Split comment screening into moderation and private comments

[rho]

Title:
Split comment screening into moderation and private comments

Area:
comments

Summary:
As it currently stands, comment screening is used for two very different purposes. It's used to allow the journal owner to check over comments before they are visible, and it's used to make private comments that are never intended to be seen by anyone other than the journal owner. I propose that this functionality be split in two.

Description:
[Based on http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/548634.html?thread=3291930#cmt3291930]

The original idea behind comment screening was that it should be like moderation. The journal's owner would have a chance to read over the comments before they were visible, and delete any that were incendiary, inappropriate or just plain spam.

What with users being users, a lot of people have found other uses to put this feature to, though, namely as a method of making private comments that aren't meant to be visible to anyone other than the journal owner.

While I always think it's great when people find unexpected uses for features, the problem here is that the two main uses are very different and have very different needs. Features that will benefit one usage can be to the detriment of the other.

The obvious example here is what happens when you reply to screened comments. In the original implementation, a comment would automatically be unscreened when you reply to it. This absolutely makes sense in the moderation model, but is disastrous for the hidden comments model. As a result, Dreamwidth no longer automatically unscreens comments when you reply to them.

What I'm proposing is that the overloaded concept of comment screening should be split into two. That is, we should have two features, one of which would be for comment moderation, and the other of which would be for making private comments. The biggest advantage to this would be that the two features could then be developed separately and in their own directions, without needing to worry about how they impact each other.

I think it would also be useful in terms of clarity of what the feature is for. There are also currently instances where it's not immediately obvious why the author is screening comments. For instance, if someone makes an emotional post about a controversial subject, they might want to screen comments to moderate out trolls, or they might want to screen comments because they don't have the emotional energy for public discussion. With the split, this would become much clearer.

The biggest disadvantage I can think of for this is the added complexity. this would especially be noticeable when posting entries, since there are already a lot of available options there.

The following are NOT part of this suggestion themselves, but are intended as examples of the sort of thing that could be done if this split were implemented.

* A reversion to the old behaviour of moderating comments automatically when they're replied to for moderated comments only.

* The implementation of comment moderation whitelists of people whose comments display without moderation (possibly based upon access lists).

* Allowing people to see how many comments are awaiting moderation on a post.

* The option for private comments to be truly private and not have any way of them being made public.

* Comments on an entry being able to be enforced public, enforced private or (the new setting) commenter chooses whether to be public or private.

* Giving the poster of a comment the ability to change the privacy status of their comments (if allowed in journal/entry settings).

Poll #7106 Split comment screening into moderation and private comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 62

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
30 (48.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (4.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
11 (17.7%)

(I have no opinion)
17 (27.4%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (1.6%)

Comments

[adalger]

I'm voting implement. I'm commenting because I read the discussion a few days ago about "That's what private messages are for." I just want to make a case against that response in advance, for two reasons.

Reason the first: a large part of the beauty of DW is that there is a great deal of attention paid to how users are actually using the service, and a general lack of judgemental opinion from the devs on the topic. I love that the focus is on making what's available work how the users want it to, rather than trying to make the users use it how the devs think it should be used. (Maybe this belongs in the DW love meme?) This suggestion is a brilliant example of that.

Reason the second: PMs are unassociated with anything. They just come into your inbox, and if you're lucky there's a truly amazing subject line that lets you go right to the post and refresh yourself on the context that will let you understand the message. (Some of us need this. A lot of us need this when someone new to our journals is digging through posts from two years ago.) A private comment, however, would be associated with the post, and would presumably carry the link to the post itself with the comment notification.

So, if anyone's up in the air about this, I hope you'll consider my wheedling recommendation of this incredibly attractive feature and start coding it now register your vote in favor.

[matgb]

This is something that would probably be beneficial--I ticked 'no opinion' as I rarely use screening anyway. However, anything that strengthens the 'moderation' side a bit is a Good Thing, so splitting "I want to talk privately" away from "I want to choose which comments are published" would probably be good.

