First of all, the Trisquel forum is not a public place. Like an association,
it is entitled to its own rules
(https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines) and it can even
ban members. That happened once, as far as I know. Anyone wanting to
express views that go against the Trisquel guidelines should always be
allowed to so. On her own forum, or website, or in the street, etc. *That*
is freedom of speech.
Having unenforced guidelines is like not having guidelines. Enforcement is
needed, unfortunately. A few trolls can destroy a community. At least, it
makes the community unwelcoming.
A few users can enforce the guidelines (like david, who often moved threads
to "the troll lounge") and/or the task can be collectively handled (like the
+1/-1 system). I like the collective moderation. In my humble opinion, its
main advantages are:
it is more responsive (moderators have a life): once inflammatory (or
otherwise guideline-disrespecting) posts are hidden, users tend to stop
replying, which is precisely what is needed to not have the thread turn into
a trollish shit storms;
it is robust (notice that whoever considers the negatively-rated post does
*not* disrespect the guidelines should click the +1 button);
you do not have a few moderators who receive all the crap (accusations of
being censors or worse; the banned user I know of was writing death threats).
The system can be improved though:
for more responsiveness, -1 could be considered enough to hide the post of a
user with a negative average rating (a new user who only registered to troll
or somebody who spends most of its post trolling);
for more robustness, the -1/+1 buttons could only be available to the users
with high-enough average ratings.
for a better understanding of how to use the -1/+1 buttons, it should be
written somewhere visible (a confirmation box after clicking -1?) that -1
should never express a disagreement but a violation of the guidelines, that
+1 should be used on negatively-rated posts that do violate the community
guidelines, even when disagreeing with the content of the post (reply to
explain why you disagree).
