Disemvowelling Button for abusive comments

[lauredhel]

Title:
Disemvowelling Button for abusive comments

Area:
Comments

Summary:
A button on comments one's own journal and on communities you moderate that allow one to remove all vowels from the comment (with a note that it's been done).

Description:
Common on other blogs is the technique of disemvowelling abusive comments. This retains the public record and maintains transparency, while frustrating the commenter's attempt to expose others to their abuse or hate speech, and sending the message that their actions are unwelcome and won't be tolerated.

It would be great to be able to disemvowel abusive comments on one's own journal, or on a community while wearing a mod hat.

Poll #2496 Disemvowelling Button for abusive comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 95

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
35 (36.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
10 (10.5%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
38 (40.0%)

(I have no opinion)
12 (12.6%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[lauredhel]

Addit: I'm not wedded to the form so much as the function. Some other method that was readily reconstructable (and accessible) might, for example, be useful for veiling spoilers?

ETA: "accessible" is really key here, of course. Disemvowelled text is definitely less accessible to some people, either cognitively (*hrm, me*) or because the language is a second language, etc. I use a web re-emvowelment tool when I really, really want to see a disemvowelled comment, which isn't often; and the tools don't work perfectly because some disemvowelled words are ambiguous. There are thorny questions in here that aren't trivially answerable.

[jenett]

Two other options I've seen are either fading out the text. For example: on a site with white background, black text, it fades out the text to a very pale gray on the selected comment. You can still highlight it and read if you want, but otherwise your eye skims over it.

That might be tricky here, due to widely varying journal styles.

The other one is to auto-collapse or auto-hide a given comment (again, might be tricky here.) People can click to reveal it. Again, tricky here, because larger comment threads auto-collapse, so it would be hard to tell which one.

However, I mention in case someone has a brillant idea that'd solve those practical difficulties. I like the overall idea of being able to de-emphasise/make harder to read offensive comments without making them invisible quite a lot.

[lauredhel]

Fading out text won't do anything at all for screen readers, though - there are possibly some accessibility issues in tension here.

Looking at a disemvowelled piece of text is a quite different experience from opening a collapsed piece of text. We're pretty used to uncollapsing text on LJ and DW platforms; there is virtually no psychological barrier to that at all, and once uncollapsed, the whole lot is visible at once. With disemvowelled text, you decipher a word or three at at time, giving plenty of opportunity to stop once you realise just how bad it is.

[kate_nepveu]

One can decrypt ROT13 partially by c&p'ing into a tool a bit at a time. Granted my suggestion of a link to click to automatically decrypt it would not provide that option.

[kyrielle]

How about replacing the body of the comment with a message indicating its hidden and a link that can be used to AJAX the original text into place? Of course, I'm not sure how that would interact with screen readers and other accessability tools....

[ratcreature]

Also it doesn't work in all languages, as not all are written with an alphabet that has vowels to remove.

[torachan]

Yes, this. Disemvowelling pretty much assumes everyone is using the roman alphabet, or even if it were programmed for other languages, it assumes a language with individual letters that can be easily removed.

[stellar_dust]

Re: spoilers: an auto-whiteout button, highlight-to-read?

However:
1. not accessible to screenreaders
2. I think we'd want different functionality for spoilers vs. offensive comments - for one thing, turning off replies to spoilery comments automatically is probably not desired!

So I think veiling spoilers is a different function, and if we want to make the site do that automatically it should have a separate implementation.

[schnurble]

How about using ROT13?
This can be restored fully, but you'll have to use a tool, I doubt that most people can read ROT13 directly...
And people who don't know about ROT13 might wonder what the strange text means.

OT, but at first I read Disembowelling Button and it still makes me giggle :o)

[kate_nepveu]

I also much prefer ROT13 for this: I reply to the comment with the offending text under ROT13 and then screen the original.

If there was an auto ROT13 button it could also include an auto-un-ROT13 link!

[lauredhel]

Rot-13 has similar issues to auto-collapse: may be useful for some forms of concealment, but isn't quite functionally equivalent to disemvowelling.

It's also somewhat harder to explain to newbies.

[kate_nepveu]

What benefit to disemvowelling do you see that ROT13 doesn't have?

Because I think ROT13 has the same function--can't automatically read it--and the benefit of being fully and automatically reconstructable, which ROT13 isn't.

[lauredhel]

explained here :)

[kyrielle]

I like this. I like it even better if there's an AJAX-y solution so that I-the-reader who doesn't own the journal can view the un-ROT13 without having to copy it into a ROT13 tool and rotate it....