[zvi]

I am still of the opinion that this is what PM's are for.

I think that people would get confused about whether they were commenting or sending a message, I think that, without the implementations that this suggestion is specifically not including, we're going to confuse everybody who hasn't read this suggestion as to why there are two different things where there used to be just one.

I think that this has the potential to muddle what has been pretty clear since LJ started, that the OP controls how people content on their post.

[rho]

I think that the "this is what PMs are for" argument is a bit of a red herring, honestly. It might be what PMs could be fore, and possibly even what they should be for, but for a lot of people, the feature that they actually do use to do this is comment screening. As adalger commented, the Dreamwidth philosophy is to look at how features are actually used, rather than how they "ought" to be used or how they were designed.

The way I envisioned this working was that if this suggestion were to be taken forward, there would be some discussion about which optional extras to include along with it when it rolls out. If we aren't going to do anything to differentiate the two options, then yes, this would be absolutely pointless. My reasoning for specifying that they weren't a part of the suggestion was because I wanted people voting on and discussing the general idea behind the suggestion, rather than the specifics of implementation.

I also don't see how this conflicts with the idea that the original poster controls how people comment on their entries. The original poster would be able to set the options "comments on this entry are private" or "no private comments allowed on this entry" or whatever.

[lorax]

Reading comments, I see merits for both sides, but think that it IS better suited to private messages than developing a new feature.

However, what if the private message system had an option on posts, added to the post options. (track, edit, etc) that was something like "send private message concerning this post" and if that option is used, then the private message sent will automatically include a link to the post in question, and fill the subject line with that post's subject? As in any auto-fill thing, it could then be changed of course.

That would keep the association with the correct post, and make it easy for the person messaged to click on the link and re-read their own post to refresh themselves as to the discussion at hand?

I have no idea if that's implementable, or if it would solve the entire problem, but it was just an idea. :) I'm clicking no opinion, because I have no problem with them implementing the option as-suggested, either, I know a lot of people would make use of it.

[cesy]

I like this idea.

[lauredhel]

Is the process being discussed/suggested very different from a poll with a text entry box? Is the main issue the character limit on those boxes, or the difficulty of responding to the reply, or the fact that it's a paid feature, or a combo/something else? Sorry if the answer is obvious; I'm having a bit of trouble pinning it all down in my head.

[trixieleitz]

A poll might be a useful (if limited) workaround if the person posting the entry actively wanted to make a private commenting feature available on a particular entry.

However, as I understand it, the original issue concerns a feature as universal as commenting or private messaging - something that can reasonably be associated with an entry or journal without much effort on the part of the poster. In addition to the limitations you've noted, adding a poll to an entry is not something that happens automatically, so it requires recognition on the part of the poster that the option might be useful to their readers and effort to create the poll and include it in their entry.

[sally_maria]

+1

I think it helps solve the basic problem, while not changing the interface in such confusing ways.

[rho]

Hmmm. Interesting idea, and certainly something that I'd prefer over the status quo. There are two potential problems that I can see, though. Or rather, two reasons why I tend to prefer my idea.

For one, commenting is a core feature of the site, whereas private messages aren't. This means that comments are always kept up to date with the latest and greatest features, whereas private messages aren't. If things are shunted off into private messages, then there'll be a tendency to forget about them.

For two, while there would be a link from the message to the entry, it would only be a one-way link. There'd not be any link from the entry back to the message. That would mean you wouldn't be able to see all the comments/messages that were replying to an entry all in one place, or at least, not easily. Without that, I think that people would likely jut go on using comment screening for private comments anyway.

I do like your idea, though. It actually might be a good thing to add even if my suggestion is implemented.

[zvi]

I submitted a suggestion along these lines yesterday (after I made my comment), so we'll see what people think when presented with that option.

[ninetydegrees]

I'm not against this but I don't see how this can be implemented. What will be the options one can choose? How will owner and posters make the difference between the two options? For now, to me, it's just using still the same feature for two different purposes and that's confusing.

