I think that the problem could be alleviated with the following combination of site capabilities:
Duncan should be able to prevent Said’s comments and posts from being visible to Duncan’s own profile -making Said invisible to Duncan.
Duncan should also have the ability to make his reasons for blocking Said from his own posts and invisibling Said’s output elsewhere legible. For example, if Said replied to one of Duncan’s comments in a third-party post, Duncan should not have to see the comment from Said. Said’s comments on Duncan’s third-party-post comments could get auto-tagged with a note saying something like “Duncan has set Said to ‘invisible’ and cannot see this comment.”
It might be good if users who block or invisible others could provide an explanation in a way that’s publicly available but not highly visible. For example, a user interested in knowing why Duncan set Said to invisible could go on Duncan’s profile to find out, but the explanation would not get automatically linked to Said’s comments replying to Duncan to avoid Duncan having the ability to unilaterally tag all of Said’s comments replying to Duncan with Duncan’s subjective criticism of Said.
My view is that the lengthy and unpleasant back and forth is largely due to Said thinking Duncan’s ignoring important criticism, while Duncan thinks Said is trying to tear down his reputation in public with shallow criticism or just ruin Duncan’s day. Those are both very normal and relatable perspectives, and I think that a technological solution like this would offer each of them most of what they want—Duncan would get insulation from criticism he views as destructive, and Said gets to continue offering criticism he thinks is constructive, and neither of them has to deal directly with each other each time such a disagreement comes up.
I think that the problem could be alleviated with the following combination of site capabilities:
Duncan should be able to prevent Said’s comments and posts from being visible to Duncan’s own profile -making Said invisible to Duncan.
Duncan should also have the ability to make his reasons for blocking Said from his own posts and invisibling Said’s output elsewhere legible. For example, if Said replied to one of Duncan’s comments in a third-party post, Duncan should not have to see the comment from Said. Said’s comments on Duncan’s third-party-post comments could get auto-tagged with a note saying something like “Duncan has set Said to ‘invisible’ and cannot see this comment.”
It might be good if users who block or invisible others could provide an explanation in a way that’s publicly available but not highly visible. For example, a user interested in knowing why Duncan set Said to invisible could go on Duncan’s profile to find out, but the explanation would not get automatically linked to Said’s comments replying to Duncan to avoid Duncan having the ability to unilaterally tag all of Said’s comments replying to Duncan with Duncan’s subjective criticism of Said.
My view is that the lengthy and unpleasant back and forth is largely due to Said thinking Duncan’s ignoring important criticism, while Duncan thinks Said is trying to tear down his reputation in public with shallow criticism or just ruin Duncan’s day. Those are both very normal and relatable perspectives, and I think that a technological solution like this would offer each of them most of what they want—Duncan would get insulation from criticism he views as destructive, and Said gets to continue offering criticism he thinks is constructive, and neither of them has to deal directly with each other each time such a disagreement comes up.