The "screen" option for a comment you leave at someone's post

[tima]

Title:
The "screen" option for a comment you leave at someone's post

Area:
comments options

Summary:
Nice to have another option for a comment you leave at someone's post - screen the comment

Description:
Being in the LJ for 10 years I never understood why the "screen" option exists for an owner of a post only. People who comment someone's post do have an option "delete" for their comments, so why don't they have the "screen" option? To accomplish the same (in a way) result a commentator either has to send a private message directly to inbox or has to post a comment and immediately delete it to make it "invisible". Personally I hate to see a palisade of deleted comments mixed with still existing ones...

Poll #7079 The "screen" option for a comment you leave at someone's post

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 59

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
10 (16.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
7 (11.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
33 (55.9%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (11.9%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.4%)

Comments

[trixieleitz]

Just noting that, as I understand it, the screen comments option was only intended to help the journal owner manage spam and other unwelcome comments. It wasn't really meant to provide a private channel for communication; although it is true that that is how people use it sometimes, it is too easy to circumvent to be truly private.

[matgb]

Exactly--when I speak to anyone not from a DW/LJ culture, I always describe 'screening' as the same as 'moderating', which is what Blogger and Wordpress call it. Screening is under the control of the post creator, not the commenter, and that's how it should be.

[tima]

I am not so sure it was for the spam. When these feature developed we didn't have any spam yet. And you are right - people use it the way they do, so why do we keep this feature the way it was for 10 years and not develop for people use?

[charmian]

What's wrong with private messaging? That seems to be the best way, I think, if you want to communicate privately.

[elf]

PMing is removed from the context of the post, and doesn't allow HTML formatting. (Also, some people allow comments from anyone but PM from friends/access list only.) It also doesn't allow unscreening later, which might be relevant in a comment fic-fest or similar setting.

If there was a "send PM about this post" button, that might cover the same niche; as it is, sending a PM involves changing the page; there's no simple "scroll up to copy sections to reply."

Allowing commentors to screen for replies to very personal posts would be nice; it would prevent the need for the journal owner to say "all comments are screened; let me know if you're okay with unscreening."

And yes, the journal owner could change their mind & unscreen everything later anyway. And they could unlock posts & reveal private comments. That's not a reason to avoid offering the feature to the people who'd use it responsibly.

[tima]

Nothing, except I would need to start the message from an explanation why I sent it. Instead of simply make a screen comment. What's wrong with that? Is it end of the world?

[jerakeen]

Giving unscreening privileges to anyone other than the post owner would be problematic, but I do feel the need to be able to keep some comments I post private.

[tima]

I didn't say a word about unscreening.

[cesy]

So long as it was just the option to screen, not the option to unscreen, it would be fine.

[delladea]

+1

[tima]

absolutely. Only an owner should be able to unscreen.

[ratcreature]

I think this would muddle things too much. For example, if I screened a comment, say to hide my contact info, which seems to be a typical use, and then the journal owner was one to habitually unscreen comments, thinking it was some anti-spam measure, not expecting me to want to hide the contact info, that could blindside. It's better to be clear that it is the journal owner's right only, i.e. if I leave such a comment only in a post set to screened intentionally by the owner, and also be sure that the hiding and showing is out of my control.

[erik]

Journal posts are for discussion. Email or private messages are for private communication.

+1

[silverflight8]

 

[tima]

Some thing even in discussions need to be hidden sometimes

Besides, not all people have a luxury to keep their private email open all day long. And finally, instead of commenting right at the spot where everyone understand what are we talking about, I'd need to explain first to what my email or message is referring to.

[moonvoice]

Imho, if someone really wants to write something privately in response to a post, that generates a one on one dialogue, that's what the private messaging function is for (and I've used it). On some journals though, you can even just add a note; 'can you screen this comment please,' and most journal owners will oblige. But otherwise the private message function is an excellent one, and I've used it myself plenty of times to respond directly to posts.

[tima]

Nothing is wrong with PM, except I would need to start the message from an explanation why I sent it. Instead of simply make a screen comment. What's wrong with that? Is it end of the world?

[senmut]

I believe that comments to a journal post, not marked as 'will be screened' by the journal owner, belongs in the public domain (as defined by the privacy setting in effect on that journal, mind you). Anything not belonging in the public domain within a person's desire to comment should be channeled through PM or other contact method.

[elf]

The phrase "public domain" is problematic because it relates to copyright law; declaring anything to be in the "public domain" means releasing all legal control over it. But otherwise, I mostly agree. If you comment publicly, that comment enters the publicly-available aspects of the internet. Journal owner has the ultimate choice whether to screen, lock, unscreen or unlock.

However, we don't say "we're not giving the option to lock posts because people might say private things in comments, and then the owner might unlock the post." I like layers of granularity in privacy.

There've been plenty of times when I wanted to make a comment on a personal post and refer to past events, but didn't know how private the person considered those events. If I screened the comment, she'd have the choice to reveal it or not. I could post through PM (on a different page, without the same formatting options, and no direct link to the conversation), but that removes her ability to make it part of the broader conversation.

[elf]

I'd even be happy if it were an option for journal owners, rather than commenters. It could be part of the privacy settings on a jornal--"allow commenters to screen their own comments [y] [n]."

Unscreening is still up to the journal owner; once you've left a screened comment, like an anon comment, you can't undo it.

I can't understand the objections. Do people think there'd be widespread abuse inflicted by screened comments? Or is it a case of "I've never wanted this feature and therefore it's not important for anyone else?"