[kate_nepveu]

Right, that's what I meant by "link." I have a Javascript bookmarklet that will do it, I'm sure you can do the same thing in the page, even if it requires the person to highlight the text first.

[afuna]

If implemented, any text processing (disemvowelled, rot-13, etc) would likely be done on-the-fly. We'd always have the original (emvowelled) text stored -- in that light, being able to reconstruct the text may not be so critical. We could have a button or link or something to see the text in its original form, perhaps?

[kate_nepveu]

If the original text would always be stored, then I'd still support ROT13 as more widely-applicable: I use it for spoilers as well as offensive comments, but I never see anyone use disemvowelling for spoilers.

[elf]

Oooh, I *like* that. Often better than screening offensive comments, because it doesn't put holes in the conversation, and they can figure out the gist of what was said, but it loses its emotional impact.

It probably also needs to lock the comment against editing, even if it hasn't been replied to.

It would have the side-effect of increasing occasional wank and accusations to the abuse team of "censorship!" (The abuse team would have to say, "it's her journal; she can delete, screen or disemvowel at will; if you don't like it, don't comment there." But the team should definitely be braced for extra screaming, especially during metafannish multi-journal controversial discussions.)

[denise]

It probably also needs to lock the comment against editing, even if it hasn't been replied to.

If you mean "so the poster doesn't just re-emvowel", it wouldn't be necessary -- the disemvoweling would be done at the point of display, not on the stored copy, so no matter what the comment contained it would be shown without vowels.

[elf]

Oooh, shiny. Hadn't realized it'd be a display feature rather than an actual edit of the content.

[kyrielle]

I dislike the concept of disemvoweling, now that I've heard of it, because I prefer to either be shown or not shown something and because I really think it would cause me difficulty/dissonance greater than having a comment missing or an abusive comment present.

On the other hand, I like a couple of the alternatives below, but I also see the point behind explanations of why they're not ideal.

And it's not like I have to use a tool just because it's there.

All of which is to explain why I voted no opinion. I actually have several opinions and they don't agree with each other. :P So I figured it was better not to skew the results but just add to the discussion.

[triadruid]

Isn't that "Other", then?

[afuna]

I voted "implemented as-is", but I'd be happy with any of the alternative suggested implementations.

[piscinarii]

I think something like this would be incredibly useful. I'm not sure how it should be implemented, seeing all the points brought up in the comments, but the usefulness of this feature would be great.

[starwatcher]

+1

[feathertail]

I think publicly ridiculing someone will just cause even more drama. And I mean, people can do that on their own; we don't have to give them a button to do so in a special way.

If just hiding comments can be done in an accessible way, that sounds like a better solution to me.

[jadelennox]

I think disemvoweling is almost always used to provoke more drama. If people didn't want more drama, they'd just delete/screen abusive comments. I avoid all forums with disemvoweling as a moderation tool, because I find the moderators use disemvoweling as way to indicate "these are the posters at which I want you to point and laugh".

I find it hostile and upsetting.

Hidden comments which have to pass a "do you mean it -- the OP thought this was bad because [fill in the blank reason]" would be accessible and less hostile.

[feathertail]

Agreed!

Perhaps hostility should be considered an accessibility issue? I know it's an issue for me ...

[zvi]

I hate the idea of this a lot, but I'd rather a rot13 solution than a disemvoweling solution, if I am over-ruled. I think disemvoweling has too many issues both with accessibility and non-English languages, where the vowel distribution makes it useless.

Question, for comments in non-roman alphabets, what does rot13'ing do?

[aedifica]

Question, for comments in non-roman alphabets, what does rot13'ing do?

Apparently nothing at all. I pasted some Greek text into http://www.rot13.com/ and it didn't change when I hit the button. (True, one could write a script that would know what to do with non-roman alphabets, all I'm really saying is that that particular site hasn't.)

[corvus]

I think disemvoweling has too many issues both with accessibility and non-English languages, where the vowel distribution makes it useless.

An example of such language: Finnish. It is usually difficult or impossible to understand disemvowelled Finnish sentences.

A disemvowelled word kt can be at least kaato, kaita, kate, kato, katu, keto, kiito, kita, kota, koti, koto, kuitu, kuti, kutu, kuutio, kaataa, kaatua, katua, kiitää, kitua, kutoa, äkätä, kuuta, aukeat, oikeat...

Most of the example words are not inflected. Often inflection (or further inflection) creates more kt words.

[susanreads]

I love "disemvowelling" as a word, but it looks like ROT13 is more accessible and more versatile.

