Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash
Disclaimer π¨: No, despite the possibly misleading title of my post, I am NOT suggesting in ANY way that the team behind this platform is full of tyrants. Now, proceed.
Hey there ππ» I'd like to start the week at a different pace this time. Hence this post.
As of late, I took notice of some posts around here where the author has chosen to hide certain comments. I can imagine that this has been around since the very inception of this platform. However, hear me out.
I'm not entirely okay with the practice of hiding comments. I am, however, fully onboard with the idea of fostering a safe, inclusive and respectful community on this platform. I follow the Code of Conduct (CoC) almost to the letter and I understand and acknowledge the need for the CoC in the first place.
Here's the deal. Imagine that I post a blog here and someone leaves a comment I disagree with. As the author I have the "power" to hide this comment for whatever reason I see fit, even if the opinion expressed in the comment/by the commenter didn't violate the CoC in any way.
I will be honest with you all. On more than one occasion I felt tempted to hide a comment or two on my posts (especially the unsolicited and shameless self promo). But I chose not to do so. However, I am seeing more and more folks hiding comments on their posts. Yes, their posts are sometimes controversial and hence elicit really candid responses from other members of the community. In my experience, it would have been great to see the hidden comments. I want to see the bigger picture, not just what the author wants me to see. That's it. That's the "issue" I have with this.
Now let me be very clear, before anybody jumps to conclusions:
- I have no intention of telling people how to "moderate" the comments on their posts.
- I understand that the CoC is there for a reason and that it will be enforced no matter what. That's great. No objections there.
- No, despite the possibly misleading title of my post, I am NOT suggesting in ANY way that the team behind this platform is full of tyrants. They have noble intentions and are doing their absolute best to make and keep this place wonderful and welcoming.
The bottom-line is this:
- Do we want authors to possibly misuse the "Hide comment" feature? Do we want authors to hide comments that disagree with their narrative but are otherwise respectful, constructive and abiding to the CoC?
- Can we, as users late to the party, have a way of seeing the hidden comments? Never mind deleted comments, these are gone for good. (P.S. if there's a way of reading hidden comments, by all means please enlighten me.)
If I am missing something and this is already being enforced whatsoever, please share the relevant docs to such information. I am genuinely curious and just trying to contribute to making this corner of the net a little more wholesome. Would be a shame to see people getting censored just because an author fails to take criticism like a grown up. I've seen it countless of times across various platforms and would hate to see this take DEV.to by storm.
By all means, drop your comments and thoughts below. I won't hide them (no matter how great the temptation).
Have a nice week folks!
Still here? Catch me on Twitter or find me elsewhere! If you like my blogs and are feeling generous, kindly consider to ππ»
Top comments (134)
This has been on my mind recently too. It's a tricky one. If I experience abuse, I want to have the power to, in real time, delete/hide the comment that targets me without having to wait for content moderators to step in and remove potentially damaging or abusive content.
On the other hand, even just yesterday, a 100% respectful comment of mine I spent some time writing, got censored - presumably because it disagreed with the author's point of view. Whilst it's the first time this happened to me, I realise it must be a frequent occurrence overall. I don't see how we are to have productive discussions and healthy debates if we go around censoring each other's points of views.
I'm starting to think I'd rather forego the ability to hide/delete comments and rely on the content moderation team to assist me with a delay should I experience any issues, than exist in an echo-chamber with one-sided or heavily censored debates.
I love how we are all dancing around the post we are talking about here. Keeps things civil π
I think the solution to the "hide" part could be simple - if a post is hidden by the article author have the ability to view hidden comments under a "warning, this has been deemed inappropriate by the post author" section.
Deletion should be a last resort and only under the strictest of circumstances such as direct harassment or abuse or inciting hatred.
At the end of the day I do not envy the dev.to team, it is hard to create a safe space free from abuse, harassment etc. without rules that will inevitably silence some discussions, but the balance definitely feels "off" given recent events.
Yep, this is exactly what I'd like to see implemented. I want to see the hidden comments despite them being hidden in the first place.
Hmm, it feels like there must be a valid reason for why this feature doesn't exist. I can think of one situation where I'd immediately want to delete a comment instead of just hiding it behind an "inappropriate wall": if it revealed my address, phone number, and incited people to harass me. In matters of personal safety, the option to delete a comment yourself is useful, I'd argue.
I clearly don't have any answers :) All I know is I'd hate for open forums like this one becoming like the Twitter echo chamber we all know and hate (or love?). Diverse opinions are great, groupthink is bad, and I wish we all agreed not to go around censoring each other unless we have very, very valid reasons to do so.
Makes perfect sense. The difficult part is justifying valid reasons. I don't believe there's a shared idea on what a valid reason is (the CoC does exist of course).
I hope a member of the DEV/forem team hops in and shines a light on this somehow. On why some choices were made and what holds them off from taking other decisions.
You see, this is the very reason why I shouldn't make any decisions, I hadn't thought of such an important point. π€£π€£
At the very least then if something is deleted the person who wrote it should at least be able to view it (as I have reposted comments that were removed with a tiny amendment at the top and they were left up) and perhaps a reason should be given.
Saying that, if I posted your address on twitter, you wouldn't be able to delete that...but obviously that puts the onus on rapid moderation, not something a "small" team like the team at dev.to could do (and I actually don't know how quickly twitter would act on that either).
Perhaps we could display a "number / percentage of deleted comments" next to a users name, so we at least know who might be someone who silences people...just spit balling ideas though, it might also have unintended consequences!
This is the very point of this discussion: to brainstorm about this "issue". Together we can think up a pretty clever solution, I'm sure π
I'd be very much against displaying any sort of stats like that. DEV does well in not displaying metrics next to people's names at the moment, and I'd be sad to see them start, but regardless, starting with things that would most likely be considered negative is not the way. Someone who deleted 90% of comments could be the victim of someone with a bunch of sockies just as well as they could be someone who trolls and deletes.
A valid point, yet again, a lot of the ideas I am throwing out are half-baked, I am hoping that one of my poor ideas leads to a good one!
