Site Features You Thought You Wanted (But Really Don't) · 10:10pm Nov 24th, 2014
Some of you probably noticed a site blog that went up earlier, regarding a pretty simple question. It was just begging for people to jump in with their opinions and thoughts that will never happen anyway, but among those comments, I noticed a disconcerting trend with some of the suggestions. While many of them were just dumb little wishes and nitpicks that obviously will never happen, and a choice few were actually pretty decent ideas, others were... well, not good. Some users wanted more control over what comments you can see, some wanted a more restricted "leave-a-comment-for-your-downvote" system, some wanted the option to have upvote/downvotes/comments removed entirely, and some also wanted their stories requiring approval from themselves before being added to groups that others try to add it to. Noticing a trend there, as well?
Just to clarify: These people want more control given to the author on how his or her readers can respond to a story. Basically, they want to include means to limit and censor people, so that all the "hateful" comments/downvotes could be filtered out; some of which (group approval) are features on such places as DeviantART or whatever. Now, I know that those things sound stupid -- and they certainly are -- and will likely never be implemented, ever... But I think it should be hammered into everyone's heads on why this is so bad, specifically. Troll comments and author abuse can be a problem, yes, but that's what the "report" and "block" function is for, people. Why should the rest of the site suffer for what a handful of people do? I'll say it up front; giving that kind of power to those all the more willing to abuse it is a great way of finally killing all semblance of quality control and recognition on this site. After all, if those "haters" can't be critical of rotten stories, guess what happens? More shit ends up staining the site, and the better fics are drowned out. Not to mention how badly that sort of thing can bork current site features like the popular or feature box, and those are broken as fuck to begin with.
I'm sick and tired of seeing those that wish for these things to be added to the site, so in the interest of not wanting to waste breath by shouting in their faces everywhere about how stupid it is and derailing any topic at hand, I'll just write this blog and direct any future idiots toward it. Seems a bit more efficient, in my opinion. As usual, rant warning ahead, but I'm pretty sure most of you know to expect that by now...
Now, I probably won't carry on too much about some of these points, because I sincerely hope they are obvious to some of you, but I'll try and cover them all as much as I can. First off: comment approval. Butthurt authors that regularly receive critiques they don't want to hear often seem to be the ones complaining about this a lot; it's the classic scenario of branding their critics "haters" and not listening to what they have to say. That often results in a stubborn complaint or rebuttal from the author, and more often than that, comment deletions and blocking. I think we all know what happens in a lot of cases, there; commenters get pissed, others get involved, the situation devolves into an epic clusterfuck if it isn't resolved, and it doesn't end until everyone's blocked, a moderator is called onto the scene to break it up, or the author backs down. Now, to be fair, sometimes users can be brought down to a point where any courtesy devolves into petty flaming or verbal jousting, and some people comment in the midst of these storms for the sheer hell of pissing off people on either side of the conflict. Yes, those people can become agitated because of a bad enough story or rude enough author; we're not infallible, we're just people, and sometimes things can get heated without it really being anyone's intention.
What does this have to do with comment approval? Well, many of these authors seem to want the ability to choose which comments to allow to be posted on the story, while "trollish" comments get pruned and deleted. This might sound good to some in theory, but in practice, it kind of fucks itself over. Why? Well, think about it. If you give that kind of approval power to an author that only wants to hear good things being said about their work (many of whom seem to migrate from FF.net, unsurprisingly), then it's obvious what will happen. Comments that praise their work and demand "moar" will obviously be allowed a pass from them, purely because it strokes the writer's inflated ego and makes them feel good about themselves. By contrast, the more blunt and "hateful" (see: critical) comments? Those won't exactly agree with the author's god complex, and thus, they will be deleted and rejected. This is, of course, quite unfair and frustrating to critics and others that wish to provide feedback to authors. In the end, it would all fall back onto the simple honor system, and it's obvious that a less-than-honorable author won't follow through with that. Not only that, but, think about it: do you really want to get all these constant notifications of comments waiting to be approved, and then have to sift through them all? For smaller stories and lesser-known authors, that's not a huge deal. For the more prolific/popular authors with these huge stories that often get dozens of comments in a day? It would be tedious and annoying as all fuck. Stuff on that level will probably break the site as well, and it's delicate enough as it is.
I've also seen what appears to be an alternate proposal to comment moderation: a formal "critiquing" system. And to an extent, it seems somewhat more reasonable-- albeit, probably a bit too heavy of a feature to implement as of yet. The idea suggested copying deviantART's "Critique" function, which serves as a more involved and in-depth means of reviewing a work. In a way, I can sort of see that working... provided that such a function is available to critics by default, and not completely left to the whims of the writer himself. But on deviantART, such critiques must be pre-approved by the author before they are visible. For the reasons I've already highlighted with the concept of approving normal comments, I'm sure you can see why that would be unfair if an author had the power to freely deflect all negative (but often constructive) critique, and accept only the "good" ones. If such a system were to work, however, I think such a feature would need to be more limited in a way that does not involve the author directly; that way they can't deflect valid criticism. If there is going to be any moderation on those, then I think an auto-approve function would be best, only allowing the author additional time to report it to mods (if the review is trollish and invalid) or approve it instantly, but never to actively disallow it. But the amount of effort and time required into creating an entirely new feedback system seems rather daunting, so I honestly doubt that such a thing would happen in the near-future, if anything. And I know nothing about coding, so, I'm at a complete loss about that.
