Blocking reactions and reviews

[NeonSpider]

So, obviously it wasn't always the case, but for a while now people can block reactions and reviews when they block someone.

I think this is a bad idea because it can effectively be abused to make a content creator or their content appear more liked or more popular than they are. And it also can be abused by people who are leaving reviews, to make their reviews likewise seem more liked than they are.

Scenario: Someone writes a dumbass review (or consistently writes dumbass reviews). People effectively downvote this review via their reactions. Snowflake reviewer blocks everyone who gave them a negative reaction smiley, thus giving the illusion everybody agreed with them, and falsely inflating their review's perceived popularity.

Scenario: Snowflake content creator can't handle constructive criticism or anything but asskissing reviews. Snowflake creator blocks everyone who gave them a sufficiently negative review, even if earned. Again, this leaves only positive or asskissing reviews, thereby giving the illusion of greater popularity than a submission otherwise deserves. Yes you still have the star rating system, but a lot of times the in-depth reviews will give more of an insight into what people really think about it, and the star rating system is often skewed (Trolls intentionally upvoting garbage or intentionally downvoting solid works).

It is already the case that abusive reviews can be flagged, and I think this should be good enough. If it is truly abusive, it can (and should) be flagged, and if someone does it enough maybe they'll get a ban, but I do not think that reactions or reviews to content should be blockable by the user, period. It is reasonable not to alert the user to new reactions or reviews from people they have blocked but it isn't reasonable to block those reactions and reviews from the world, especially in the content areas of the site, such as the various portals.

Now, I'm okay with blocking on news posts and that sort of thing, but presumably blocked users aren't allowed to post on people's newsposts anyway.

As it is, people are really discouraged from leaving anything but asskissing reviews, unless they know the person well, in the offchance the content creator really didn't want honest reviews anyway and just wanted some sort of hug box. Likewise, while it has always been possible to flag abusive reviews, it also should be possible to flag abusive replies to reviews. It should go both ways.

[orbitz]

I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

[NeonSpider]

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

It does. If someone has you blocked you're not allowed to do any of the reaction smileys to their reviews. The option will just not exist for those user's reviews but will exist for any other users.

Not sure if it removes existing reactions but it surely prevents new ones.

[S3C]

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

That's not the point.

If you're blocked by user, you can't interact with them in any way- this includes reacting to their BBS posts, newsposts, blog comments, and reviews, you also cannot review their content, just vote on it.

Regarding reactions/reviews this is undesirable for reasons NeonSpider mention. Remove it from the author's feed would be fine, but don't prevent the rest of the world from seeing their opinion, assuming the review follows the guidelines.

[orbitz]

At 8/19/23 03:02 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

That's not the point.

If you're blocked by user, you can't interact with them in any way- this includes reacting to their BBS posts, newsposts, blog comments, and reviews, you also cannot review their content, just vote on it.

Regarding reactions/reviews this is undesirable for reasons NeonSpider mention. Remove it from the author's feed would be fine, but don't prevent the rest of the world from seeing their opinion, assuming the review follows the guidelines.

I guess im not getting it.

Blocking someone doesn't remove anything they did before they were blocked except forcing an unfollow

[S3C]

At 8/19/23 03:16 PM, olskoo wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:02 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

That's not the point.

If you're blocked by user, you can't interact with them in any way- this includes reacting to their BBS posts, newsposts, blog comments, and reviews, you also cannot review their content, just vote on it.

Regarding reactions/reviews this is undesirable for reasons NeonSpider mention. Remove it from the author's feed would be fine, but don't prevent the rest of the world from seeing their opinion, assuming the review follows the guidelines.

I guess im not getting it.

Blocking someone doesn't remove anything they did before they were blocked except forcing an unfollow

Removing reviews/reacts pre-block is something that you have brought up, not the OP.

Blocking a user shouldn't prevent them from leaving reviews or reacts on other reviews towards the author that has blocked the user.

[orbitz]

At 8/19/23 03:27 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:16 PM, olskoo wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:02 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

That's not the point.

If you're blocked by user, you can't interact with them in any way- this includes reacting to their BBS posts, newsposts, blog comments, and reviews, you also cannot review their content, just vote on it.

Regarding reactions/reviews this is undesirable for reasons NeonSpider mention. Remove it from the author's feed would be fine, but don't prevent the rest of the world from seeing their opinion, assuming the review follows the guidelines.

I guess im not getting it.

Blocking someone doesn't remove anything they did before they were blocked except forcing an unfollow

Removing reviews/reacts pre-block is something that you have brought up, not the OP.