Fail-fast is a very dev minded way to go about it π
I do believe your ideas will contribute to a fully-baked one, haha! ππ
@sanspanic ,
Safety vs freedom huh. While your argument is valid, I think there's a way to let people not censorship anyone with safety in mind: if there are enough reports on a comment - only the mods should be able to view it.
Edit:
After thinking a bit more, I've come up with another solution: hide comments until mod review when they are reported for a specific violation (e.g. doxing, hate speech, etc.). If the report was false, some restrictions could be applied to the one who've reported a comment. And I'm pretty sure if that's the case, not everyone would want to report something they disagree with using these categories.
With this system, we would have a healthy discussion and a person would not be vulnerable to doxing and other bad stuff.
I have no idea what post "we" might be talking about here, for what it's worth. So the dancing is working in that it's not sending people off in an avalanche to comment somewhere that's already problematic!
No need to focus on whatever post or posts are meant. The bottom-line remains that some folks are being silenced for no good reason.
I honestly like that too. I'm here to just vent a little bit about how I feel but also I'm very strongly against any sort of pile on effect. We should continue to handle it respectfully. We are a community with a diversity of opinion and that's ok.
Exactly, also sometimes it is easy to just "see red".
The last thing we need is more people going to that post with them already having an opinion about it, it just leads to comments that aren't "on the line" it just leads to attacks.
Your comment was not hidden.
It was (unfortunately) threaded incorrectly because you replied to someone else instead of me. I hid their comment because it was abusive until the moderators could get to it.
This just tells me there is an issue with the platform's UI for replying when there are other replies.
It's frustrating to me that you assert here that it's because I disagreed with you, when I clearly didn't hide any of the rest of your comments, and had dialogues with at least 15 other people who also disagreed with me.
I opened an issue for this on github: github.com/forem/forem/issues/13730
I was motivated to engage with the current article due to my recent first experience with censorship. You'll note that I never linked to your post or left any identifying information whatsoever, neither did I assume that the article was about you - in fact, I'm fairly certain it wasn't. I did nothing wrong. I'm just trying to live my life and engage in the topics I'm curious about. The reason I'm curious about this topic might have been initially inspired by how your actions in your comment section affected me, but now no longer has anything to do with you.
I'm not attacking you, and I'm definitely not looking for a fight. In fact, I'm really scared of you and your 30k Twitter followers who you just actively tweeted at about a group you call "us" behind our back, LINKING to this article. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
It's not, and I'm not asserting it was.
This comment thread was linked to me on Twitter because it was very obvious to anyone with context (including other people in this thread as you can see) was talking about me.
You specifically stated that I hid your comment because I disagreed with you. That is simply not true, as I did not even hide your comments. I agree it is unfortunate that your comment was hidden as a result, as well, and definitely not my intention, nor do I think that's what every author would want to happen unless they choose to hide an entire thread.
To be clear, I didn't say you attacked me, nor am I saying that you did. The idea that you gave identifying information to anyone with context of my post really isn't an issue to me, nor is talking about how you feel about the fact that I hid comments, and talking about how the platform gives me the right to do so. My issue is that you said I did something that I did not do, and went further to say why I did that thing that I did not do, when a large portion of your argument against my post is precisely that you feel I was making assumptions about the antagonist's motivations that I couldn't possibly know for certain.
You may be reading this as hostile, and I have to accept and take responsibility for that, but I emphatically express that I am not being hostile. I am frustrated that I'm having to defend moderating my own content and further that it's as immature as "they disagreed" when there are 60+ comments of dialogue, including your own, debating the topic.
I'm sorry that you're scared of me, and in terms of power dynamics, I understand that I have that kind of advantage. I am doing my best not to create a pile-on, which is the reason I hid some of the comments.
The link to the article was to a moderator, not to my 30,000 followers. Only people who follow both her and I, or drill down into that content would see it. And that audience is extremely limited.
Cher, this is a separate article about a separate issue. I was not accusing YOU of anything. I simply said that I recently had my first experience of censorship, without providing context or clarification.
I follow Amelia, and so I was one of the first people to comment on this article, if not the first one. I wasn't jumping on a bandwagon of a pre-existing, obvious theme. I simply mentioned my experience, in the fresh and empty comment section of a new post.
As for "assuming": how could I have known my comment got hidden due to a bug, and not your intention? That shouldn't ever be anyone's default assumption when they see the message "some posts have been hidden by the post's author". I implore you to put yourself in my shoes and have some empathy with the fact that assuming I got censored was the most logical assumption to make. Besides, when I ended up on the "comment graveyard" URL, I saw some other comments, similar to mine, that had also been hidden. How could I assume anything other than what I did, seeing multiple comments like mine tucked neatly away?
I would have stayed the fuck out of this article had it already had a lot of engagement, because as I said, I'm scared of your power and the ramifications our public interactions can have on my career and my life. You have 30k followers, and a DEV mod immediately replied to your tweet that they'd aid you if you need it. I don't think that's fair to the many people who have expressed their opinions here, opinions that have nothing to do with your article or you as a person. Seeing that Twitter interaction between you and the mod honestly made me lose faith in the fairness of this platform.
In summary: I can only speak for myself, but I've moved on from your article! I was thinking out loud about censorship in general, not in reference to you.
I'm not on a mission to tarnish your reputation or even engage with you at all at this point, and I really hope you stop referencing me in your tweets (which is, despite your claim, something I distinctly managed NOT to do in my interactions here) - your hostility towards me is causing me a lot of hurt. I'm here to help people like me transition to coding from a diverse background. I care about making coding accessible to all, I'm passionate about mental health, equality and I like to defend the underdog, even if the underdog is, god-forbid, a cis het white male on occasion. I'm not here for this, and I feel nauseous at how this escalated.
One last thing, you're wrong to assume you did not create a pile-on, and you're wrong to think you've hidden the post. I can see it, and I follow neither you nor the moderator.
I'll resign to the fact that you weren't saying I was responsible for hiding it, but surely you can see how you are implying that I did.
