If I understand fully, the purpose of a solution like this would be to completely remove any potentially triggering content from a user's feed without them even knowing it existed. Am I correct in thinking this would have to be implemented flawlessly, where triggers won't slip through the net due to erroneous self-reporting? Do you have any examples in mind of a community that manages to get this right?
I would be hesitant to over-promise and under-deliver, so would love to speak to someone who has figured out how to do this in a way that doesn't overly depend on the author self-reporting.
Other than having a TW and a tag automatically applied if the author checks the box, we would need to have a reliable way to mute tags. As of now, we don't have that, so I would advocate for that being the first step to any of this.
The purpose of the solution would be for the user to know exactly what kind of trigger the post contains, only saying that a post contains a trigger is not really helpful to them as the user does not know whether they are impacted by this trigger or not, so they would either have to abandon the post entirely or read it to find out, risking to be triggered.
A consequence of knowing what kinds of triggers a post contains would be the ability to filter those posts out or marking them in someway so that the user is forewarned.
I think self-reporting should be part of any system that is being implemented, the author can then be aided by other systems, whatever they may be, although I am not sure how useful a fully or even semi fully automated system would be, as triggers come in so many shapes and ways.
The easiest of those semi automated systems would probably be a keyword based search that would recommend triggers based on certain words and phrases found, but this can also easily lead to false positives.
Another way would be to basically crowd source the trigger detection, letting users add trigger warnings to posts, but here we have the problem of abuse that must be addressed.
No system will catch everything we want, and we should of course state that, but having even just a self reporting system would help users avoiding things they do not want to see.
Thank you so much for exploring this idea further with me.
In terms of implementation, I keep coming back to the tag mute conversation. I know it's not perfect at this point, but I would love us to look at how we can find ways to improve on what we have to release the functionality faster for communities where it would be game-changing, with a view to refining or re-imagining it down the line. Also, we've already started discussing tag mute in a broader context, since we see value for in other applications, so it has momentum on its side.
It also ties in with giving Trusted Users and Tag Moderators more scope as well, which is another adjustment we'd like to promote. Crowd sourcing is effective as long as we can trust the crowd we're sourcing from, and that's where giving tag editing privileges to a small group of proven trusted users can be a powerful tool for both rewarding trust and generating crowd-sourced data.
You're welcome, and thank you for the conversation, I'm enjoying it very much.
The most trivial approach to tag muting I think would be using the existing system, so that instead of following a tag it is being muted and removed from the feed. People are using tags to indicate the language of their posts so one could filter out posts in languages that they do not understand.
But the question here is also, what does muting mean, to what extend do we mute this post, does it only not appear in the users feed or do we also hide it from search results, do we warn the user when they're visiting a post having a tag that they have muted, is the user allowed to set which, if any, of these scenarios should happen.
Some platforms allow users to mute certain keywords for a certain amount of time, is this something we want, or even useful for us?
Also I like the idea of using moderators and trusted users to add certain tags, I have not thought of them!
Hey @abenettt
I wanted to touch base again to let you know that I've not abandoned our conversation! My attention got pulled in another direction, but I am still here! Let me think about this for a second and get back to you soon?
If I understand fully, the purpose of a solution like this would be to completely remove any potentially triggering content from a user's feed without them even knowing it existed. Am I correct in thinking this would have to be implemented flawlessly, where triggers won't slip through the net due to erroneous self-reporting? Do you have any examples in mind of a community that manages to get this right?
I would be hesitant to over-promise and under-deliver, so would love to speak to someone who has figured out how to do this in a way that doesn't overly depend on the author self-reporting.
Other than having a TW and a tag automatically applied if the author checks the box, we would need to have a reliable way to mute tags. As of now, we don't have that, so I would advocate for that being the first step to any of this.
The purpose of the solution would be for the user to know exactly what kind of trigger the post contains, only saying that a post contains a trigger is not really helpful to them as the user does not know whether they are impacted by this trigger or not, so they would either have to abandon the post entirely or read it to find out, risking to be triggered.
A consequence of knowing what kinds of triggers a post contains would be the ability to filter those posts out or marking them in someway so that the user is forewarned.
I think self-reporting should be part of any system that is being implemented, the author can then be aided by other systems, whatever they may be, although I am not sure how useful a fully or even semi fully automated system would be, as triggers come in so many shapes and ways.
The easiest of those semi automated systems would probably be a keyword based search that would recommend triggers based on certain words and phrases found, but this can also easily lead to false positives.
Another way would be to basically crowd source the trigger detection, letting users add trigger warnings to posts, but here we have the problem of abuse that must be addressed.
No system will catch everything we want, and we should of course state that, but having even just a self reporting system would help users avoiding things they do not want to see.
Thank you so much for exploring this idea further with me.
In terms of implementation, I keep coming back to the tag mute conversation. I know it's not perfect at this point, but I would love us to look at how we can find ways to improve on what we have to release the functionality faster for communities where it would be game-changing, with a view to refining or re-imagining it down the line. Also, we've already started discussing tag mute in a broader context, since we see value for in other applications, so it has momentum on its side.
It also ties in with giving Trusted Users and Tag Moderators more scope as well, which is another adjustment we'd like to promote. Crowd sourcing is effective as long as we can trust the crowd we're sourcing from, and that's where giving tag editing privileges to a small group of proven trusted users can be a powerful tool for both rewarding trust and generating crowd-sourced data.
You're welcome, and thank you for the conversation, I'm enjoying it very much.
The most trivial approach to tag muting I think would be using the existing system, so that instead of following a tag it is being muted and removed from the feed. People are using tags to indicate the language of their posts so one could filter out posts in languages that they do not understand.
But the question here is also, what does muting mean, to what extend do we mute this post, does it only not appear in the users feed or do we also hide it from search results, do we warn the user when they're visiting a post having a tag that they have muted, is the user allowed to set which, if any, of these scenarios should happen.
Some platforms allow users to mute certain keywords for a certain amount of time, is this something we want, or even useful for us?
Also I like the idea of using moderators and trusted users to add certain tags, I have not thought of them!
Hey @abenettt I wanted to touch base again to let you know that I've not abandoned our conversation! My attention got pulled in another direction, but I am still here! Let me think about this for a second and get back to you soon?
Of course! There are many demands of your time! Thank you for coming back at me!