[charmian]

I don't really like the concept of disemvowelling. I don't think the current procedures for dealing with abusive comments are that inadequate: we have deletion, screening, and freezing. I'd be more into something that would like hide the comment, with maybe a button for revealing it, should readers wish to see it.

[rainbow]

i like the word, but hate the idea; i have immense neuro-cognitive issues and would find it immensely frustrating to have blocks of text that are suddenly turned unreadable.

i've seen on a couple sites a placeholder for the text of a comment that says something like "this comment has been hidden due to low rating" with an option to show it anyway.

i'd strongly prefer something more like that; maybe a button to hide the comment (with an optional reason for hiding it field), but with a button viewers could click if they wanted to view it anyway?

[msilverstar]

whatever happens with the display, it's also an issue for search indexing. which one should be indexed?

[azurelunatic]

So supposing we combine the concept of "hide this comment unless the reader chooses to show it" with the ability to include an explanatory note on the original-comment-hidden version, set by the journal owner. This way, the journal owner could choose to leave it default ( This comment hidden by journal owner, click to reveal ) or something similar, or write a note about it ( We have BINGO, folks! Step right up to see the *ism in action! ), or the journal owner could manually disemvowel or ROT13 or other obfuscation method of choice, with the original available on click-through.

[zvi]

This is the best implementation of this idea, which I am still opposed to.

[jadelennox]

I agree with the text on both sides of zvi's comma.

[avendya]

+1 to this

[ninetydegrees]

I'm probably missing something here but I don't really see the point of frustrating (ridiculing?) hateful users or trolls. As a poster, I would rather delete a comment and ban a user and, as a reader, I would rather see a deleted comment and the user banned from further commenting.
I think the tools we have are fine enough.

[mskala]

Agreed. It's escalation; the last thing we should be doing is making that easier.

[mskala]

In general I'm strongly against anything that allows someone to edit someone else's comments, whatever the reason; but if the reason for it is to mock or punish the author of the comment, that makes it very much worse. Not something Dreamwidth should be encouraging at all. The limit of a journal owner/community maintainer's control over comments should be to allow them or not.

"Disemvowelling" isn't all that meaningful in many non-English languages. これをヂセンバーワル方が分かりません。 In fact the idea is pretty much only possible in alphabetic scripts with separate consonants and vowels; the idea isn't meaningful with any syllabic or ideographic script. Ｔｈｉｓ　ｋｉｎｄ　ｏｆ　ｗｒｉｔｉｎｇ　ｍａｙ　ｂｅ　ａ　ｐｒｏｂｌｅｍ　ｔｏｏ，　ｉｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｏｆｔｗａｒｅ　ｉｓｎ’ｔ　ｃｏｄｅｄ　ｃａｒｅｆｕｌｌｙ． However, that's really a side issue. It would be a bad idea even if it were possible in every language, and there's enough English on Dreamwidth that the fact it wouldn't work in many other languages wouldn't be prohibitive anyway.

[allchildren]

I really hate the idea that one user could alter the text of another dreamwidth user's comment. Delete or screen or hide unless summoned, sure, it's your space. But not change what another person registered on this site has said.

[triadruid]

This, for all the reasons mentioned above. I think the current tools are more than sufficient, and avoid drama/accessability admirably.

[lurksnomore]

While I like the option to "mask" potentially hurtful comments while still leaving a record that such a comment occurred, I am uncertain that disemvowelling is the best way to do this. ROT13 is a useful alternative. Basically, I think that something like either of these should be offered, but am concerned that disemvowelling may not work well in non-roman character sets. This may also be an issue with ROT13. Are there alternatives for the C-J-K continuum of languages?

[exor674]

+1 to proposed revision in http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/276646.html?thread=1794726#cmt1794726

[damned_colonial]

Ditto.

[liv]

I could sort of possibly live with the proposed alternative implementation where you semi-screen the comment, giving readers the opportunity to reveal the comment if they choose to, but not putting the offensive (or triggering or spoilery or whatever) text right in front of their eyes. I don't really like the idea, though; one of the things that I really like about the LJ / DW interface compared to other blogs is the very, very limited ability to edit comments and absolute prohibition on editing others' comments.

But disemvowelling per se is English-specific, inaccessible, and there are whole large internet communities that hate it so much on principle that even having the option is a source of drama.

[faevii]

I often want to know what it was that made everyone so angry, so I at least prefer "disemvowelling" over deleting comments altogether. However, since seeing it in action also confuses the hell out of me and I'm really bad at putting the vowels back in, I think that a hide/unhide function would be better. Or at least give readers the option to view the original comment at will.