This contradicts what you just said... but you could have waited for me to reply your repost? You could have asked me? I certainly didn't engage with you in a way that suggested I was uncomfortable with anything you wrote, and I even "liked" your final post because I was too tired to reply, but wanted to express that I appreciated it.
I do, and I implore you to do the same.
I was honestly refreshed by our interaction, and given that so much of the emails I received were openly hostile and misogynistic, it was nice to engage in a discourse with not only no aggressive undertones, but also with someone who has had at least some similar experiences to me to discuss an opposing viewpoint. I sincerely appreciated our discourse.
When I was linked this thread, it wasn't pointed to your post (though I chose to reiterate that I didn't hide your comment as was implied, and link to it, and the issue I raised in github) because it was clear to others that it was about me and while the author as the ability and right to hide my standing up for myself and correcting misinformation, I hoped she wouldn't given her position on the matter.
When I got here there were already more than 100 comments here. They were already watching it because of that. She just expressed if there was any sort of abuse happening that wasn't getting dealt with, to reach out to her directly, because it's already a lot for the mods to handle as it is.
Furthermore, my tweet actually had nothing to do with your comment, but rather many of the others. I don't actually think your comment on its own would be so obviously identifying, except if someone clicked through your profile, and while it frustrated me, it only prompted me to correct you and work to solve the underlying issue by opening a github issue.
Can you point me to the pile-on? I don't see that here or on Twitter.
I didn't say I hid the tweet. I was saying that I actually hide replies and comments at times because they are aggressive in tone and I don't want anyone else to jump all over the person to defend me or attack them.
I didn't think you were. I haven't referenced you in my tweets. It confuses me again, why you are saying you didn't reference me in your comments here. This isn't hostility. I'm sorry that it's coming across that way, as I said before, I'm actually trying really hard not to express the frustration that your assumption made me feel, and I'm struggling to find language in anything I've written that can be read as hostile, outside of the fact that we are clearly at odds over a misunderstanding.
You are not the only one hurting here. I'm glad you've moved on, and I had hoped that the churn of a new issue would give me the space to do that as well, but I didn't get to do that. I was linked a thread of people openly expressing their disdain for me (not including yours), and your implying I hid something because you disagreed with me, after I felt like we had a really good dialogue cut deep.
I wish you the best, truly.
What I understand least of all is why you hold me accountable for making an assumption that this website literally DISPLAYED AS A MESSAGE to me. I got told my comment got hidden by the post author. And I got led to a URL where I saw others like mine, also hidden. I don't understand what happened on a technical level. I also don't understand, on a human level, why you think my assumption that I got censored, given the information I had, was the wrong one.
I am so sorry, I wrongly understood based on what was said here that folks' comments have been hidden without being notified, unlike when it's deleted, and because in your reply on my post that it simply 'disappeared' because it was no longer in our conversation thread, and that you reposted it thinking it was a technical issue.
I have never had a comment hidden or deleted, so my understanding is based entirely on what has been presented here and in your reply on my post about it.
I didn't have the information that you were sent a notification that I hid it, so hopefully that clears that up.
I completely understand now why you believed that.
I hope you can understand, from my perspective, why I was confused and hurt by what you said here, without the context that you were notified.
@sanspanic Hi Hello Hey - I'm the mod you're referencing above.
I offered to step in because I know what it's like to be a woman on the internet as I'm sure you do as well! Things can turn toxic incredibly quick, especially when you're speaking out.
As a mod I have a responsibility to enact the COC put forth by the DEV team. I would never abuse that. I was apart of DEV from dang near the beginning. This community means a lot to me and I want to ensure peoples voices are heard.. IN A CONSTRUCTIVE MANNER. As do the other moderators of the site! There's an active mod chat where this article was flagged long before it came across my radar. Everyone on the Dev team want to make sure this community stays safe for everyone. That's it.
Just wanted to clear up any confusion on where my intentions lie. I'm a big fan of Cher, I'm a big fan of Dev, and I'm a big fan of authors having control over their space on this site. Carry on. :)
Hi Kim. If this thread was already on your radar, then it means it was already getting moderated, so why engage publicly on Twitter? This platform also means a lot to me, I'm pretty sure it's basically the reason I now have a developer job. To get unfairly targeted on Twitter by someone with a large following, based on assumptions that even Cher herself has since apologised for, and to then see a content moderator of this website essentially say "I've got your back", makes me feel all kinds of sad and unwelcome.
Also sad is the fact that I've just posted a new article, arguably my most useful one yet, and I've never had less engagement. I can't shake the feeling that I've been put into a category of "troublemaker" and suppressed. All for speaking up, and respectfully sharing my opinion, which on ONE occasion happened to deviate from the norm.
The lesson here for me is that I need to bite my tongue before disagreeing on sensitive issues, if I am to remain in the moderator team's good esteem, and retain access to what has until now felt like a welcoming and safe space.
That's not how moderation works, we honestly don't have much power.
It wasn't on my radar, it was brought up in a mod chat. I've not been on DEV for a bit, so I was unaware. As my tweet said, If there's a need for a mod let me know. I've offered that to others as well. Need for a mod == CoC was violated and is going unchecked. A lot of content goes through this site, it's easy for things to get missed.
I'll RT your article right now. Hopefully that will help drive some engagement. Best of luck Sandra - I'm glad you're here and a constructive contributor to this conversation, for what it's worth.
Apology not accepted, I am hurt and thanks to you, Iβve lost both followers and faith in this website and at least one of its moderators. I feel like I have to take my content elsewhere. For an early career developer, losing my momentum and the opportunity to reach people in this way is a pretty big deal.
You have 30k followers and with that comes a responsibility to check your tweets before you make incendiary statements that are not backed up by facts. The most ironic thing is that youβre talking about me behind my back and making wrong assumptions, in what I can only assume to be a bout of cognitive dissonance, about me experiencing cognitive dissonance, and making wrong assumptions whilst talking about you behind your back.
