Hello Steemians, we want to hear your thoughts on whether we should expand the “Mute” feature on steemit.com (specifically “Condenser” the open source software that powers steemit.com and a number of other sites) to include hiding comments on a blog from visitors to that blog if the author has Muted the commenter.

TL;DR

Leave a comment starting with “YES” if you believe that when you Mute another user that their comments should be hidden from your blog for other Steem users.

Leave a comment starting with “NO” if you believe that when you Mute another user that their comments should remain visible to the visitors of your blog even if you have Muted them.

After "YES" or "NO" you should feel free to share any additional thoughts you might have on the topic.

Ownership

At Steemit, we take very seriously the concept of “ownership.” Steem enables users to retain ownership of their social information and we believe that great Steem applications should play to this strength. But this question isn’t always straightforward, especially at the user interface level. It can also conflict with some people’s views on censorship.

Non-Consensus

One thing that will never change is that any information posted to the Steem blockchain will be open and accessible to anyone. This feature change we are suggesting would have no impact on that whatsoever. All comments will always remain on-chain, and any developer is always free to provide an interface that displays that information. We call these types of changes “non-consensus.”

Free Speech

We believe that you should always have the right to make your views public, but you do not have the right to harass, spam, or otherwise pollute someone else’s space. A user’s blog (and in the future their Community) should be a place where they feel safe to speak their mind. What good is censorship-resistance if people are censoring themselves out of fear?

Giving users the ability to hide any toxic elements from their space, while still leaving every other user free to make that determination for themselves, will enable everyone to express themselves more freely. What good is freedom if people don’t feel safe enough to use it?

Improving UX

We think that expanding the “Mute” feature walks the right line between preserving a person’s right to speak while also preserving a user’s right to protect their property and even enhance its value. We believe that this could dramatically improve the user experience on steemit.com by enabling users to ensure that the visitors to their blog see only high quality comments.

Open Source

As always, the fact that both steemit.com and Steem are open source ensures that if anyone does not like how the information stored on the blockchain is displayed, they can easily launch their own version of the site, or use one of the many alternative user interfaces that already exist.

But what do you think? This is a feature that is intended to improve the user experience on steemit.com, so if you don’t think it will do that, be sure to vote “NO” in the comment section below.

When SMT Tho?!

Since we know people will say it, implementing this feature is trivial and will not delay any ongoing development efforts. That ease of implementation is a consequence of our Hivemind software which was developed by @roadscape (a/k/a “Hive”) and makes it extremely easy to alter how user interfaces interpret data stored on the blockchain.

If you'd like to learn more about the progress we've been making on SMTs, be sure to check out the recent post by Steemit Blockchain Engineer @gerbino.

The Poll!

But we digress! This post is about whether or not we should expand the “Mute” function on steemit.com.

Leave a comment starting with “YES” if you believe that when you Mute another user that their comments should be hidden from your blog for other Steem users.

Leave a comment stating only “NO” if you believe that when you Mute another user that their comments should remain visible to the visitors of your blog even if you have Muted them.

Don't hesitate to leave any additional feedback, including suggestions for other features you'd like to see added to steemit.com.

The Steemit Team