Suggestion: language warning

[Nalicter]

Suggestion:
I would like to suggest that forums give warnings (above the message body) if their posts contain any foul language (or rather give forum owners the ability to enable this on particular forums).

This is like what critters.org does for its mailing list of stories/chapters to critique. It's quite nice for critique forums—so people don't have to read stuff they'd rather not critique on account of language. They also give word counts and other such, but the language thing is all I'm meaning to suggest.

Now, I would just suggest that users have a language filter option in their personal settings that they can turn on/off, but that would give people an excuse to swear more, and I'd still rather not critique things with foul language (even if I don't see it—because then people who don't know about the filter might think I support/read that sort of thing and all).

Anyway, my suggestion would be helpful for me, as currently I have to tell them in the forum rules (which tell them to warn us if there is foul language), and hope they read/comply with them—which doesn't always happen. It would save a lot of time, hassle, and concern, I think, to automate it.

[Feel free to let me know if you're another user who would appreciate this feature.]—this is where a poll would be handy. :)

[Rumors]

This would be helpful as a lot of the users on my site like to get excited. Sometimes they will have a good post or make an excellent point, but in the process they forget to watch their language. I don't want to delete the posts or thread as that was the whole point of the forum (stop getting deleted).

[Graham Perrin]

Reading Nabble's Universal Back-End I consider the possibility of debatably foul content of all sorts — words, pictures, sound, movies (not limited to written language).

A few other topics discuss moderation. Selected points:

• moderate posts and replies
• Very confused why admins can not…

99% of the time I enjoy participation in fora where content never offends.

(Or, if content does offend, a person-to-person ban is quietly effective without involving owners.)

Legacy help from the old www.nabble.com domain:

• What is self-moderation? (highlights)
• How do I remove SPAM or bad users from my forum? (highlights).

I rarely seek a deprecated feature, but I wonder whether ratings can be re-introduced to Nabble — without cluttering or confusing the UI.

A six-point rating system (no entry icon, one star … five stars) might be presented in a pull-down menu, a sibling to the Options menu. Five stars uppermost, no entry at the foot of the list.

Not forgetting: Workgroup format, with its five points
(1 = greatest interest, top priority)
plus the possibility of a completed stamp of some sort.

Not forgetting: the established grey/red flag routine.

—

Based upon star ratings, Nabble 1 allowed users to view the 'best' messages (above a default threshold, or above a threshold preferred by the viewer).

A question for owners:

• if ratings were possible, then would you find it useful to have an alternative view — of messages that have been knocked down to one star or less?

During a periodic (weekly?) view of such messages, I might:

• delete messages that are truly junk
• notice a user receiving low ratings.

I might write to that user, reminding that they can edit/improve whatever they posted. The window of opportunity for edition seems to be indefinite.

(I wondered whether the legacy advanced search allows a view of one-star messages, apparently not.)

Regards
Graham

[Graham Perrin]

Graham Perrin wrote

A six-point rating system (no entry icon, one star … five stars) might be presented in a pull-down menu, a sibling to the Options menu. Five stars uppermost, no entry at the foot of the list.

The un-pulled menu might appear as a single icon:

• five stars = gold star
• four stars = gold star
• three stars = white star with black border (average)
• two stars = grey star
• one star = very pale grey star (barely visible)
• no entry icon = no entry icon

— only when the menu is pulled down is the viewer invited to change the count of stars.

[Nalicter]

Graham Perrin wrote

99% of the time I enjoy participation in fora where content never offends.

(Or, if content does offend, a person-to-person ban is quietly effective without involving owners.)

I wouldn't say this is the case with every forum. For instance, people often post song lyrics in my forum for such with foul language. A large percent of the posts are like that, and it is troublesome; I don't like having to talk with them every time about it. It's not that they're not allowed to have it in their songs that they post—I just want some kind of header with a warning about the language so that concerned people don't accidentally read it. I would actually prefer this greatly over censoring the words out (that can be annoying for people who don't swear, even: I was on a chat a while ago where it filtered Charles Dickens into Charles ----ens, and that, I would find fearfully troublesome in a forum). I know that example was a little overboard; I don't mean to suggest that the foul language count thing be that particular. It would be nice if it mentioned the frequency of use, too, perhaps.

I should also note that out of all the times I've asked people to edit their posts to make a note of the language (many times, I should note), I've only seen them actually do it once or twice, although they usually don't post the stuff again, themselves (but they don't bother with what they've already done). So, a warning message would be nice.

[Nalicter]

Graham Perrin wrote

I rarely seek a deprecated feature, but I wonder whether ratings can be re-introduced to Nabble — without cluttering or confusing the UI.

No offense, but I am really glad the rating system is gone. I think it was ambiguous in that a lot of people didn't know it was for moderation—they just thought it was for how much they liked the post. It made my stress levels go up.