Sandra, I apologized for being frustrated with you and for saying you had no basis for assuming I purposefully hid your comment, because it was a misunderstanding. I didn't even express myself in any emotional way to you until you responded to this comment with hostility.
You claimed I did something I didn't do, I respectfully corrected you and let you know I found it frustrating that you attributed it to simply disagreeing with me, when there's obviously a ton of dialogue between myself and others AND YOU that I did not hide that is based entirely around disagreeing with me.
I'm trying really hard to be understanding of the dynamics here of having a discussion with someone with a large audience, and believe me, I've been there, but saying I targeted you on Twitter is just categorically false. This is absolute exhausting and I think my good graces and patience are spent on this matter.
I did not drive anyone directly, nor indirectly, to your content. Not on Twitter. Not here. Not on backchannels. I responded to you, both on your repost and here, where you mentioned it.
I've told you more than once, that tweet was not about you. I made no wrong assumptions. You assumed I deleted your comment, which I didn't know at the time you received notification of, and I corrected you, here, on this platform.
I sincerely wish you the best, but I cannot psychologically handle this dialogue with you any further.
Patrick, you are posting on a public thread, on public articles where anyone can see what youβre saying. Anyone could have pieced together what article many of these comments are referencing.
Please see Michaelβs comment with more info on this safety feature of hiding comments.
The DEV team is always open to suggestions to make things better, if you have ideas!
dev.to/michaeltharrington/comment/...
The fact that many people came here, independently, interested in this topic after having recently felt censored, is a natural result of many people having recently felt censored.
You continue to make us feel like we did something wrong by simply talking about a subject we have interest in, without any disrespect, without names, without links, indeed even without any recognition that a lot of us had been involved in the original post as well - for example, I never saw Patrickβs comments until now. They had, after all, been removed.
And you, a supposedly neutral moderator, are here because the author LINKED to this post on her public Twitter with 30k followers, actively pointing towards our cognitive dissonance. Youβre making us feel like we were wrong to discuss something because it could have easily been linked to the initial post.
Doesnβt this strike you as problematic, even hypocritical?
If you think this thread is insensitive because it is public and could have too easily been traced back to some other thread, why do you think itβs okay for someone with a huge public platform to literally DIRECT people here?
Again, this is a public post on a public article. Never did I say this thread is insensitive. Never did I say this was wrong to discuss, in fact I believe I thanked you for being a constructive contributor to the conversation.
If you or others feel anything in this thread/article or any other has been unfairly moderated, you're welcome to reach out to yo@dev.to.
This is the last thing Iβm going to say here.
I did not direct anyone here other than a moderator. I showed you how it works, and that an audience of 20 people saw the link, and only that moderator has chimed in, reflecting that intention in its impact.
Everyone who saw this on their own that had context knew you were talking about me, which is why I was linked it in the first place.
Claiming that I have branded folks villains, censored people for opposing viewpoints, and the lack of general consideration for me as a human being led me to feel compelled to defend myself.
You continue to push that all the commentary here has been respectful, and I donβt agree. It felt, as the subject, I was being dehumanized by being robbed of my perspective while folks publicly βventedβ about how I moderated my own space, for my own mental health.
I am kindly asking you to stop saying Iβve done things that I have not done.
And a final note, context is key. And more often, ditching the context is powerful. It's easy to share one side of a story and not allow anyone else's to be surfaced. I hope that's what we are ultimately talking about here (in this article). Please take time to reflect on how we feel when our content is hidden, but also when we strategically hide others' to tell an untrue story.
vs
Not my website, not my decision! I'm a volunteer mod, as with many others that have already been responding in here!
There's an existing bug linked below. I will add a comment that notifications should be included as well.
github.com/forem/forem/issues/11636
Also I'll respond with I was watching that thread as well, just to ensure things stay civil. I feel both sides are expressing how the interaction made them feel. If you feel otherwise, or feel my judgement is not neutral, you're welcome to message yo@dev.to to get further help.
Sorry about that! I'm relatively new to the site; thanks for the clarification. π
Hi @cher and @sanspanic . I want to apologize for the hidden comment feature's tooling and messaging, and how it's not as clear as it needs to be. It has caused a lot of misunderstanding, and what I believe has allowed for a decent part of the back and forth that you two had. I'm truly sorry for that.
If it's any solace, I'm taking a lot of the feedback here in this post and the discussion, and will be sharing it with our product team. There's a lot of room for improvement and additions to our tooling and messaging here. We definitely want to make sure folks can engage in the content and not spend a lot of their emotional energy feeling frustrated at misunderstandings.
I really appreciate you both sharing your thoughts on the platform, and hope you two can feel a little bit more at ease that Forem is keeping all of this mind.
Yikes, so sorry to hear about that!
I have to agree that one cannot solely rely on the moderators. I haven't been offended/disrespected by anyone around here (yet) but when that does happen, I think I'd rather report the comment instead of hiding it. I think I don't "benefit" the community by hiding the person's comment. By this I mean: "You said what you said. I won't protect you by hiding your harmful comment. Let the world see your true colors. After all you were very comfortable insulting/bullying someone online." Yes, I happen to be that radical at times π
But in all seriousness. This practice needs to be addressed somehow. Having constructive conversations online is becoming impossible. Most of the time things are either black or white, there's no greys in between. You either agree with them or you are against them. I get it, taking criticism is hard. But shutting out other people's opinions because you disagree with them is just bogus.
Thanks for sharing your experience and thoughts on this one!
My thread of comments was censored too. This felt like a battle of attrition and I lost.
Coincidentally it took exactly the same angle as yours; except I persisted until I was personally accused of "sweeping it under the rug." There was a bit too much drama and emotional retort (even after spending several hours in my replies) that I simply deleted my comments after they got censored (and having received a couple likes).
The crazy thing was that I agreed on the bigger picture; my fault I guess was nitpicking at a particular detail which didn't align with the author's perspective.
I see myself as such a hardcore geek; like, I live (like all of you) "in the weeds." I care so much about the subject matter and it really matters to me that everyone else also be able to enjoy their passion too, freely. I don't care what your race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or religion is.
