There is no way to pin topics here?

Is there a way I can make it so specific people cannot see my posts?

I don't know. That's why I asked.

Is there a way I can make it so specific people cannot see my posts?

Talking rules
December 18, 2016 | By Jo
Like every community site, Able2Know grapples with the dilemmas of moderating objectionable content – and defining what “objectionable content” is. Some of it is easy to identify. Our volunteer moderators remove unceasing amounts of spam. Rare appearances of gore and pornography are dealt with swiftly.

Other lines are harder to draw. Especially on political threads, discussions can veer off into insult or even harassment. Able2Know errs on the side of free speech, but does need to preempt behavior that harms the community. A glut of personal attacks can make the forum inhospitable to participation and discourage new members.

Earlier this year, Able2Know revamped its content policy. You can find the current policy by clicking the “Rules” link in the footer of the site. Some of the rules are easy to uphold; others trickier. Rule 8, for example: “No personal attacks on other members. Heated arguments are okay; mudslinging and calling each other names is not.”

To increase the transparency of our moderation and to encourage members to adhere to the rules, we are going to try out a small change. When a post is removed for reasons other than spam, you might now find a message indicating that it was removed, and why (e.g. “Response moderated: No personal attacks”).

This might be a little jarring at first. We ask you to keep two things in mind:

Our small moderator team cannot read everything that’s posted. If we removed one post but left another up, it might just be that we didn’t see it. So if you see something you feel should be removed, use the Report function and we’ll take a look when we can.
As our moderator team is small and consists of people volunteering their spare time, we are not able to engage in discussions about individual post removals.
We are keenly aware that any line we draw is going to be arbitrary to some extent. People will always disagree about what constitutes a “personal attack,” “personal arguments ad nauseum”, or “toxic behavior”. A couple of the rules of thumb we keep in mind, however, involve:

distinguishing between personal attacks and criticisms of someone’s views or arguments, however harsh;
distinguishing between attacks aimed at an individual and generic broadsides;
considering whether a post solely disparages another user or has other, redeeming content;
distinguishing between hate speech and controversial views.
In the end, we do not claim to be faultless. All the moderators promise to do, in the spare time they devote to A2K, is to try to be fair – and adhere to the rules that apply to their own actions.

UPDATE: After implementing the strategy of replacing posts that violated non-spam rules with moderation messages for half a year, we stopped editing out posts in this way again in June 2017. While the practice increased moderation transparency, it had little effect otherwise. Eventually we decided that the negative impact of littering threads with repetitive stock moderation messages on the site’s appeal outweighed its benefits. We have therefore returned to simply deleting posts that violate the site’s rules.

To increase the transparency of another aspect of our site moderation, however, we have started informing users who are suspended for non-spam reasons by email of the reasons why.



One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison
October 3, 2012 | By Robert Gentel
As an open marketplace for ideas, Able2know seeks to support a diverse range of discussion. One of the inevitable results of said diversity is that some of the speech that occurs freely on Able2know is objectionable to some people, sometimes acutely so.

Our preferred way of dealing with such situations is to try to create solutions that allow for the free expression to continue for those who seek it, while providing a way for those who find said speech objectionable to avoid it.

Towards these aims we are introducing a new NSFW feature that allows for members to report posts that are Not Safe For Work through the normal topic and post reporting buttons. Moderators will mark topics and posts that are NSFW that follow our definition thereof. These topics and posts will not be removed, but will be marked with a “NSFW” flag (and posts are collapsed by default). Anyone who wants to see the content can still do so on a case-by-case basis or members can edit their user preferences if they don’t want to collapse NSFW posts at all.

This NSFW flag allows us to better serve the different portions of our community. For example, no longer will we be editing out graphic images, and replacing them with links. Moderators will simply mark posts NSFW and those who want to see them can, and those who do not don’t have to, problem solved.

If only all the world’s objectionable-content problems were resolved this easily.

For the record, I have always been against this. It would turn this place into little silos... there would be a space for liberals and a space for conservatives with zero interaction.

There is no mention of any ignore feature.

I found out today that there is a way to ignore posters.

maiden-usa wrote:

I don't know. That's why I asked.
Is there a way I can make it so specific people cannot see my posts?

For the record, I have always been against this. It would turn this place into little silos... there would be a space for liberals and a space for conservatives with zero interaction.