Now, in regards to the whole "leave-a-comment-for-your-downvote" thing... do you not even realize how stupid that would be? Firstly, there's the whole matter of -- again -- implementing such a thing in the first place. Secondly, if you're going to do that for downvotes, then I think it's plenty fair to do the exact same thing for upvotes as well (because hey, why give the ability to make upvotes FREE when you have to go the extra mile for downvoting?). Thirdly, it's a huge waste of everyone's time. Let's just put it into perspective, shall we? Assume that, for a day, that kind of system was implemented. Users can only upvote/downvote if they leave a comment explaining why. (For fairness' sake, let's assume that people generally commenting otherwise doesn't count toward an upvote/downvote, and that votes are tethered to individual comments (somehow, if that's even possible to do).) For any reader that tends to go through a lot of stories, they usually are hard-pressed to comment. Often, they just upvote, downvote, favorite, and move on. But in this system, they can't simply read and drop a vote before they move on; they are forced to comment. I think you can imagine that, being forced to leave a comment explaining why you liked/disliked something gets very tedious over time. While there are a number of people that probably could put up with this, the majority simply won't bother. As a result, you might notice that you won't get nearly as many upvotes or downvotes; that may depend, as a number of people won't hesitate to drop plenty of criticism on downvoted fics. If the author can't take those criticisms? Well, often it ends up being deleted. So much for that system, then.
For the people complaining about wanting that feature: why would you complain about it, if you'll only end up receiving the very thing you won't like to hear anyway? And for the people who probably do indeed honestly want fair criticism, so they can improve: that's why we have review groups. It's why we have groups in general. You already have access to everything you need. Why not use them, for fuck's sake? I mean, a feature like this would inconvenience everyone on the site, not to mention that I can't imagine how hard it would be to even implement such a thing in the first place.
And now, lastly, the "group approval" thing. Sorry to break it you guys, but you've already got access to a feature like that, and according to knighty himself, that's about all you're ever going to get. On your story pages, you have a "featured groups" sidebar; you can change it to show only groups that you decide to show, if you even want to show them at all. There's no approval from you, and you can't remove the stories yourself. In fact, even Eldorado went on record to explain this new policy of sorts. (Reposting that screencap that people have been sharing around, because it's apparently okay to do so.)
In essence, the answer is "go fuck yourself".
If you honestly want a story removed from a group, then just ask the group admins. Nicely. Which means no demands, no threats, no condescending tone, none of that. Using "please" in this situation would probably help. Yes, I know, that's probably asking far too much of some people. But if you do that? Most of the time, your wishes will be acknowledged. And even if they refuse, for whatever reason, there's pretty much nothing that can be done about it, anyway; bitching to the moderators is a waste of your time and theirs. Just use the "featured groups" blacklist on your story page, people; they put it there for a reason. The mods have listened to your complaints in the past, and yes, this is the best that you're getting from them. Use the system, and get over your "hater" mantra already. Most of the complaints, I should note, have come to people asking for removal from what are dubbed "troll havens" or "hate groups"; places like Plan 9 From Equestria, Overly Stupid Fanfiction, The Badfic Bin, "Why?", Absolutely Disgusting, Edgy Group of Edginess, and the dozens of other groups of the sort. (Even larger reviewing groups like Rage Reviews aren't safe from being considered this way, which is unsurprising, considering that many reviews are of a tough, vitriolic (but usually fair) nature.)
Anyway, that's enough bitching about the idiots making idiot demands. Since I've still got room left, I figure I might as well put down a few more random ideas and thoughts of my own that might be more viable on this site. Keyword being, "might".
· A "flagging" system. I've mentioned this before, I think, but it's a bit like YouTube commenting in a way. Rather than delete comments, a user can simply choose to flag it as spam, which hides the comment by default, but still can be viewed if someone chooses to. Comment burial (another feature I've seen on other sites) could also be a viable side-feature, where a comment with enough downvotes and not enough upvotes would become hidden by default.
· I've mentioned this earlier in the blog, but some sort of official critiquing system would be a rather interesting idea, though so long as it's tweaked to be as fair as possible for both critic and author. It could have weight on a story's heat or overall rating, and can grade on different aspects of a story's merits. I sincerely doubt that such a feature would even be possible, and I don't think such a feature should be available to everyone on the site (because I imagine it can abused/misused), but it's nice to dream, I guess.