EDIT: I really tried to move on. Even though I thought I had vented here, encouraging others not to call her out, I figured we had moved past this issue and came to agree that we are a community with a diversity of opinions.
However, the author decided to track me down here and use my own "final straw" against me. After my thread was hidden, she then revealed purposefully found me here and then revealed that, actually, she hid my comments because she felt attacked by me. This was not my intent; I sincerely thought I largely agreed with her except for a single detail (the core thesis of her article).
However, I'm now in a position where I feel forced to publicly defend my statements because of this escalation. Please see my latest comment on the current article for more context on the original conversation between her and I: dev.to/patricknelson/comment/1ecpj
I'm saddened to hear this. I really am. So sorry you were branded the villain. You don't strike me as a disrespectful person at all.
Thank you. It was an interesting but nuanced discussion with some complexity to it. At the end of it, I just felt dismissed (as it appears the author did), even though I thought I largely agreed with them.
Even on dev.to, anything politically sensitive still runs the risk of descending into a potentially toxic discussion; ironically, even if the discussion itself is about toxic discussions.
Considering the time and effort it takes, to honestly consider the opinions of others (particularly those you disagree with) and to write a well thought out opinion of your own, it's often much easier to simply not participate. Particularly if the subject matter is at all potentially contentious in any way.
One lesson you could learn from this to simply stay anonymous or just don't get involved. However, I feel that degrades the quality of the content and the level of consideration, because I genuinely want to represent myself well when my name is publicly attached to to what I'm saying.
This is what upsets me the most! You basically agree with them but they still censor you. I just don't get it! How much lower do we have to fall as humankind?
I really don't like how things unfolded at all. Things were a hot mess over the weekend. And to think we are supposed to continue our lives like nothing happened. Oh boy, the audacity...
This is one of the reasons why people don't engage with any kind of content these days. They don't feel heard. They feel dismissed. They are treated like the villain. That's really uncool I must say.
I really don't know how to feel about this whole thing, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. Chances are not much will change, because entitled folks will be entitled folks and well, the minorities are sacrificed along with their opinions.
The sad thing, to me, is that despite not using my name, you are all doing the very thing you postured against me doing. I never "branded" anyone a "villain".
I am exhausted after many days of having to respond to hundreds of comments, often repeating the same exact points over and over to each person making the exact same points.
@patricknelson :
Our exchange in particular left me mentally extinguished and I felt that your final reply to me threw out what I spent a significant amount of time and thoughtfulness writing to focus on one single word, dismissing all of that time and energy. I don't actually feel like our interaction was a healthy one at all, and somehow I had missed that, and on top of that, it made no points from you, nor from me, that weren't readily readable and available in any of the other dozens of comment threads challenging my post.
Your comments read to me as increasing in aggression, with the last one being the final straw to me.
I'll leave with this. You have absolutely zero right to take up any amount of space in my head, nor on my posts. You aren't entitled to a dialogue with me, nor am I to entitled to one with you. While I appreciated you taking the time you did to share your differing opinion, I, again, felt like your tone got increasingly more aggressive, and so I chose to simply disengage and let the other threads that remained more constructive into arguing these two opposing viewpoints stand on their own.
While I apologize that this made you feel victimized, I want you to consider that I hid your content because I felt attacked by you.
Edit:
Neither of these things are true.
I was linked this thread of people talking about me, because it was obvious they were talking about me. I read the thread. I replied where I felt I wanted/needed to defend myself.
You really are getting worked up for nothing. Nobody mentioned your name or your post, why not just move on with your life? This post is about the habit of authors hiding comments and about how it invalidates the opinions of the commenters. This post is not about YOU. So please stop justifying yourself and move on.
I'm replying to specific comments about me, in this thread. Thank you for your input.
Redacted.
EDIT: Full deleted thread here.
EDIT 2: Cleaning things up here since it has gotten messy. Basically I'm asking that she not reply to me again and that I disagree strongly with her message above. I'll leave it at that.
@cher I gave it more thought, reread what I said, what you said and etc. Please accept my apologies on this and the original thread. I was definitely too pedantic in my last comment to you and cut it unceremoniously short, I honestly wasn't in the best state of mind at the time; however that's no excuse. When I saw the notifications, I selfishly felt very overloaded (nothing like what you're experiencing, I'm sure). I took it much to personally as well and that's my fault. I hope you can understand and I don't expect anything in return per se. I've already made sure to edit out or remove most of my statements if it helps.
I appreciate this a lot. I can understand feeling overloaded (I was there, too, when I started hiding comments to control the flow of notifications and repeating myself, mostly).
Hopefully we can all be a little more empathetic here and remember we're all just humans with totally different experiences trying to come together for a better understanding to work towards a more equitable and healthy environment.
dev.to/devteam/changelog-hidden-co... This is a useful post.
indeed is! Seems like I woke an old demon today, by addressing this "issue" once more, haha
I seem to have an unpopular opinion on this, but I think it's fine for the author to be able to hide comments.
This makes dev.to similar to a personal website, where you have complete control over your content and deleting comments.
dev.to could have taken a different approach, such as being more like a guest blog post website (where you can't necessarily delete your post or the comments), or being something like reddit (where you can't delete the comments, only moderators can). But I like this approach. It means that we can make posts and feel safe about them. If we get inappropriate or irrelevant comments, we can hide them. And we can do so based on our opinion. In the end, the post and page can look exactly how we want them to. It's our content after all.
But I still think that only inappropriate (and possibly completely irrelevant) comments should be hidden. If someone deletes a constructive comment with a different point of view, that just means they couldn't support their point of view in an argument. So their point of view probably doesn't have merit. Also, everyone loses out on good discussion. Finally, it gives a bad impression to viewers of that page that the author isn't fair and may unfairly hide opposing comments. So I think that's sufficient punishment for the author.
The response is to make your own post with your own point of view.
It's not ideal, but I personally think that this con is worth it for the ownership it gives the author over their content. The point of view with the most merit can still come out on top. Additionally, I hope that people who hide comments are the minority.