I have wanted this feature many, many times. Have wanted to be able make posts inviting deeply personal comments and say, "you can screen your replies" rather than "I'll screen everything and you have to tell me if you want that to be public." Have wanted to leave comments on other people's journal saying, "I remember that time when [X] and this seems similar," and give them the option whether they want [X] to be part of their current public identity. Have wanted to be able to leave screened typo notifications on fic posts, and public review-and-squee comments. Have wanted to leave "Cut tag, please" comments so they don't get in the way of later readers after the cut's been fixed.

I very much want journal owners to be able to decide what levels of privacy and publicity work for them, and this would help that.

[arethinn]

I'd even be happy if it were an option for journal owners, rather than commenters. It could be part of the privacy settings on a jornal--"allow commenters to screen their own comments [y] [n]."

I agree - this would be my "with changes".

[rho]

It occurs to me that comment screening may have become an overloaded concept in need of splitting. On the one hand, we have comment moderation, where the journal owner wants to see the comment before approving it to appear, and on the other hand, we have instances where comments are designed to be left hidden. The two possibilities have very different needs, so would it be worthwhile to split them into two separate options?

[denise]

Hm, I think that's sufficiently different from the parent suggestion that it should rate a separate suggestion!

[solitarywalker]

I think the difficulty here would be with later unscreening... if the commenter-screened comment is replied to, does that unscreen it? Would/should the journal owner be able to unscreen the comment (presumably against the commenter's wishes), or would this control be taken away from the journal owner (which would be odd as well).

I like the idea as far as it goes, and have wished for the same thing more than once, but it's problematic. Maybe something like "send private reply", as a link, which would send a private message with subject line Re: [post subject] would be a better way to handle this.

[matgb]

I concur, but having been testing, it'd need some changes to the PM compse system (HTML forms is something I never learnt how to do so I don't know what).

Currently, you can autofill the Update page (example) but trying to do the same thing for the message creator doesn't work (my attempt), it's possible I'm missing something in the code, but I don't think I am. If the latter is possible, it's doable in S2 easily and would create an expectation/invitation.

I have the former code hardcoded into my layout, and could easily also put the latter in there, but it'd need changes to the message centre to work it.

[montanaharper]

The benefit of this over PM, IMO and from the perspective of the journal owner specifically, is that it keeps all discussion in the same place. If someone wants to make a comment on something I've posted, but they don't feel comfortable with it being public, I'd rather they post something screened (which allows their comment to remain readily within the context of my original post) than PM me with it.

I also apparently differ from pretty much everyone commenting on the idea in that I think the screen/unscreen capability on a single-comment basis should belong to the commenter. To clarify: I think journal owners should always be able to screen any comment on their journal, and that they should always be able to unscreen any comment that they screened. I'm just suggesting that if a commenter screens their own comment, then that commenter should have exclusive right to unscreen it again. If people are unwilling to go for that as an exclusive right, then I'd like to see a notification option to let someone know if one of their screened comments has been unscreened by the journal owner. In fact, I'd like to see that, period, but that's the subject of another suggestion.

I agree with some previous suggestions that it should be up to the journal owner whether or not to allow commenters to screen/unscreen, period. I think that should take care of a lot of the objections, because it allows those people who like the feature to have it enabled and everyone else to avoid the issue entirely. And of course, journal owners always have the ability to delete unwanted comments, whether or not they're screened.

I can't really see any major possibilities for abuse, though, with allowing a commenter—in a journal whose owner has chosen to allow it, and in a situation where the journal owner hasn't set all comments to be screened—to screen and unscreen their comments, so long as it's treated the same way that editing comments is treated: i.e., once someone (in this case it'd be the original commenter or the journal owner only, since they're the only ones who can see the comment) has replied to a comment, it cannot be unscreened.

I also want to address the issue that matgb brought up:

Specifically, I don't, ever, like features that give an illusion of privacy that isn't there.

There's absolutely nothing to stop someone from copy-pasting (or screencapping) from a PM into their journal, and I'm willing to bet that more people feel that a Private Message has an expectation of privacy than a screened comment to a journal entry. PMs give an illusion of privacy that isn't there.

[matgb]

Oh, agreed, anyone can break a confidence with screencaps or copy/paste. And anyone can falsify such an instance as well. But that's an act of commission, you have to actively want to brak someone else's confidence (and for what it's worth PM is a shorthand used to refer to on site messages, but deliberately isn't called that on site that I'm aware of for the very reason you cite).

But a comment that's intended to be 'private' can be unscreened with an 'unscreen all' option, therefore there would be no technical breach, etc.

FWIW, your arguments are stronger--I can see a case for allowing people to make a private comment that they have control over. But for me, my journal is my space, I don't like giving control over what is and isn't displayed to others. But as you say, I'd still have control over allowing that.

[montuos]

If this option is implemented I would wish the following stipulations to be included:

1. Too many people are rabidly against screened comments, so there must be an option for the journal owner to be able to choose whether to allow commenters to screen their own comments at all;


2. Since a comment often leads to a reply, you have to assume that there could be a thread generated, and it is likely to continue to need screening, so once a comment has been screened, the entire following thread needs to default to being screened;


3. Since it is not always 100% clear why and for whom a comment needs to be screened, there needs to be an "OK to unscreen" ticky box for both commenter and journal owner to agree that it's ok before a comment can be unscreened.

That being said, I would still prefer that the general approach of Split comment screening into moderation and private comments be implemented instead. [Sentence deleted for stupidity; I've just re-read that post and realized that it's not actually describing how private comments should work, but only describing an approach to allow them to develop separately from moderation-screening.]