ban me

I have found that moderators are often powerless to prevent certain types of negative behaviors.

Drive-by voting is among the worst behaviors in all of the social media sites.

A drive-by downvote is damaging to a community because a user is not able to determine why the vote was left, especially when there are large amounts of downvotes and no negative comments.

A drive-by upvote is damaging because it may falsely promote positions not held by the members of a sub and the post may be on-topic and appropriate content as considered from a moderator's perspective. Worse, it can be used to influence moderator and even admin decisions on the management of subs or even the site, itself.

My preference for tools to reduce these influences is to grant moderators more options in how they are able to manage their communities.

I would like the option of approving all users that want to participate in a sub.

Separately, I would like to control who can view a sub:
1. The world
2. Logged in users
3. Sub members

If users can view a sub they are not a member of, and the sub is configured such that non-members cannot vote, then I no longer have to worry about excessive drive-by voting in my sub. An additional feature would be granting members the option of choosing who can view or vote on their posts. Perhaps I prefer only only members view, vote, or comment on my posts.

The creation of sock-puppets is very commonly performed across nearly all social media sites. Given this level of demand for such an activity, it can be arguably considered a legitimate tool or, at the very least, a tool with exceptionally high demand.

It was recently in the news that a popular public personality admitted to having a sock-puppet account and this sock-puppet account was also revealed to the public. The reason this is a legitimate use-case is that it is likely almost totally impossible for the public figure to gauge actual opinion and responses when he is interacting with his popular public account:
1. People seeing who the user is will likely comment differently than with an unknown user or "normie" account
2. The broader community will nearly always engage the discussion whereas they are unlikely to do so for normies
3. Many normies will not desire the attention that a popular personality will bring to their discussions

Even if it is not agreed that there can be a legitimate usage for sock-puppet accounts, it still occurs on every site en masse and it is impossible to stop.

Posting anonymously cannot be seen as the same as posting pseudonymously. Posting anonymously is performed by all users of the site posting as "Anonymous". A pseudonym is a name I create and post with that is different from my username and that I am not sharing with others. It is possible with a pseudonym for other users to recognize me à la that pseudonym.

I feel a social media site would be better if it simply included a pseudonymous posting feature.

For example, if I were to go into a sub that is pure evil, such as /freemarkets, I may not want to post with my username for fear of being negged site-wide by some bury brigade. However, I also may not want to use Anonymous because this does not differentiate me from all of the other users posting with that name and it makes it more difficult to foster discussions beyond one single comment.

A common frustration on social media is a near total inability to control the environment in ways that are common in real life, especially in regard to direct interaction.

Effective bad actors can destroy a community that doesn't have a sentry monitoring all interactions every moment of every day for eternity. Many bad actors stifle growth by focusing their attentions on users new to a group such that these new users are discouraged from engaging the community.

The ability to moderate one's own posts and comments can offset these and other factors to very large extent.

If I have the power to completely moderate everything inside my posts, the workload of the sub's moderators will be substantially reduced as I am likely to maintain a discussion that is inline with the sub, as I and others are likely drawn to the sub for purposes of having similar discussions.

It is important to note that the purpose of self-moderation is not specifically to foster lopsided discussions, though that may occur, but rather to foster good discussions where good is from the perspective of most users drawn to the sub.

The same goes holds true on replies to comments.

If the moderation features on replies to posts and comments functioned separately blocking features, it grants users an option to continue interacting with users in other parts of the site that they would otherwise not due to being blocked.

If I make a post about making two different airplane models to appear as close to the real airplanes as possible, and a commenter insists on changing the conversation to be about some technical comparison between the actual two airplanes, I would find this to be highly annoying noise rudely inserted into my conversation. If my only tool to remedy the situation is to block the user, then that is the tool I am going to use. This might be unfortunate, because if on some other sub I want to find the best way to clean my pool, this same user would be able to provide information to me.

I really think a site with self-moderation would be head and shoulders above most other sites I have used.

Without the blocking feature, it will be too easy for users to be trolled, thus fewer users will engage the site.

However, blocking someone's anonymous post should not reveal the account of the user who made the anonymous post, as many users will be using the anonymous feature for legitimate purposes, including as a tactic to avoid gaining the attention of some bury brigade.

I have already been able to determine on this site which users have left which anonymous posts by simply blocking and then unblocking users. It is certainly the case that this is made easier with a small community, but history tells us that as sites get larger, crude but effective tools specifically for accomplishing these kinds of tasks get developed, published, and circulated.

The best policy I have derived is the following:

A. A user that is blocked through their username only has their posts as that username blocked. All anonymous posts from that username are not blocked.
1. The blocked username ("blockee") can no longer see posts or comments made by the blocking username ("blockor"), and vice-versa.
2. All previous posts and comments between the usernames are hidden (if they are deleted, then unblocking cannot restore them).

B. A username posting anonymously will interact with everyone.
1. A blockor may interact with the blockee if that blockor replies to an anonymous post or comment left by the blockor.
2. A blockee may interact with a blockor when the blockor posts or comments anonymously.