Blocking a user shouldn't prevent them from leaving reviews or reacts on other reviews towards the author that has blocked the user.

I did? well I have poor elocution

[S3C]

At 8/19/23 03:28 PM, olskoo wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:27 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:16 PM, olskoo wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:02 PM, S3C wrote:

At 8/19/23 05:58 AM, olskoo wrote:I don't think blocking someone removes their reactions

That's not the point.

If you're blocked by user, you can't interact with them in any way- this includes reacting to their BBS posts, newsposts, blog comments, and reviews, you also cannot review their content, just vote on it.

Regarding reactions/reviews this is undesirable for reasons NeonSpider mention. Remove it from the author's feed would be fine, but don't prevent the rest of the world from seeing their opinion, assuming the review follows the guidelines.

I guess im not getting it.

Blocking someone doesn't remove anything they did before they were blocked except forcing an unfollow

Removing reviews/reacts pre-block is something that you have brought up, not the OP.

Blocking a user shouldn't prevent them from leaving reviews or reacts on other reviews towards the author that has blocked the user.

I did? well I have poor elocution

no worries lad, happens to the best of us

[Thetageist]

At 8/19/23 03:27 PM, S3C wrote:
Blocking a user shouldn't prevent them from leaving reviews or reacts on other reviews towards the author that has blocked the user.

Devil's advocacy, but couldn't that mean that someone who has been harassing a user for a while would still be able to give a cruel review/zero bomb a submission behind their back, and they wouldn't be able to see that review in order to report it? Might not be a problem for a big creator with a bunch of people who can see and report the review, but smaller ones might not have enough people backing them for one to decide to put forth the effort to report.

"Snowflakes", as OP put it, are always going to be that way, and everyone here already knows not to trust the voting/reviews system anyway, because of skewed ratings and lazy comments. It's not worth anyone's time to try to "educate" the followers/viewers of someone who can't take critique, because those followers probably can't take critique of the user they follow either.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/21/23 01:07 PM, Thetageist wrote:

At 8/19/23 03:27 PM, S3C wrote:
Blocking a user shouldn't prevent them from leaving reviews or reacts on other reviews towards the author that has blocked the user.

Devil's advocacy, but couldn't that mean that someone who has been harassing a user for a while would still be able to give a cruel review/zero bomb a submission behind their back, and they wouldn't be able to see that review in order to report it? Might not be a problem for a big creator with a bunch of people who can see and report the review, but smaller ones might not have enough people backing them for one to decide to put forth the effort to report.

"Snowflakes", as OP put it, are always going to be that way, and everyone here already knows not to trust the voting/reviews system anyway, because of skewed ratings and lazy comments. It's not worth anyone's time to try to "educate" the followers/viewers of someone who can't take critique, because those followers probably can't take critique of the user they follow either.

I really don't see this as being the case. People do try to read through reviews to flag the abusive ones for those whistle points. Also, it wouldn't be blocked from the author. The only thing that I suggest happen would be that they not get a notification, in case they are pestered by having too many notifications. If they are actively reading through all their reviews, it will still be there, and they can flag it themselves, if abusive, but also, more than likely, plenty of other people already would have as well.

So if someone was trying to do this, they would frequently get their reviews flagged, and they would very quickly be banned from Newgrounds. Maybe a temp ban at first but if they kept it up it could be permanent. This is how I suggest it be handled.

As for educating snowflakes, that's not the point. Ratings systems exist for a reason and it's rather skewed if it isn't balanced. People should be able to give their approval or their disapproval. I think the Youtube system of only showing the upvotes is stupid for the same reason. Likewise for people up or downvoting various reviews (or in Youtube's case comments) themselves. If you're going to allow such a system, you need to allow it for everyone, not just those who would exclusively give glowing praising reviews.

Also, what people will like or not like will differ wildly, so it's very possible, and even extremely likely, that someone will dislike what other people like or vica versa. Can't please everyone and all that. Maybe people downvote a game because it is "too hard" but other people upvote it for the same reason. Maybe something is one person's ideal submission but loathed by another.

[S3C]

At 8/21/23 01:07 PM, Thetageist wrote:Devil's advocacy,

as if the devil needs defending...

but couldn't that mean that someone who has been harassing a user for a while would still be able to give a cruel review/zero bomb a submission behind their back, and they wouldn't be able to see that review in order to report it? Might not be a problem for a big creator with a bunch of people who can see and report the review, but smaller ones might not have enough people backing them for one to decide to put forth the effort to report.

by definition, zero-bombs are always behind the author's back and if the voter is blocked the author would not be able to see their vote if they decided to make it public.