[green_knight]

You can currently decide who can read a post - everybody, yourself, access list, filters - and comments would work no differently. The exact implementation is a user interfact problem, but if users can cope with 'who will be able to read this post' they'll be able to cope with 'who will be able to read this comment.'

[ninetydegrees]

You can currently decide who can read a post - everybody, yourself, access list, filters - and comments would work no differently

Except this is not what's suggested here and there is no 'competing' or 'overlapping' option letting you screen entries regardless of the security level.

[green_knight]

there is no 'competing' or 'overlapping' option letting you screen entries regardless of the security level

I thought that was being proposed?

We already have mechanisms for 'make this content available according to its settings' on the reading list, so implementing the same mechanism for comments isn't, conceptually speaking, a big leap. This means that as a commenter you could decide that only the poster (or only people on your access list, or only people on a particular filter, should we go that route) can see the comment. This would cater to the 'I want my content seen only by [poster etc]. use of comment screening.

Screening - not making comments visible until the journal owner/community moderator has appropved it - is a separate mechansim, and would keep working as before.

[ninetydegrees]

This means that as a commenter you could decide that only the poster (or only people on your access list, or only people on a particular filter, should we go that route) can see the comment.

To me, the suggestion only takes two settings into account: public and private.

We already have mechanisms for 'make this content available according to its settings' on the reading list, so implementing the same mechanism for comments isn't, conceptually speaking, a big leap.

Viewers cannot change an entry's security level. This is a new behavior which is suggested here.

[green_knight]

Viewers cannot change an entry's security level. This is a new behavior which is suggested here.

It's not about viewers, but posters. We have 'set this entry to private/public etc.' This suggestion would mean 'set this comment to private/public'. Yes, it's new behaviour, but it maps quite well to something we already do - the poster decides who can see it.

*Screening* is about a viewer (or rather, the jornal owner/moderator): someone deciding who may view content somebody else wrote.

At least, that's how I understand this suggestion and how I'd implement it, and I would say that it should be relatively straightforward to add a 'who may see this' flag to comments and to query the post/comment database accordingly.

[axiom_of_stripe]

Here's a brief user story for private comments which are less useful as PMs: I might make a post saying "I'm mailing out X, so please give me your address (comments are screened)", and this permanently collects in one location the addresses of people to whom I mail X. If I got that list of addresses as PMs, I would be tempted to write out the address labels and then delete the PMs to clean up my inbox, but if I have them as comments then by default I keep them and have a record of what I did with X, plus a base from which to say "I'm mailing out X again, please let me know if your address has changed".

[green_knight]

I like the idea of private comments. Yes, DW already has a messaging system, but in order to send a private message you have to jump through several hoops, whereas a private comment could preserve the context and fit in more easily with the conversation.

I've seen a number of discussions on sensitive topics - eg, on mental health topics - that had comments set to screened and posters saying 'unscreen if you think it's helpful' and 'please don't unscreen'; it would be nice to be able to set this _as the poster_ so the comment _can't_ be unscreened accidentally.

I'm wondering whether comments could be unscreened to all, dwcircle, or access filters. Sometimes I want to snark to my friends without locking down the post or writing a new one; sometimes I want personal friends to be able to comment freely, but would like to screen replies by others. I'm not sure how viable this would be as a model, but I thought I'd throw it into the discussion.

Also, the 'xx comments awaiting moderation' would be helpful, because the number of comments can make a difference to whether I comment (am I the first or the fourteenth person to point out something?) or whether I mark a post as worth coming back to.

[turlough]

I can't make up my mind about what I really think of this, hence my Other vote.

[ninetydegrees]

Some of what is suggested here is very close to this other suggestion: http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/32608.html.

[montuos]

Ok, if I have finally understood correctly now that I have read it more closely, this suggestion limits itself to splitting screening as a whole into a moderation approach and a private comments approach, and does not directly concern itself with the features and implementation of either, other than allowing them to progress in different directions? So this is not actually the place to discuss how we would want private comments to be implemented, but only whether we would like them to exist in the framework in the first place?