Forum Moderators: open
You can set a post as trusted by you.
Assuming your trust filter is on, you only see posts which are either posted by:
0) yourself
a) someone x degrees of seperation from you
b) a post trusted by someone y degrees of seperation from you
c) a post trusted by a lot of people outside of your network
You can obviously click to see posts which are outside your filter in case you are interested and want to trust something.
This way we can ignore a lot of new user whisper campaigns, col spamming, etc ad nauseum. We can also kick people out of your trust network or even "distrust them" so that people will know what to avoid.
Great idea. For example, some users might have inane & consitantly useless comments / which you'd just love to filter.
Others might consitantly raise the bar, make you think and reevaluate your own ideas and positions - and you might want to "follow" their advice through the forums.
In a broader sense, we've already got a social network here @ webmasterworld, why not elevate it & start executing on some of the innovations that are currently in place at the friendsters, orkuts, etc? Makes sense, and from a business perspecitive, if you consistantly raise the value of the user experience for paying customes...then, your subscriber base will continuously increase, based on the perceived value of the enhancements.
Aside from the fact that some of the "upper-crust" elite WFA's around are the least likely to open up their little book of secrets, while the "less distinguished" just plain folks are generous, giving and willing to share, there's all kinds of room for abuse with that type of system. It could do nothing but erode community spirit, participation and growth.
Personally, I hate attitudes of pride and snobbishness, and if there were a clique/caste system instituted I'd be outta here as fast as I could.
What I was proposing was one where you could trust anyone .. and see the posts of the people they trust.
It would not be on an 'invite only' basis.
ie: I could be joe random new user and I could trust marcia and automatically see all the people marcia trusts and the people they trust and the posts they trust, etc.
so that people will know what to avoid
What is that people should be avoiding? It looks like there will always be a few that drop in for a chance at promoting themselves. There's no avoiding that. There are (hopefully) a few folks like myself trying to figure out all this stuff at once, and more often than not posting in the wrong place, or not remembering the little things in the face of something new and seemingly overwhelming. Sometimes the response to a post like that will be a link to a previous thread. I wouldn't want to miss those :-)
Frankly, I haven't yet figured out a way to see what everyone else is posting every day. Who knows what I've missed...
I could be joe random new user and I could trust marcia and automatically see all the people marcia trusts and the people they trust and the posts they trust, etc.
The type of system suggested in post one above, sounds similar to /. post "voting" of thumbs up/down. We've been actively considering such a system, but the usability is always an issue.
If a filter existed, I wouldn't use it.
Nor would I.
But it could mean that someone could post a request, get a perfect reply, but not see the reply because they'd filtered out posts by the replier. Things would get even wierder if the original questioner made a subsequent post that ignored information available to those who had not switched on their filters.
Presumably, in this case, there would have to be a series of posts from a variety of third parties to get the original poster to change their filter in order to see the reply to their question. (Possibly more than one of these, since some of those who post "switch your filters off!" may also be filitered out by the original poster.)
I'm not sure this would be a good thing for the Webmaster World community as a whole.
I thought we were all a single community..and we respected everyone's opinions..
Where did all that seperation come from?
:)
Sid
