On Killfiles

[charmian]

Some time in the future, Dreamwidth is planning to offer a killfile. The specs say that two levels of killfile are planned. The first will collapse posts and comments by the user who has been killfiled. The second will remove all traces of the killfiled user from your view (with the exception of access lists on profiles, and comm membership lists).

Poll #120

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 130

View Respondents

Would you use the killfile described above?

View Answers

Yes, I would use it
66 (50.8%)

No, I would not use it
17 (13.1%)

Not sure/don't know
47 (36.2%)

To borrow foxfirefey's question, what effects do you think killfiles (if put into practice as described above) would have on Dreamwidth and the way people use it?

Comments

[kerrick]

While I think it would be tempting, I think I would try hard to avoid using it. I think it would be damaging to communities if people could cease to see each others' posts at the drop of a hat, but everyone else could still see those same posts. It would probably lead to some very strange, not to say incomprehensible, interactions.

I am also suspicious of the way the internet allows us to avoid dissenting opinions. I'd most likely be tempted to use this to avoid any vociferous Ron Paul supporters I came into regular contact with, for instance, because I disagree heartily with many of their views and those of their hero and for some reason tend to become angry about that when we talk. But that would mean that I can't actually address our disagreements productively. And those things we do have in common—namely a deep suspicion of the presently-failing debt-based monetary system—I wouldn't have the opportunity to talk with them about. It's likely that I wouldn't regret that much, but never having my prejudices challenged would only reinforce them.

I'd much prefer the version that left posts collapsed by default, so that I could engage with them when I felt I had the energy. I'd also be interested in a version that expires after a user-settable amount of time. If I were just really annoyed with someone for a particular interaction and needed time to cool off, that might be useful.

[charmian]

Hmm, why do you think it would necessarily be damaging? What would happen? It would be bad if the moderator did this and stopped performing their duties, but then that's an individual failure of the moderator, IMHO.

Eh, I think that's a personal choice, and there are some people not worth engaging with. People have to actively choose whether to killfile a person, I think, so that process of choosing will be going on, and it isn't necessarily that they don't think they are wrong/evil, but they might simply find their content irrelevant or uninteresting.

Longwinded example

[kerrick]

Well, I'm imagining situations in which hypothetical DW user SirTalksalot posts the zillionth longwinded and annoying ramble, and DW user Owmyeyes KFs hir. Time goes by and Owmyeyes forgets zie's KFed SirTalksalot. Then SirTalksalot posts a short, to the point post about hir mother just having died; Owmyeyes, not being aware of this, posts a lighthearted compilation of filthy "your mom" jokes immediately thereafter. SirTalksalot posts a complaint about Owmyeyes' insensitive bastardry, which Owmyeyes doesn't see, mods scramble, Owmyeyes has no idea why hir friendly mods are suddenly being so thin-skinned, and it takes a lot of time and hurt feelings and people make judgments about SirTalksalot and Owmyeyes with insufficient information before it all gets sorted out. If KFing is very easy and relatively common, this sort of misunderstanding could be relatively common as well, ranging from "didn't you see that QuestionMark just posted that question right before you?" "No, er, uh, I've KFed hir, sorry" to the rather clusterfing scenario I described above.

I also think who one has KFed would get politicky very fast, like "defriending" back in the Old Place. Once it becomes common knowledge that you've KFed someone, there would be questions, allegations, accusations, and eventually I'd have to own up to the fact that I had a very stupid one night stand and am now just too embarrassed to... oh, dear, I've gone and typed that out loud, haven't I? *blush*

None of this is in itself sufficient reason NOT to allow KFing. (Which I'm already calling kiffing in my head, so I guess it'll probably stick.) It'll cause new and exciting kinds of problems, and that's what we're all trying to do probably is find the best set of problems to work on.

Re: Longwinded example

[charmian]

Wouldn't in that situation, the mods specifically reference SirTalksAlot's post in their communications with Owmyeyes? I don't see why they wouldn't.(though posting about death of your relatives and filthy jokes doesn't really occur in most communities, IME. Most of the time the comm would be about death of relatives and filthy jokes would be off-topic, or vice versa...)

Huh... but defriending is something publicly visible, and KFing, I am guessing, wouldn't be publicly visible? It would be even less visible than banning.

Re: Longwinded example

[torachan]

I think the repeated posts scenario is more likely than the former, and that could definitely get annoying.

[axelrod]

I think wank is way more damaging to comms than occasional killfiling would be. In any event, we *know* what happens when two or more people have very different opinions in the same comm and keep butting heads over it - and we know it's not good. What might happen if at least one of those people could ignore the posts and comments of the other/s? imo, there'd be an improvement. Also, I support anything which allows an individual user to control the content ze sees. People can say what they like, but that doesn't mean everyone has to read it, and being able to more automatically filter out the things you *know* you don't want to read seems desirable to me.

It looks like there's going to be two levels of killfile - both the kind that collapses posts and the kind that eliminates all posts and comments. So we both get what we want : )