Content Warnings Anonymous Poll

I think this poll is missing some of the reasons content warnings are used. That being said, part of the reason this is such a point of contention (and that they are useless when there's disagreement) is that mastodon's implementation of them is fundamentally lacking, so I'm uncertain where to take that.

The underlying social problem is that content authors are never going to be able to predict what any given person who might see the content will have wanted or needed to be warned about. Short of putting everything under one (which some real usability issues) or major software changes, at best you can come to a vague sort of compromise, and actors who are actively malicious can intentionally use the ambiguities and lack of consensus to cause harm.

Yea, this basically. I've had people get surprisingly upset with me for talking publicly about crop genetic science on Mastodon, for example, because the things I'm sharing challenge beliefs they hold very dear and identify with. Like, crops. Farming. If it were my duty to CW anything that could upset a reader, I'd still not have considered that discussing the science of crops would cause so much distress. :confused:

I think this poll is missing some of the reasons content warnings are used

@meltheadorable @cathalgarvey
Then please do add them. I made sure to put 'Feel free to choose multiple options and to add your own' to the description. I see the contention around this but don't think that's a reason to rely on implicit understanding. I don't think it should necessarily be compulsory to CW an arbitrary list of subjects.

Though we've got Loomio for social.coop members to talk amongst themselves I'm kinda curious what the other people I follow and my followers think too, as well as all the other users out there, on other instances. When I toot, it's not only social.coop that hears it. So I want to know when I toot if I'm inadvertently causing distress – some might be able to reply and explain themselves, others might rather anonymity. Others might just unfollow/block. Either way, fair enough. I think the more methods of communication, the better.

Going by your example @cathalgarvey , if your reader had already anonymously added 'crop genetic science' to a list that wasn't difficult for us all to search, you might not have caused distress.

Not that I'm trying to say it should necessarily be the tooter's responsibility to CW the most obscure of distressing topics – but I'd rather know beforehand than inadvertently offend or distress someone.

Added the option:
"Niche interest content (toot includes acronyms not widely known)".

There seems to be people who have already voted and didn't have this option offered to them: the vote results will be very useful, but I hope that this is taken into consideration.

Thanks for taking things forward @jakebeamish !

A quick update on the poll – there's been 26 participants, voting as follows:

1. NSFW (23/26) 88%
2. Content considered inflammatory (16/26) 62%
3. Content considered insensitive (15/26) 58%
4. Contents that may trigger anxiety crises and/or meltdowns (15/26) 58%
5. Optionally: topics that may be sensitive for some people (eg. food) (12/26) 46%
6. Politics (11/26) 42%
7. Content Warnings are always optional (9/26) 35%
8. Profanity (5/26) 19%
9. Highly personal topics (5/26) 19%
10. Content Warnings should always be used (3/26) 12%
11. Hate speech (1/26) 4%
12. Niche interest content (toot includes acronyms not widely known (0/26) 0%
13. Content Warnings should never be used (0/26) 0%

The percentages in the screen shot look to be calculated as a proportion of total votes cast, which isn't that helpful as there wasn't a set amount of votes per voter. I've rounded to the nearest percent in the figures above.

Again I just want to reiterate that I don't think this kind of research will yield a hard and fast result upon which we base any kind of proposal here. However I think there is value in regularly testing the waters and being open to take on board the opinions of others, especially those who interact in any way with the instance (and have us populating their federated timelines).

The reaction to this particular poll has been a bit mixed here on Loomio, and participation is pretty low – but then again, it wasn't shared very widely at all. I suspect a poll with higher participation would be more useful. If the group agrees it would be productive, can I informally propose:

• A poll of the membership, as @matthewcropp has suggested. (We should of course use Loomio for this)
• Another wider poll (anonymous again? Or not? Or both? Perhaps include a link to somewhere that discussion can take place, @cathalgarvey – what do you reckon? Is Mastodon is a good place for that?) targeted at members and users of other instances who federate with social.coop or otherwise interact with our members. (@samtoland thanks for pointing out that Loomio can do this too)
• Implementation of some kind of (anon?) comment box we can publicize for requests/complaints about bad CWing – CWG could periodically review this?

I populated this poll with some answers to start with – in an effort to represent a variety of positions, and to test out opinion on some of the phrasing currently used in the CoC. Results however are pretty skewy, as though a voter can add options, those who have already voted cannot change their vote(s). A poll without any initial options might be better, maybe. @meltheadorable, @cathalgarvey, @leosammallahti and everyone else too, do you folks have suggestions for how we can get around some of these problems? Is there value in this kind of thing?