I will say up front, unlike many others, I’m a fan of Daily Kos 5. I think many of the core features continue to improve and I’m very happy with the layout engine in comparison to DK4. I think more changes will likely continue to improve the editing and diary function.
One change was made in Daily Kos 5 that at the time I believe was thought for the best and, IMHO, just didn’t work out. When Markos noted that the way in which Hiderates were handed out would change, the idea was to create a more civil community. Fewer dogpiles. Less calling out people for “why did you HR this!?!?” and most importantly, no retribution against those who had given out an HR.
At the beginning, I strongly agreed with this policy. I felt as though the policy provided a real way to help immunize some of the roving downvoters that sometimes invade online communities.
Several months in, though, I have to say: this is an idea that didn’t work out remotely as I thought it would, and I hope that staff reconsiders the idea of leaving HRs in a way that cannot be tracked.
The problem with the current system is that it it didn’t stop bad behavior, it just encouraged different rules to go along with flagging. People now feel compelled to post a reply to a bad comment before an HR to note “this is why I played an HR”. This happened some before, but now, when items are flagged and there is no comment, people have no idea if it was flagged, why, etc. I can’t tell if a comment has been flagged at all (seemingly) on my browser without it being marked as “hidden”.. and I have no idea how many flags it has, or who gave them to weigh that in my thoughts.
This is especially problematic with tip jars on diaries. A diary can have a stack of HR’s put on the tip jar, and I, as a user, cannot always tell unless I check the “hidden” which isn’t quickly accessible from the drop down/etc.
This can lead to users, especially new users, wading into diaries that have already been flagged.
But the biggest problem I’m having with the anonymous style hide rates is something I didn’t anticipate: users who act with suspicion toward each other. At least once, I’ve been accused of handing out a flag to someone when I didn’t. When people don’t know who flagged them, they just suspect whoever they already think would do it.
This is Markos site, and he may have statistical information to say my thoughts on this are completely wrong, but in only my humble opinion, this is one Daily Kos 5 upgrade that is generating far more heart burn then it is solving. Yes, if people can see flags within a diary and know who flagged it, it will make them “angry” and maybe some will dogpile. But it will also stop people from flagging knowing that no one will know who it is that is doing the flagging. Open flagging also allows people to take the credibility of the person flagging the diary into consideration, and it stops people from handing out capricious flags knowing it never comes back to them.
I truly wish that psychologically this worked out the way that I think I imagined it.. and maybe how Markos imagined it when Daily Kos 5 launched, but seeing comment fights over who is flagging who, accusations of flag gangs and so on makes me realize that human nature just may not ever work to allow this.
Without some definable “super flags” (copyright me, just for fun tonight), I think this is the only piece of Daily Kos 5 that I think has worked to almost the complete opposite of stated intent… and I don’t think anyone could have imagined that or thought about that happening at the beginning.
Carry on, be nice to each other, and all of that. I’m going to go watch Walking Dead.
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