphasize that my suggestion would be merely an option. It's for admin's to voluntarily choose or reject (along with the rest of the menu-of-options which they can choose or reject.) It's not intended to be shoved down the throats of any admin's who oppose same. After all, 20 companies rejected the Xerox invention, so why should a "mere idea" be any different?

 

[Taylor J]

I agree with some of the others. This would best be suited as an add-on by a third party that is actually already available.

 

[jelley]

OK, i re-read this thread, and must first emphasize that Kirby and FTL misread me. Nowhere did i speak of "silencing" or "being hidden". Rather, I absolutely emphasized the ability for any member to Re-Visibilize anyone else's post on their private connections, as per the precedent which was active on Amazon, as some of you might recall. So Kirby, that's not called being hidden from the general registered public, and FTL, that's not called silencing. Total bans, and total deletions are what's called silencing.
As an aside, believe me, there are moderators and administrators who ban without even sending the banned member a copy/paste of whichever post is the basis of the ban, nor enable them to dispute it in an open way. That smacks of silencing evident in totalitarian regimes which don't offer people a fair trial. My idea would bypass this mess. In fact, it would seem to me, that the same mindset which opposes this type of idea, may also lean toward anti-gun laws (not that this old hag owns one).

Alpha1, I checked out crowd moderation, but that's not what I had in mind, aside from it being over my head. To better clarify, you can check out my post on the suggestion board which i posted per BeerForo's advice. Furthermore, crowd moderation gives as an example 10 regular members and 5 ranking members, but what if a forum has fewer members browsing any particular thread?

P.S. Re: Post #12, what may interest, is that I was subsequently notified of a quirk in the XF system, which filtered me automatically because my pen-name is similar to a type of chew which is made of See Bhee Dhee (since they've been getting lots of junk related to that). Weird