· Newer BBCode functions while fixing some of the current ones would also be nice, but I'm not in any real need of those, personally. Still, it would be nice to give better formatting options to some authors that can use it effectively.
· A way of knowing who deleted a comment. That way, there's not much room for debate on who did so, be it an author of the story it was posted on, a moderator, or the commenter him/herself. Perhaps also allow an optional "reason for deletion" to be filled out. And this is more of a personal nitpick, but, if mods can still see deleted comments, why not make it so that a commenter can still see their own comment? At least that way, if it was deleted for no good reason, you can make a case of possible abuse and whatnot. (Related to this case, but I saw someone ask about making it so that a deleted comment removes all evidence of it ever existing. That being, of course, an astoundingly stupid idea, because that only encourages people to delete comments more often. With no leftover evidence, a commenter can't make a case for themselves anymore; it ultimately ends up hurting the site as a whole.)
I would also make mention of how they should fix the whole "not being able to delete comments on blogs" bug, but honestly? I've already spoken against comment deletion so often by now, I don't really mind that. People not being able to delete comments on blogs is a bit amusing to me, actually; and since comments on blogs I've seen lately haven't been able to be deleted, the overall level of drama seems a bit on the low end. Granted, that certainly doesn't stop it from happening entirely, but without the factor of people getting pissed off by deleted comments... yeah. I mean, if someone posted a nasty comment, I wouldn't delete it; I might sure as hell report one, and maybe block the user, but I'd still keep it around, so that people can still see what's being discussed and/or how much of an idiot the commenter is being. That way, there's no doubt on who said what. Others are more content to delete abusive comments or actual criticism, but hey, that's their problem, not mine. Some people just need to learn to grow a goddamn backbone already. This is the internet; if you can't adapt to its ways, it'll chew you up and spit you out.
In the end, no single system is perfect, so there will always be debate and demand on how it should be working. Honestly, I could care less about that. The site as it stands is fairly stable right now, and though I really do not care for the comment deletion thing, things seem to working fine for us as-is. Though, I think the place could certainly stand to fix some of its little bugs...
~Blinkie
I've seen plenty of people ask for only author's being able to add stories to groups, and speaking as an author I would hate this. i don't want to have to be in every single possible group that my story applies to so I depend on readers adding it to other groups.
It used to be like that and I still don't get why this feature disappeared.
2614499 Because it was being abused.
I don't have any specific examples, but I would occasionally see a very popular story have hidden comments that contained fair critiques of the story, downvoted into oblivion presumably because it had actual, critical feedback and didn't say "OMG MOAR SO GOOD."
img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110920204753/halo/images/e/e3/Mlp_you_make_rarity_sad-(n1304147972337).png
Certainly not the impression I was trying to make.
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Apparently the same is true of "who deleted a comment", and such. Again, no idea why they removed it. If anything, the anonymity of that fact alone causes plenty of arguments to flare up, so, great job on that front, guys...
And hey, no system is without a way of being abused and tampered with, so it's all a matter of finding the system that would be the less-abused. It's something one can only figure out through trial-and-error, because most of the time, ideas and theories tend to not work out quite as well in the field as they do on paper.
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Butthurt morons bitched about their Bad Opinions getting buried.
I hadn't even thought of that. Oh god, the nightmare this would be. At least two of my stories have over seven hundred comments; I would have been so pissed having to click "approve" on every single one of them!
That could work, if it required the original commenter to also agree to delete it. Maybe have a second delete button on the deleted comment, only visible to OP, so that he/she can have the final word on the remains. That way, an unjustly deleted comment stains the page just like it does now, while a mutual agreement to erase a conversation doesn't leave big, worrisome warning signs on an otherwise innocent story.
And I'm so unbelievably opposed to the mandatory-comment-for-a-downvote thing. These people don't even realize how immediately stupid that would prove to be. (Although it'd be funny to see it implemented for a day, just to see the flood of unbelievably unhelpful comments that would arise from this and the faces of this feature's advocates when they witness the vitriol that would be created by their (so insanely stupid) idea.)
2614544 "Downvoted because Hank Hill told me to." i.imgur.com/rVWfpIp.jpg
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Read: Chatoyance
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That would suck as a reader too.
There's another aspect to the "required comments" idea. For purposes of this example, let's pretend I'm Homer Simpson:
I've seen a lot of people wanting a featured box system where admins or top authors choose what gets featured. That's an incredibly stupid idea. Like, so stupid in every essence and form. Sure, seeing a piece of shit in the featured box can be bad, but seeing a piece of shit specifically chosen by a "top" author? Yeah, no. The featured box might be a cruel bitch, but at least it's a heartless machine. It just puts stories with the most heat in the box. And I'd trust that more every day than what someone thinks should be featured.
¿How much less could you care?
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Well, when I saw a buried comment, I was usually clicking on it anyway.
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