Sidenote: There are many comments that are unconstructive (in my opinion), such as:
I don't delete these kind of comments personally, but I wouldn't blame someone for wanting to delete them. And I wouldn't want them to have a jury of mods that need to agree on whether it meets their threshold of "low quality" before they're deleted.
I actually agree with you. In my opinion, you can't have both: self-moderation of your content to protect you and complete freedom of speech. If you want one, the other goes away.
Each community needs its own approach. If DEV was about politics, I would be all in for complete freedom of speech. But it is about software development and computer science, so an insecure person hiding an opposite opinion won't make that much of a difference (even though is not a nice move). If you notice that a well intended comment is removed by the author, then remember his/her name and don't engage with them again π€·. It's bad for you, but it's better for vulnerable people.
Yeah, it seems like they contradict at some level.
Also, interesting mention about politics there. I hadn't considered it. It's interesting to think about how we'd do things differently for different topics and what impact it might have overall. Thanks :)
Thanks, Spyros. I believe that each community should have different purposes or we wouldn't want to even use the Internet!π
Certainly a fair point
It's a very valid opinion; I think the nuance for me was not on the existence of the feature, but maybe more how authors decided to use it when mixed with politically sensitive issues (which could get heated, importantly). This may actually entrench individuals on each "side" (when drawing lines) in the debate, particularly if they feel they are being unfairly silenced. So, the issue is not with the ability to censor itself (which I agree should still remain on dev.to, even though I "fell victim" to it), but rather the decision that is then made to censor someone after an hours-long back-and-forth that can potentially have unexpected side effects.
But that's up to the author.
On the flip side, I do moderate a minor subreddit of my own. As the moderator, I'm careful not to remove comments unless they violate some pretty obvious rules (i.e. follow "reddiquette," no harassment, bullying, name calling, hate speech, etc etc). This rarely ever happens, but: Even if I end up on the unpopular side of a discussion and end up with some negative karma, I will not flair my posts or delete comments or ban users or anything along those lines. For me it's more important that we have a forum where folks can discuss openly without fear of the moderator disagreeing with them. If it ever went that far (it hasn't yet), I'd rather just take all the negative karma and potentially just delete my comment in shame rather than use my power to moderate the discussion to my liking.
However, that's a completely different context and a totally different forum and type of discussion. Even in a place like dev.to though, I think I would still apply that approach. Particularly in the world of development. I can't count how many times I've had an opinion that ended up changing because I realized I was "doing it wrong" or that there ended up being much better ways of doing something that I never considered.
It's alright to have an unpopular opinion, absolutely fine by me!
I personally don't bother hiding comments (not even the shameless promo I get every so often in my comment section). I just leave them be. Not everyone has to agree with me on everything, and I've come to terms with that.
I started blogging with the intention to share what I know with others. And despite being in "full" control of my content, I don't feel motivated to weed out every last comment on my post. I just leave people be. I challenge self-promoters here and there and those that don't have anything constructive to add to the conversation ("This post is useless"-kind of comments). They usually don't interact back. Perhaps, because they feel like they are in the minority or because they are trolls.
Either way I stand for the protection and safety of the author, but I also value other people's views and I don't believe everything needs to be "censored".
Food for thought. Spicy way of starting the week, if you ask me. π
I think what you do is very good. I also leave almost all comments alone, even troll comments. So in a sense, I don't exercise "full control" over my content either :).
I guess we only have a different opinion at the extremities. I also definitely think that censoring opposing points of view is bad for the community. But I still believe that your content, on your page, should be your own. Other people can still get their view across on their own posts, which technically solves the censorship problem.
It's not ideal, but I think this way, the author can feel 100% safe, rather than have other people decide for them on what's allowed or not on their content.
But that's just my opinion and where I would like the balance. You've made some great points too. In the end, it's up to community to decide :).
Heyo!
Thanks for bringing this tricky issue up... I can definitely understand the pushback against giving authors the power to hide comments on their post. β
Just for the record, here's the changelog post that originally came out describing the feature in case anyone would like to review the motivation and thoughts on the feature at the time of release.
First off, I don't think that giving authors the ability to hide comments on their post is a perfect solution. As you pointed out, it allows authors the freedom to hide any comment on their post, which means that authors may hide warranted criticism or any other discussions that they disagree with.
On the other hand, not giving authors this ability, means that the author must report a comment that they think should be removed from their article and wait for an admin to remove (or not remove) that comment based on whether it has violated the Code of Conduct as it's interpreted by the admin who is reviewing reports β after all, we're humans and so may have slightly different interpretations of how a comment should be handled based on the CoC. That waiting could be an excruciating experience for someone who has been majorly slighted or worse had their info doxxed.
Ultimately, we decided that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks β that we'd rather allow authors the ability to hide comments on their own post (without needing to report a comment) because we think providing this safety feature and giving authors the agency to control the discussion on their own post is more important than allowing an a commenter's comment to stay visible on a post when the author doesn't want it to be there.
Maybe there is some middle-ground area here that we could take. I definitely understand the idea of making it so that hidden comments are still visible to all by clicking in somewhere else to see them. On one hand, I really like this idea as it seems like a nice compromise, but on the other, I feel like it does sort of undo the purpose of making the comment hidden if it can easily be clicked to. I'd slightly worry that people would be drawn to read these comments because they want to see whatever controversy is happening on the other side.
Maybe when an author hides a comment that comment should be flagged behind scenes to DEV staff. I have a feeling that some of the time a comment is hidden and not necessarily reported... in some instances, we actually may want to take a harder stance against the commenter whose comment was hidden. Perhaps they have breached our Code of Conduct and need further action taken against them? On the other hand, maybe the comment was "This post is plagiarized" and thus it's the author, not the commenter that has broken our Code of Conduct and needs further action taken against them. I could see us potentially opening up a section for admin to review hidden comments.
While I think there are issues with allowing an author to hide any comment on their post, I still believe that the safety benefits outweigh the downsides. I do think it's worth exploring some inbetween options though and will bring this up with the team. Thanks for the honest feedback here and hopefully we can come up with ways to improve this feature!