I don't see the problem. It's like the BBS. if you have a user blocked, they can still say mean things 'behind your back' (except it's not- the rest of the world can see it). If someone else catches it and reports it, and it breaks the rules, they get banned. if no one reports it/cares to report it then no moderation is needed. The user cannot see it, the troll is effectively ignored and everyone can be on their merry way.

"Snowflakes", as OP put it, are always going to be that way, and everyone here already knows not to trust the voting/reviews system anyway, because of skewed ratings and lazy comments. It's not worth anyone's time to try to "educate" the followers/viewers of someone who can't take critique, because those followers probably can't take critique of the user they follow either.

partially irrelevant- when a user publishes something to NewGrounds, it is now open to the public for consumption and critique. Reviews are not just for the sake of soliciting advice to the author but for the rest of the public to read: which includes stans and new viewers alike.

[NeonSpider]

It gets weirder.

When someone has you blocked, not only are you not allowed to review their submissions or react to their reviews (either in their own submissions or those of others), but you're also prevented from reacting to the reviews of other people who are not even the person who blocked you, within the blocking person's submissions lol.

So you can't even give an "I agree" or "Love it" or similar kind of reaction smileys to people, who aren't even the blocker, to back them up because you agree with what they wrote.

[DamnedByFate]

At 8/22/23 02:24 AM, NeonSpider wrote:It gets weirder.

When someone has you blocked, not only are you not allowed to review their submissions or react to their reviews (either in their own submissions or those of others), but you're also prevented from reacting to the reviews of other people who are not even the person who blocked you, within the blocking person's submissions lol.

So you can't even give an "I agree" or "Love it" or similar kind of reaction smileys to people, who aren't even the blocker, to back them up because you agree with what they wrote.

Indeed, this is just complete and utter bollocks.

[lwpage]

Maybe @TomFulp can add this to do the TODO list. Thanks OP.

[Magnedeus]

So I'm curious what lead to this question. Did you give your 2 cents on someone here and they blocked you? Have you been blocked a lot and you're tired of it?

[Chdonga]

If I can just whine for a sec, it's annoying as hell when I can't review, reply/react to reviews, or favorite a collab that I was part of because one of the collaborators has me blocked.

I think everyone deserves the right to tell someone to shut the fuck up if they're annoyed by that person, but if they're in a collab together then some compromises need to be made.

[DamnedByFate]

At 8/22/23 06:30 PM, Chdonga wrote:If I can just whine for a sec, it's annoying as hell when I can't review, reply/react to reviews, or favorite a collab that I was part of because one of the collaborators has me blocked.

I think everyone deserves the right to tell someone to shut the fuck up if they're annoyed by that person, but if they're in a collab together then some compromises need to be made.

Yeah, huge multi-author projects are a major pain in the arse regarding this because it only takes one to ruin it.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/22/23 02:57 PM, Magnedeus wrote:So I'm curious what lead to this question. Did you give your 2 cents on someone here and they blocked you? Have you been blocked a lot and you're tired of it?

I often give in-depth reviews. They are fair. (You can search through my reviews yourself if you want to see, though there's a huge amount of them). Inevitably, if you do this enough, yes you will encounter it. And yes it has often been from snowflakes who cannot handle the slightest negative feedback, even if constructive. Of course, people can block you for other reasons, but if you've not really interacted with them aside from the reviews, and especially if they seem to react extremely negatively to any but the most praising reviews (and unnaturally elated at the praising ones) it's pretty safe to assume it's this.

At 8/22/23 06:30 PM, Chdonga wrote:If I can just whine for a sec, it's annoying as hell when I can't review, reply/react to reviews, or favorite a collab that I was part of because one of the collaborators has me blocked.

I think everyone deserves the right to tell someone to shut the fuck up if they're annoyed by that person, but if they're in a collab together then some compromises need to be made.

Yep this is indeed a problem and one such organizer is indeed one of the snowflakes, lol. It is indeed as you say.

Incidentally, you have me blocked from reviewing your submissions and I'm not sure why.

[Chdonga]

At 8/22/23 07:46 PM, NeonSpider wrote:Yep this is indeed a problem and one such organizer is indeed one of the snowflakes, lol. It is indeed as you say.

Incidentally, you have me blocked from reviewing your submissions and I'm not sure why.

Weird, I had you blocked over nearly everything. I'll take a shot in the dark and guess it was years ago over some dumb General forum drama. I'll unblock you right now.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/22/23 07:53 PM, Chdonga wrote:

At 8/22/23 07:46 PM, NeonSpider wrote:Yep this is indeed a problem and one such organizer is indeed one of the snowflakes, lol. It is indeed as you say.

