To reduce clutter you can reuse the green color bars that currently indicate new comments, and make it red for muted comments.
No, the whole point of the green bars is to be a very salient indicator that only shows in the relatively rare circumstance where you need it (which is when you revisit a comment thread you previously read and want to find new comments). Having a permanent red indicator would break in like 5 different ways:
It would communicate a temporary indicator, because that’s the pattern that we established with colored indicators all across the site. All color we have is part of dynamic elements.
It would introduce a completely new UI color which has so far only been used in the extremely narrow context of downvoting
Because the color has only been used in downvoting it would feel like a mark of shame making the social dynamics a bunch worse
How would you now indicate that a muted comment is new?
The green bar is intentionally very noticeable, and red is even more attention grabbing, making it IMO even worse than a small icon somewhere on the comment in terms of clutter.
To be clear, I still appreciate the suggestion, but I don’t think it’s a good one in this context.
I would support letting authors control their space via the mute and flag proposal, adding my weight to its social legitimacy, and I’m guessing others who currently are very much against the ban system (thus helping to deprive it of social legitimacy) would also support or at least not attack it much in the future.
I’ve received much more pushback for mute-like proposals than for ban-like proposals on LW (though this one is quite different and things might be different).
I appreciate the offer to provide social legitimacy, but I don’t really see a feasible way for you to achieve that, as authors will rightfully be concerned that the people who will judge them will be people who don’t know your opinions on this, and there is no natural way for them to see your support. As I mentioned one central issue with this proposal is that authors cannot see the reaction others have to the muted comments (whereas they know that if they ban someone then the state of knowledge they have about what conversation is going on on the site is the same as the state other people have, which makes the social situation much easier to model).
Or you simultaneously want authors to have a lot of control over comment visibility, but don’t want that fact to be easily visible (and the current ban system accomplishes this)? I don’t know, this just seems very wrong to me, like you want authors to feel social legitimacy that doesn’t actually exist, ie if most people support giving authors more control then why would it be necessary to hide it.
No, I don’t mind visibility at all really. I think public ban lists are great, and as I mentioned I wouldn’t mind having the number of people banned and comments deleted shown at the bottom of the comment section for each author (as well as the deleted content and the author names themselves still visible via the moderation log).
But legitimacy is a fickle thing on the internet where vigorous calls against censorship are as easy to elicit as friendly greetings at your neighborhood potluck, and angry mobs do frequently roam the streets, and you have to think about how both readers and authors will think about the legitimacy of a tool in a situation where you didn’t just have a long multi-dozen paragraph conversation about the merits of different moderation systems.
I think this specific proposal fails on communicating the right level of legitimacy. I think others fare better (like the ban system with a visible moderation log), though are also not ideal. I think we can probably do something better than both, which is why I am interested in discussing this, but my intuitions about how these things go say this specific proposal probably will end up in the wrong social equilibria (and like, to be clear, I am not super confident in this, but understanding these social dynamics is among the top concerns for designing systems and UI like this).
No, the whole point of the green bars is to be a very salient indicator that only shows in the relatively rare circumstance where you need it (which is when you revisit a comment thread you previously read and want to find new comments). Having a permanent red indicator would break in like 5 different ways:
It would communicate a temporary indicator, because that’s the pattern that we established with colored indicators all across the site. All color we have is part of dynamic elements.
It would introduce a completely new UI color which has so far only been used in the extremely narrow context of downvoting
Because the color has only been used in downvoting it would feel like a mark of shame making the social dynamics a bunch worse
How would you now indicate that a muted comment is new?
The green bar is intentionally very noticeable, and red is even more attention grabbing, making it IMO even worse than a small icon somewhere on the comment in terms of clutter.
To be clear, I still appreciate the suggestion, but I don’t think it’s a good one in this context.
I’ve received much more pushback for mute-like proposals than for ban-like proposals on LW (though this one is quite different and things might be different).
I appreciate the offer to provide social legitimacy, but I don’t really see a feasible way for you to achieve that, as authors will rightfully be concerned that the people who will judge them will be people who don’t know your opinions on this, and there is no natural way for them to see your support. As I mentioned one central issue with this proposal is that authors cannot see the reaction others have to the muted comments (whereas they know that if they ban someone then the state of knowledge they have about what conversation is going on on the site is the same as the state other people have, which makes the social situation much easier to model).
No, I don’t mind visibility at all really. I think public ban lists are great, and as I mentioned I wouldn’t mind having the number of people banned and comments deleted shown at the bottom of the comment section for each author (as well as the deleted content and the author names themselves still visible via the moderation log).
But legitimacy is a fickle thing on the internet where vigorous calls against censorship are as easy to elicit as friendly greetings at your neighborhood potluck, and angry mobs do frequently roam the streets, and you have to think about how both readers and authors will think about the legitimacy of a tool in a situation where you didn’t just have a long multi-dozen paragraph conversation about the merits of different moderation systems.
I think this specific proposal fails on communicating the right level of legitimacy. I think others fare better (like the ban system with a visible moderation log), though are also not ideal. I think we can probably do something better than both, which is why I am interested in discussing this, but my intuitions about how these things go say this specific proposal probably will end up in the wrong social equilibria (and like, to be clear, I am not super confident in this, but understanding these social dynamics is among the top concerns for designing systems and UI like this).