Thanks for sharing, I'll take a look at it!
Yes, and well, because of this things often go sideways, haha.
I admit that it adds a significant overhead, but through this discussion, I hope anyone can freely contribute possible solutions and middle-ground approaches to improve the platform.
I knew that you guys thought long and hard about this. I know that perhaps not everyone is fully satisfied with the current way of doing things but it can surely be addressed. Yes, I don't want authors to feel unsafe but I can't help but sympathize with those whose comments have been hidden or deleted in an unwarranted way.
Anyhow, I hope that this discussion brings in some great suggestions that can be helpful to the DEV/Forem team!
Thanks for dropping in!
I've also had a comment hidden. I was suspicious of plagiarism because I remembered the exact word-for-word introduction and general outline of the post (I remembered because it was actually an excellent article). It looked like the original had been deleted as the only evidence I could find was a tweet with the introduction linking to a now non-existent article.
I left a comment with my evidence and simply asking for an explanation. They removed my comment. It turns out they were the original author and were just republishing for themselves instead of the organization it was originally published under (which I learned from the DEV team after reporting the post). Why couldn't they simply leave that explanation? Why hide my comment? It just makes you look guilty. I lost a lot of respect for that author. If I ever see their post I wonder "what comments are you hiding?"
Since then I've sworn to never remove comments on my articles unless they are truly harmful (doxxing, harrassment, vulgur, etc.). I could remove "unhelpful" comments; but I'm not going to, stifling conversation is not a good way to learn and grow.
I think unhelpful comments like that should be flagged still. A comment like that would be enough to put some new devs off following the career and that's a huge shame. I'm sorry they were like that (though you're right, it feeds the algorithm π)
You know I keep forgetting that I have "trusted user" privileges... I don't want to take the team's attention on something so mild that I can handle, but I did mark it
Low Quality. Looks like I was the tipping point:SPOT ON! Couldn't agree more!
It's sad to hear how unprofessionally you (and others) are being treated. And this is exactly what I mean. Some authors abuse the "power" they have over their posts and those who get to comment on them. This needs to be addressed because it's getting out of hand....
Thanks so much for joining and sharing your experience!
I have only been notified of one comment of mine being deleted, and it was one pointing out a flaw in the post's premise. I contacted the author and came to a satisfactory conclusion (though I can't remember whether they restored my comment or updated their post or what tbh it was a while ago).
I'm sorry to hear that... it's always sad when someone responds that way.
I think the cover picture and title are a little exaggerated. Comparing a discussion forum to governmental censorship and civil rights is hyperbolic, inspiring visions of people demanding to say whatever they want here regardless of the CoC.
The actual topic - people hidding comments they disagree with or otherwise abusing a feature - doesn't have anything to do with "freedom of speech".
I don't believe I did any of that, to be honest.
It's what's generally meant when people complain about free speech on social media.
So, are you assuming I mean the same thing? Or how should I go about it? I'm curious.
No, no I'm not assuming you mean the same thing!
I'm saying that "free speech" and the people who tend to be most vocal about it conflate governmental (US amendment-style) freedom of speech with what they can say on social media, and in turn use that as a place to pitch their battles about their right to say whatever they want, and insult whoever they want. I'm worried that it'll make this post attract more armchair warriors than it would if it was something about comments and community.
"Free speech" used to be a positive idea, but it's been a big issue with places like Gab (for example) which build their image on free speech while really being more about hate speech.
Sometimes these DEV posts get shared via Twitter (especially when they get a lot of comments like this one is bound to!) and the splashy headline and picture might give people the wrong impression.
I know you're trying to catch people's eye, and I took the disclaimer on board, but censorship and freedom of speech are two concepts that don't apply to this site, and which have baggage. I'm not always the most tactful or graceful person in the way I talk, but I'd try to pitch it more like, "Discussion of how to help people manage their interactions" or as a way to balance people feeling safe with people trying to ignore others' points of view. If it's soley a discussion about people having their point of view excluded, then "What can we do to improve comment moderation?" is a pretty positive spin.
Makes perfect sense. I now fully understand what you mean. I'll take this into consideration. (Not gonna lie, picking a title and cover image was pretty difficult. I'll try to revise them and improve them as best as I can).
I appreciate that you changed your post image π
I do what I can
I put a disclaimer for a reason. Anyway, sorry to hear you disliked the title and cover image.
Howdy! I work at Forem!
As I understand it, the ability to hide comments is more about enabling authors to protect themselves.
This is a good callout and (personally) I'll watch the discussion here to see what we can learn from our community. Thanks for starting this conversation π¦
No problem, I contribute as best as I can! ππ»ββοΈ Thanks for dropping by!
I completely agree on the hiding and deleting comments.
In fact, unless a comment is directly bullying and individual, or inciting hatred, I would prefer to see it up so that people have an opportunity to explain to that person why their point of view is dangerous (or more importantly, perhaps start seeing opposing views that challenge their own).
We have spoken about this before on my (looking back perhaps inappropriately "tongue-in-cheek") post on having a way of communicating "I welcome all comments" vs "I would prefer nice comments only" and you made some great points there.
I think that is the only way to avoid biased conversations and echo chambers.
Sarcasm on the internet is hard and is often met with hostility because it's misunderstood. I also feel for people that don't have English as their first language, they can raise valid points but come across as confrontational and stand-offish just because they can't express what they're trying to say with the expected mannerisms.
I've been on the internet long enough to read something through a few times before I decide how they're trying to say something, the how is as, if not more, important as the what in my opinion.
There is a team of community mods, of which I am one, though we have only the power to flag a comment for an admin or to lower a posts 'hotness' (which makes it appear lower on the home page). I rarely feel the need to flag a comment, I have but that's generally unsolicited/unrelated self promotion stuff. I have however felt the need to tell people their tone comes across as argumentative (in a naΓ―ve hope that's not how they meant it).