Incidentally, you have me blocked from reviewing your submissions and I'm not sure why.

Weird, I had you blocked over nearly everything. I'll take a shot in the dark and guess it was years ago over some dumb General forum drama. I'll unblock you right now.

Yeah I honestly have no idea my dude, haha. I don't have beef with you and I don't think I ever have. In fact, mostly I agree with what you have to say in the forums.

[NeonSpider]

Also, in case anyone else wants to play further Devil's Advocate (which is fine), I personally am not going to be harassing people or anything of the sort. Again, if reviews are abusive, please flag them as such. But I will be honest, and my ratings are going to be all over the map just depending on the submission, but if I'm giving something a low score I will oftentimes elaborate on the *why* so that authors can take the feedback and hopefully improve future submissions, or in the case of bug reports, so they can fix the bugs. If it's bugs, once fixed, I usually will go in and adjust the rating accordingly, typically with an --edit-- line and then further clarification under that, so people can still see the original review, but also how any issues were fixed/handled/etc...

https://neonspider.newgrounds.com/news/post/879004

^This newspost is typically what I would abide by as rating submissions. So yes if I just genuinely can't get along with somebody then I'm not likely to be rating or reviewing their submissions anyway. Now this is just me personally, so it doesn't apply to other people and isn't some site-wide rule or anything, nor should it be. As-is, I *could* just zero-bomb everything by anyone I dislike, but in practice I am *not* doing that because that doesn't seem like it would be very fair and I'm all about fairness.

I have very few people blocked anyway. Of those who are blocked, they typically know what they did, and I usually tell people why I'm blocking them before I block them, as a matter of principle, anyway, although there are cases where this has not been done, mostly because it was a mutual block and the other person had already blocked me. For example, one person who kept blocking and unblocking me a bunch for pretty arbitrary reasons, so I just blocked them to make up their mind for them, lol. I don't think people should just arbitrarily be blocking folks, but that's up to each individual.

That said, yes I do think anyone, even those you have blocked, should be able to review submissions or react to reviews of submissions.

Also yes I realize not everyone will like or get along with everyone else, and this is perfectly fine and normal, even if you get along fine with people who mutually hate each other, or get along fine with one person, but not their friend. It all happens and yes been there done that.

I know someone PM'd me asking if they were blocked. No, again, I have very few people blocked (and most of them should know why). If a PM can go through, and the Newgrounds system doesn't reject it, then no I don't have you blocked. I just can't exactly reply to PMs at the moment because the sentbox space is full and I don't feel like going through that to clear out room right now and there's a lot of stuff I don't want to delete.

[Jojo]

People have been spammed in the past with trolls abusing the reaction emojis which fills up your inbox with notifications; that option in blocking unfortunately must stay for that reason.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/23/23 01:17 AM, Jojo wrote:People have been spammed in the past with trolls abusing the reaction emojis which fills up your inbox with notifications; that option in blocking unfortunately must stay for that reason.

Okay but if you'd read what I've been saying, I did already say to just remove the notifications. So that has already been addressed. So maybe someone just doesn't get the notifications. Problem averted.

[Jojo]

At 8/22/23 06:55 PM, DamnedByFate wrote:

At 8/22/23 06:30 PM, Chdonga wrote:If I can just whine for a sec, it's annoying as hell when I can't review, reply/react to reviews, or favorite a collab that I was part of because one of the collaborators has me blocked.

I think everyone deserves the right to tell someone to shut the fuck up if they're annoyed by that person, but if they're in a collab together then some compromises need to be made.

Yeah, huge multi-author projects are a major pain in the arse regarding this because it only takes one to ruin it.

It legitimately sucks when you're part of a collab that a bunch of people enjoyed and you can't reply to their lovely reviews because you had a falling out with one of the collaborators and you still don't understand to this day why they blocked you instead of just talking with you about why they didn't like you. This happened on an older account though that is long gone now.

[Magnedeus]

If people are blocking you because their fragile feelings are hurt because they can't handle constructive criticism, then they shouldn't be uploading shit here or the internet general. And even if you gave your 2 cents and the creator paid no attention to it, they're people that will block you because they didn't appreciate what you said despite the fact it wasn't directed towards them and they block you because insert "How dare he hate what I like"

[Skoops]

At 8/23/23 01:20 AM, NeonSpider wrote:

At 8/23/23 01:17 AM, Jojo wrote:People have been spammed in the past with trolls abusing the reaction emojis which fills up your inbox with notifications; that option in blocking unfortunately must stay for that reason.

