Looking back on this, I do not feel I did a satisfactory job explaining what the issue is. Before I explain further, I wanna just summarize two key points:
- @Marker, @Luzion are not good enough. It cannot be a script. It has to be a feature that is integrated into the site itself for it to be satisfactory. Also,
- Simply hiding comments/posts is not quite acceptable.
I usually save this stuff for the PTSD thread, but this is a thread dedicated to explaining what this site needs to not go the same route as Derpi. And in order to do that, we have to take note of some of what they did wrong and see how we can avoid doing that here. Let me start with my own personal experience.
It was a user named Chrys, who later changed her name to DreamSoda. She was in a foul mood for a month or two on Derpi. Constantly lashing out hard at people. And she told me that I was annoying. Incredibly annoying. And so she DEMANDED that to avoid being annoyed by me, I stop replying to her. Anywhere. And when I did not obey this command, she got more and more bitter and vitriolic. Meanwhile, no one around me said anything about how she does not have the authority to tell me what to do. In fact, one of the mods, Mikey, saw this and told me that I should stop replying to her. And so I did. For a few months. Then she decided that it was okay of her to reply to me. And when I told Mikey about this, he just said that she was not breaking any rules, and couldn’t think of anything else to say at all.
This upset me. She ordered me around like a mod for months, but when it came time to practice what she preached, she did not care, and neither did anyone else. I was so upset by this, I talked to Ciaran about it.
You’ll notice he didn’t really care. Like, at all.
This relayed to me that when users want to make up their own rules on the site, it’s up to the mods’ personal opinions on how that is handled. If they decide that that particular user is allowed to bend the rules and their lack of a block button, they will. And they will not apply this fairly to those that they enforce the rule upon.
And two years later, they still do not see the folly of this.
Here, a user decided that because she did not like someone, she should be allowed to enforce him to not comment on her art on the site. And the mods did not care about that one little bit.
My point is that if a site intentionally does not have a block button, then this is not acceptable. If a site is going to let users enforce who can and can not reply to them, then they should have a block button. Not a script that is not inherently integrated into the site. An actual block button. And if the site does not have a block button, then they should make it clear to their users that they not attempt to effectively enforce one by saying that they cannot reply to them.
It has to be one or the other, because as Derpibooru demonstrated to me, if you don’t have one or the other, there is this room for users and even mods to twist it to do what they feel like to whoever they feel like.
So no to the script. If you want a block button, it cannot be a script. It has to be integrated into the site. Or, if you do not want a block button, you have to tell users that they are not to try and effectively create one by ordering other users around.
@Luzion
I agree with
@Boxless that there’s already a userscript alternative.
Not him but I just don’t believe that a block button is required. DA has a block button, and people over there are supposedly more than willing to block people at the slightest of infractions
I agree. The block feature has been abused many times. But unless they do something that ensures people will not try and recreate it through other means (not a script), then what I showed above will happen, and that is even worse. I would rather not have a block button, but I would also rather have a block button than users being free to regulate who can reply to them and not vice versa.