ignore feature for mediawiki? - Wikitech-l

Chad

9 Aug 9 Aug

1:15 p.m.

On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 1:49 PM, svetlana <svetlana(a)fastmail.com.au> wrote:

Use-case: someone is being annoying, but is willing to ignore me voluntarily on-wiki. Are there any software tools which may assist them in this where doing so is O.K. (such as not showing my edits in review queue where a page defaults to old stable version anyway, hiding my edits from recent changes and watchlists, etc)? In such cases there is a potential that I do some harm behind their closed eyes (such as malicious edits) so there needs to be a fine line where the target user is, for example, a reviewer. I searched on the web but I couldn't find past related software, documentation, or discussions.

No, there is no such tool that I am aware of. -Chad

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Brandon Harris

4:01 p.m.

I've thought about this a fair bit and it's actually a non-trivial problem. Not technically, mind you - technically, it's trivial. The problem lies with the whole revert/communicate, or warn/communicate problem. We have no way for administrators/sysops to mark comments in discussions as being "in my role as administrator," and people who are "ignoring" said discussion bits may very well cause greater problems. Ignoring people by actually ignoring people tends to work pretty well. On Aug 11, 2014, at 4:52 PM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

...

Perhaps the easiest place to start with this sort of opt-in ignoring would be in discussions; thus I filed a request for a Flow feature https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69404 : "preference to ignore comments from specific users ("killfile")". Thank you for the idea, svetlana. Sumana Harihareswara Senior Technical Writer Wikimedia Foundation On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 8:49 AM, svetlana <svetlana(a)fastmail.com.au> wrote:

Use-case: someone is being annoying, but is willing to ignore me voluntarily on-wiki. Are there any software tools which may assist them in this where doing so is O.K. (such as not showing my edits in review queue where a page defaults to old stable version anyway, hiding my edits from recent changes and watchlists, etc)? In such cases there is a potential that I do some harm behind their closed eyes (such as malicious edits) so there needs to be a fine line where the target user is, for example, a reviewer. I searched on the web but I couldn't find past related software, documentation, or discussions. svetlana _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

_______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--- Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Sumana Harihareswara

9:44 p.m.

Frances makes a good point, and now I'm thinking about the different scenarios we're talking about. There are two big ones: 1) A has a policy or editing dispute with B and they just sort of get on each other's nerves a lot, so they try to avoid seeing each other's edits, talk page messages, and so on. This is like what svetlana originally brought up. I agree with Brandon that in this case users should use their willpower to skim, ignore, or avoid reminders of each other. This is kind of like how one avoids one's ex at a party. 2) X consistently makes anti-[insert group here] comments that marginalize, belittle, and demean Y, and the wiki's community is not getting X to stop or otherwise backing up Y's right to participate in the community. In this intimidating atmosphere, Y tries to ignore seeing X's talk page messages and edit summaries. Here, there's clearly been a failure of community moderation - no moderation techniques http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Moderation are being employed, and/or people are mistakenly saying "don't feed the trolls" http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Don%27t_feed_the_trolls . The process of improving a community's level of hospitality takes time; while we're doing that, it would be nice to give Y some respite from seeing X's comments. Danny Horn, in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow#Components_of_the_discussion_system I see that in Flow, "Users will also have the ability to delete/suppress entire threads," which is good, and that Flow will tie into AbuseFilter for spam prevention. I'd like to ask more questions about moderation and self-care possibilities in Flow; let me know where I should ask those (the design list, a different list, the Flow talkpage on mediawiki.org, elsewhere). Sumana Harihareswara Senior Technical Writer Wikimedia Foundation On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 4:12 PM, Frances Hocutt <frances.hocutt(a)gmail.com> wrote:

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On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 9:01 AM, Brandon Harris <bharris(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

Ignoring people by actually ignoring people tends to work pretty

well. This depends on your background, your history with them, and why you are ignoring them. I'm more likely to just leave a discussion than to scroll past sexist/homophobic/transphobic arguments so I can continue engaging with other people I have more common ground with. Reading the beginning and scrolling past stuff like that stresses me out and makes it not worth my time or energy to stay. -Frances _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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svetlana

6 a.m.

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014, at 15:58, svetlana wrote:

...

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014, at 07:44, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:

Frances makes a good point, and now I'm thinking about the different scenarios we're talking about. There are two big ones: 1) A has a policy or editing dispute with B and they just sort of get on each other's nerves a lot, so they try to avoid seeing each other's edits, talk page messages, and so on. This is like what svetlana originally brought up. I agree with Brandon that in this case users should use their willpower to skim, ignore, or avoid reminders of each other. This is kind of like how one avoids one's ex at a party. 2) X consistently makes anti-[insert group here] comments that marginalize, belittle, and demean Y, and the wiki's community is not getting X to stop or otherwise backing up Y's right to participate in the community. In this intimidating atmosphere, Y tries to ignore seeing X's talk page messages and edit summaries. Here, there's clearly been a failure of community moderation - no moderation techniques http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Moderation are being employed, and/or people are mistakenly saying "don't feed the trolls" http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Don%27t_feed_the_trolls . The process of improving a community's level of hospitality takes time; while we're doing that, it would be nice to give Y some respite from seeing X's comments.

3) Another contributor's contributions look disgusting, as he's inserting what I consider rubbish into articles and discussions, but I couldn't convince him to understand me. It's something against Wikimedia mission in my view, but not a blockable offense on that Wikimedia project. I'd like to avoid engaging into educational rants with the contributor (he's not young either and he can't hear me), and to do this, I need to stop seeing his messages. Hence a need to have the software impose an interaction barrier between me and another contributor: - when leaving messages at my talk page, he's warned that I'll not see them at all (and potentially prevented from doing so) - when leaving messages in discussions, he's warned that I'll not see them - where a discussion involves my participation in the specific thread - when reviewing a page or an edit I made, he's warned against that (and potentially prevented from doing so, where a page is stabilised - i.e. no harm is made if it stays in queue for a longer bit and someone else reviews the edit) - when editing a page I created, he's warned that its content will be hidden from me by default (with an unhide button available, if I want it) - etc

p.s. in addition to the above, his edits are not visible in RC and watchlist to me, but obviously it is not something he's warned about

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svetlana

6:08 a.m.

On Tue, 12 Aug 2014, at 02:01, Brandon Harris wrote:

...

The problem lies with the whole revert/communicate, or warn/communicate problem. We have no way for administrators/sysops to mark comments in discussions as being "in my role as administrator," and people who are "ignoring" said discussion bits may very well cause greater problems.

Ideally, we'd of course expect ALL contributors participate in cooling off vandalism before it goes to the danger level. :D So addition of the "in my role as" button would not make sense in that regard. This issue may also be approached by adding a time delay for all ignore actions, so that the ignoree gets a few hours/days to communicate first. [Insert a brainstorming button here] How do forums resolve this? I can cause trouble and ignore a forum admin, or ...?

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