Okay but if you'd read what I've been saying, I did already say to just remove the notifications. So that has already been addressed. So maybe someone just doesn't get the notifications. Problem averted.

I've had one psycho go through my forum posts and react to over 100 of them before I could block them, so having a nice "remove all notifications of actions from this user" option would've been nice. Since we don't have that, if they were allowed to continue reacting to my posts, who knows where it would have ended. I'm glad they're not allowed to keep at it, and I don't see the point in reverting it just for some niche interest someone has in being annoying from beyond the veil.

Generally, I think when it comes to these things, erring on the side of not giving freaks an avenue to harass people is best. The only thing I agree with others here is that the functionality of collabs need work; it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to make it so that the blocked/blockers don't see each other's comments, but can still comment on the things that they themselves worked on. Beyond that, if the worst thing that happens is that you get blocked just because someone finds you annoying, so be it. I can suck it up if that happens, I sure hope the dorks that caught one from me aren't crying about it. I bet they did, but I hope they didn't.

[TheJayJay]

Wow I didn't read any of that.

I will say though, deleted users should not keep their reactions. I had one of the people trolling @DrunkGecko reacting to all of my reviews at the time with the ZZZzzz... emoticon. Their account is gone now but the reactions are still there, forever scathing my perfectly fine reviews.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/23/23 02:21 PM, Skoops wrote:

At 8/23/23 01:20 AM, NeonSpider wrote:

At 8/23/23 01:17 AM, Jojo wrote:People have been spammed in the past with trolls abusing the reaction emojis which fills up your inbox with notifications; that option in blocking unfortunately must stay for that reason.

Okay but if you'd read what I've been saying, I did already say to just remove the notifications. So that has already been addressed. So maybe someone just doesn't get the notifications. Problem averted.

I've had one psycho go through my forum posts and react to over 100 of them before I could block them, so having a nice "remove all notifications of actions from this user" option would've been nice. Since we don't have that, if they were allowed to continue reacting to my posts, who knows where it would have ended. I'm glad they're not allowed to keep at it, and I don't see the point in reverting it just for some niche interest someone has in being annoying from beyond the veil.

Yeah this is what I've been suggesting. I've been suggesting that, instead of blocking reactions and reviews in the submitted content areas of the site, that they still be allowed (since it's for more than just the content author's benefit), but that the author not receive notifications for it, to prevent exactly this sort of thing. So indeed you wouldn't be receiving those notifications from blocked users.

Also, I'm talking specifically about the content submission parts of the site, and not the forums, but it's reasonable that, if people are able to react to people who have them blocked, that those who have them blocked not receive the notifications, since presumably they don't want them.

[NeonSpider]

At 8/23/23 03:06 PM, TheJayJay wrote:Wow I didn't read any of that.

I will say though, deleted users should not keep their reactions. I had one of the people trolling @DrunkGecko reacting to all of my reviews at the time with the ZZZzzz... emoticon. Their account is gone now but the reactions are still there, forever scathing my perfectly fine reviews.

I'm sorry, but if "this was a good tip thanq yuo" and 'my "feelings" on this AAD attempt is that it's pretty good.' are typical of your reviews, those aren't "perfectly fine reviews". They aren't even reviews. You could say just as much by just throwing down the 5 stars vote and be done with it.

I'm gonna have to agree with the ZZZzzz... emoticon for those reviews (at least those two you posted here), although I will agree with you that deleted accounts should have their reactions removed.

[TheJayJay]

At 8/23/23 03:18 PM, NeonSpider wrote:

At 8/23/23 03:06 PM, TheJayJay wrote:Wow I didn't read any of that.

I will say though, deleted users should not keep their reactions. I had one of the people trolling @DrunkGecko reacting to all of my reviews at the time with the ZZZzzz... emoticon. Their account is gone now but the reactions are still there, forever scathing my perfectly fine reviews.

I'm sorry, but if "this was a good tip thanq yuo" and 'my "feelings" on this AAD attempt is that it's pretty good.' are typical of your reviews, those aren't "perfectly fine reviews". They aren't even reviews. You could say just as much by just throwing down the 5 stars vote and be done with it.

What? No these are perfectly legit and epic and awesome reviews, your just jealous your reviews could never be this good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm gonna have to agree with the ZZZzzz... emoticon for those reviews (at least those two you posted here), although I will agree with you that deleted accounts should have their reactions removed.

In all seriousness, at least we agree on something.

Also if you think my totally epic and legit reviews are bad, hoo boy there are way worse. People treat the review section like a YouTube comment section at this point.