Recently Pluto made a suggestion in a meta diary about hidden comments:
One suggestion (3+ / 0-)
(And, indeed, this is how it is done at Hupo.)
I suggest that "hidden" comments be hidden from TUs as well. That ends the discussions. Period.
All hiddens are sent to a back room and viewed by professional moderators.
If they are hidden for good reason (based on posted Diary Guidelines, as you suggest) then they remain hidden.
If they were wrongly hidden, then they reappear and the persons that hid it lose their TU status for a month.
That takes care of HR abuse, reparations for HR abuse, escalating insults, and thread hijacking -- all at the same time.
by Pluto on Tue May 17, 2011 at 12:27:18 PM CDT
To make this quite clear (as one commenter mistook it, I believe) Pluto was suggesting that comments that reached the magic ratio of hide ratings to recommends would be hidden from all. Up to that point TUs could add either and shift the balance one way or the other.
This notion seems to have a lot of merit to my eye. As many times as wiser or cooler heads say, "Don't feed the trolls!" there nonetheless are many who are drawn like a moth to a flame and add their contribution. It would also help keep threads more coherent as the hidden comment and its subthread (now much shorter) would be out of sight.
I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this. Even if you don't want to comment, please take the poll.