I agree with your points! π―
Frankly said, if anybody thinks they can hop online and experience rose-colored interactions only, they are pretty naΓ―ve. That's not how the net works.
Besides, inviting only nice comments (whatever nice is to the author) defeats the purpose of interactions at all. It is NOT realistic by any means. The only way one can learn AND grow, is by being exposed to the views of others. Otherwise all you do is live in your own bubble of bias. Whatever floats your boat, darlings.
I also think it's hilarious how some folks call out censorship as it happens in certain countries but they themselves censor folks online as soon as they don't agree with them. How does that make you much better? I just think that's hypocritical at best.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one! ππ»
Let's hope you open up a conversation on this one with this post! β€
I'd definitely hope so. DEV.to felt pretty dry the past week. Hardly anybody interacted at all.
I think there are cycles on here, not sure yet as only been here 3 months or so but I have seen posts where everyone interacts and I am surprised and then other posts and nobody bites.
One trick I find works (for the algo!) is to like and comment on your own post when you post it. That always seems to make a difference, but that is just anecdotal (although I have downloaded every single DEV.to post to analyse so maybe I will discover something interesting there!)
Be sure to share your findings! π I also have no clue what's happening here lately. I've been around (actively) for at least two months.
Will do π
This is a complicated question, it can be boiled down to who polices the police. I'd like to think people want to hear opposing views and the people expressing those views do it in a respectful manor, I'm aware this is incredibly naΓ―ve, and therefor no one will feel the need to hide comments without good reason.
I imagine adding a simple way to appeal a hidden comment would be a step in the right direction but, of course, it adds a cost for the platform maintainer as they'll need a real person to step in an check if the they think the hiding was fair (what is
fairanyway).There sort of is but not really, if you have the direct link to a comment you can see it, for instance if this comment was hidden the link to it would still work.
That's too much a workaround, but it works I guess π
Not exactly where I would like things to go. I literally just want to see hidden comments without needing nifty tricks to get to them π I just would like to keep biased authors from hiding comments they don't like (just because they don't like them, not because its harmful or anything).
My suggestion is simple: let the author hide the comment if they want. But let other users view hidden comments EASILY and decide if it was rightfully hidden or not. That should remove the strain from the DEV staff. We should strive to empower a self-moderating community instead of relying only on the DEV staff and appointed moderators. Or so I think.
What I saw yesterday was someone who had personally attacked another person in a post. They made some pretty serious accusations all based on their own biases, which was pretty ironic.
Then one of Dev.to's moderators stepped in and started silencing pretty much everyone who was pointing out the violation and the double-standards applied by the moderator. It was clear the moderator and the author share the same worldview and they weren't going to allow any dissenters challenge it. Several of my comments were deleted and all I said was it's sad to see dev.to being used like Facebook/Twitter and the moderator justifying the author's behavior.
I 100% believe in free speech, so I actually support the author. She should be able to write what she wrote, BUT we should be free to point out the unfairness and blindness of what she wrote without being censored. Nothing I saw was private or dangerous, so censoring it was nothing more than an abuse of power.
Oof, that's rough!Thanks so much for sharing your experience here. I can't promise much but at least I won't hide or delete your comment. Consider this a safe space, hehe.
You know, in the end, a lot of measures we use to "moderate" content, are pretty subjective to some degree (despite the CoC and all). Hence the unfairness that we experience sometimes (even when we think we did nothing wrong).
Ideally, we would all share the same idea of what's an abusive comment is and what's not (among other things), however, the lines can get blurred really fast the moment that we interpret it in our own way. And allow me to add: it's HUMAN to do so. We jump to conclusions, we make assumptions, we fail in our estimations. Anyway, it is NO surprise that anything we create is also somehow a reflection of ourselves and our beliefs (and may I add, our shortcomings). At times, we literally code bias into our projects (and it bites us in the butt sooner or later).
Let's see what changes this discussion can bring about.
Again, thanks for joining, I appreciate a ton!
I think that there's an triangle of self-moderation vs community-moderation vs no-moderation to classify every social-network/forum.
If you have self-moderation, like in DEV (mostly), you protect vulnerable people giving them the power to control their content and keeping trolls away, but you also allow ground-level quality content and censurable comment sections.
If you have community-moderation, you ensure some rules on the content of your site, but it's very easy for it to become elitist and very little beginner friendly, like Stack Overflow. I don't think this is necessarily bad, but it's not what DEV is supposed to be.
If you have no moderation, you have the worst sites on the internet, because human nature.
All communities have their advantages and disadvantages. DEV may be full of low quality, low effort content and easily censurable comment sections, but is a friendly community, full of wholesome people. I don't think it's possible to have both of best worlds, sadly.
Have a nice day!
Thanks for the in-depth comment as usual @miguelmj ! It is indeed a tricky question and the triangle you explain here makes absolute sense.
I don't think DEV has to become the next Reddit or Stack Overflow. I'm not pro that per se. But I do think things are getting out of hand here and I'm not sure the hide comment feature is (always) being used in the best way. Thought I'd bring it up and see what others think about it. Who knows, maybe we can find a middle-ground. Maybe.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it!
Thanks for this post, @technoglot ! You bring to light a number of salient points, some of which are in active discussion behind the scenes among the DEV/Forem team. As @link2twenty is also aware, there are conversations taking place in our repo and on forem.dev about how to handle hidden comments, among other pressing issues around content moderation.
I appreciate you taking the time to write this blog post as a contribution to the conversation, and have subscribed to the comments, so Iβll be dropping in every so often and adding what I can to the mix!
Thanks so much @ellativity ! I haven't been around here for long, so I'm unaware of what's going on (especially behind the scenes or on the repo). I appreciate any info that you can share with us. ππ»ββοΈ
When you say you've seen this happen more recently, do you mean you see a notice like "comment hidden by author of post" or you're inferring it from other context?
I don't remember seeing anything like that (though I've not been on the look-out for it).
Some posts have a notice at the bottom.
There was a, particularly polarising, post the other day and things got a little heated leading to Admins stepping in. Which I imagine has lead us here