Anyway, I do have a similar suggestion that I do like, however. I wouldn't mind so much if users could flag certain posts as having foul language or other such mentioned below.

Part of the reason I didn't like the rating system was that it had more than one option that ultimately went toward the same goal. If some such were reintroduced, rather than having stars, I would just let users flag it with certain labels (such as 'breaks rules', 'foul language', 'offensive', 'disturbing', etc.) These flags would be seen at the top of the post for everyone who went to see it. Forum administrators should be able to remove flags, and only authorized users should be able add them, I think (although it would be nice if the forum admin could see who added them, in case someone goes haywire and flags everyone's posts). I don't think these flags should necessarily go against the viewability of a person's posts on Nabble (that's what banning is for, I think). Perhaps there would be a vote count by each flag. A flag system like this I think would be far less ambiguous than a rating system.

[Graham Perrin]

Cordilow wrote

No offense, but I am really glad the rating system is gone.

None taken. I follow this with interest :)

Personally: whilst I sometimes used the rating system, I very rarely saw evidence of others using it.

I imagine that something less troublesome than ratings could/should serve purposes that are not limited to foul content or spam.

Best,
Graham

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Hi Cordilow,

Do you think that labels (like gmail does) could work in this case? For example, a label with red background that says "Contains Foul Language" would be enough?

Example:


I remember that you suggested labels months ago when we released Nabble2, mainly because we allow just one parent forum now. This would add points to this feature.

Please let me know what you think.

Regards,
Hugo Teixeira
Nabble.com

[Nalicter]

Hugo <Nabble> wrote

Do you think that labels (like gmail does) could work in this case? For example, a label with red background that says "Contains Foul Language" would be enough?

I certainly think it would be enough, and would be diverse enough for other purposes, as well. However, if it were to solve the problem, forum owners would need to be able to add labels to posts they didn't own within their forums.

[Graham Perrin]

@ Cordilow

The red label is very eye-catching.

I don't know whether I fit within the target audience for this particular forum (I'm a Ray Bradbury fan) but FWIW … if I saw more than, say, two or three RED ALERTS WARNING OF FOUL LANGUAGE at any one page, I would simply move along to another page with fewer, or no red alerts.

In doing so I would miss all other potentially interesting content.

A highlight from a nearby topic,

> … block of text may unfortunately have been processed as … 

Consider the possibility of reader's eyes processing a block of text, an entire page, in ways that differ from your expectation/intention.

@ Nabble

Assuming a future in which images, sounds and movies may be considered foul, would the plan be to:

• allow customisation of the label

or

• encourage additional labels?

Best,
Graham

[Nalicter]

Graham Perrin wrote

The red label is very eye-catching.

I don't know whether I fit within the target audience for this particular forum (I'm a Ray Bradbury fan) but FWIW … if I saw more than, say, two or three RED ALERTS WARNING OF FOUL LANGUAGE at any one page, I would simply move along to another page with fewer, or no red alerts.

I was under the impression that there could only be a maximum of one of the same kind of label per post.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Cordilow wrote

I was under the impression that there could only be a maximum of one of the same kind of label per post.

Yes, only one type of label per post. That's the idea.

[Nalicter]

I was thinking that maybe the labels should show up in the post (at the top or some such; maybe even a corner), and not in the forum page at large. I think that might be what Graham was meaning. Am I right?

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Cordilow wrote

I was thinking that maybe the labels should show up in the post (at the top or some such; maybe even a corner), and not in the forum page at large.

I agree. I think labels could be used to filter content, but they wouldn't be displayed on the forum front page connected to each topic. Otherwise, the UI would become noisy and difficult to scan.

[Graham Perrin]

+1
to everything below <http://n2.nabble.com/Suggestion%3A-language-warning-tp661558p2264592.html> — now, I have a clearer vision of what was described.

More rough mock-ups. Assuming a 1,024 x 768 pixels view of a topic:


— when message is disclosed: label is evident


— when message is not disclosed: label is obscured (for a moment, let's call this option o)


— when message is not disclosed: label is present (option p)

Do we prefer the label to be obscure or present before the foul content is disclosed?

If present before disclosure, then where — in threaded view — might the label be positioned/aligned?


— consider long subject lines
— consider Eee PC and other narrow displays.

(Wandering off-topic, I wonder how many people read Nabble on iPhone. If I had one, I certainly would. I imagine that Nabble list view is very well-suited.)

[Graham Perrin]

A variation on option o:

1. initial threaded view of the topic draws no attention to foul content

— so, posters of such content gain no extra visibility from posting in that way

2. first single click, on any message that is labelled, presents the label:



3. an example label:



If the first line of a post is foul then it may be seen before a label is presented, but this will always happen in classic view. For a moment, I'm thinking of ways to refine threaded and list views of a topic that may include multiple labels (no more than one per post).