Selective Delay/Prevention of Notification for Screened Comments

[sanguinity]

Title:
Selective Delay/Prevention of Notification for Screened Comments

Area:
Comment Notification and Comment Screening

Summary:
Notifications for automatically screened comments are sent to others AFTER the journal-owner makes the moderation decision to unscreen the comment. No timing change for notifications sent to the journal owner. Complementary changes to who can see a screened comment, to support the notification timings.

Description:
Currently, when a commenter (commenter2) replies to another commenter (commenter1) on a post where commenter2's comments are automatically screened, commenter1 gets an immediate notification about the comment, with the comment's complete text. This happens BEFORE the journal owner can make a moderation decision about whether to permit the comment or not. This is a problem for those of us who use automatic comment-screening to try to protect our commenters from harassment, since the notifications are mailed to commenter1 automatically. (I.e., a journal owner cannot use comment screening to protect a trans commenter from being harassed with transphobic comments; the journal owner can only keep the harassment from being conducted publicly.)

I suggest that there be two rounds of notification for automatically screened comments: the journal owner is notified immediately (no change from current system), while commenter1 gets the "someone replied to your comment" notice only after the journal owner unscreens the comment.

To support this, screened comments should only be visible to the journal owner; they should be invisible to the person the commenter replied to. (Alternatively, there could be two levels of screening -- owner-only or visible-to-other-people-in-the-thread -- but that seems like it might be confusing, and lead to errors in comment moderation.)

Poll #3833 Selective Delay/Prevention of Notification for Screened Comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
20 (50.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
9 (22.5%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (27.5%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

This happens BEFORE the journal owner can make a moderation decision about whether to permit the comment or not.

This is only one possible use of the screening function and changing the way comment notifications are sent would only be profitable to people using the feature this way.
Some conversations stay entirely screened, on purpose, and your suggestion means nobody would ever get notification of replies unless the owner unscreen then screen the comment again.

I'd like to add that implementing such a suggestion would also mean that there would be cases where you would never know someone had answered you. Yes, the comment may be deemed inappropriate by the entry poster for some reason but it doesn't mean the discussion can't be moved elsewhere. There are lots of reason for comment screening, not all of them relating to trolling, name-calling or other 'bad' things.

[matgb]

I sort of agree with your suggestion, and sort of agree with 900degrees above, but I ticked yes, but for different reasons.

I tend to get reply emails, go click the link, and archive the email. If the comment is still screened, I can't reply.

If the owner isn't going to unscreen it, I'd rather not know about it.

[sanguinity]

:: If the owner isn't going to unscreen it, I'd rather not know about it. ::

Yeah, I can't reply to it, I can't nothin', not until/unless the journal owner unscreens it. Which means I have to keep checking back to see if I can reply now. Even in good scenarios, the current notification system is an irritating hassle when I'm commenter1.

[axiom_of_stripe]

I'm surprised that it doesn't work this way already. I had thought that only the journal owner and the screened commenter could interact with screened comments in any way.

[zing_och]

*nods* Yes, me too.