We’ve introduced a minor change to how Blocking works. Until now, if Account A blocked Account B, that meant that Account B could not interact with any of Account A’s content. That included observations, comments, identifications, journal posts, flags, etc.
However, that also meant that Account B would be prevented from commenting on taxon changes made by Account A, or on any taxon flags made by Account A. This has been used to prevent some people, including those with knowledge of the taxon in question, from being able to comment on them and provide what may be important information and context to the discussion. The taxon itself does not belong to any account; it’s a common good of the iNaturalist community.
Starting today, a blocked account can comment on taxon changes made by the blocker, and taxon flags made by the blocker. So in the scenario above, if Account A flags a taxon, Account B will be able to comment on that flag. Account A, however, will not receive notifications of these comments from Account B. Comments on taxon changes will work in a similar fashion.
We hope this will lead to more informed discussions about taxonomic issues while still preventing conflicts and harassment. It does not mean that a blocked account can use taxon flags or taxon changes to harass or insult the blocker. These can be reported to help@inaturalist.org or via the ticket submission form. If it’s determined that a blocked account is using taxon flags or taxon changes as vehicles for harassment, that action will be treated as an attempt to circumvent blocking and the blocked account may be suspended.
In the scenario you describe will account B receive notifications for comments on the taxon change/flag?
Harassment has long been a suspendable offense, which would cover this scenario, but the way this is written implies that there is a separate suspendable offense of circumventing blocks, if that is the case this should be added to the community guidelines, and defined such that it is not applied too broadly. My concerns would be a scenario where A blocks B but A and B continue to interact and even discuss iNat on other social media, does B risk a suspension here despite not engaging in harassment? Or where A blocks B but still engages in discussion with B on person C’s observation, does B risk a suspension for responding to A’s comments?
Does B risk a suspension for disagreeing with A’s ID on an observation and leaving a comment explaining why?
Just tested to double check and Account B will not receive notifications for comments by Account A, but will for comments by other accounts.
There isn’t, but the main method to do so would be to create a sockpuppet, and it meets the definition of a sockpuppet:
A sockpuppet account is an additional account set up to evade suspension, circumvent restrictions in functionality, or other forms of bad behavior, like confirming your own identifications.
But I see your point with the confusion, I can change the OP here to
If it’s determined that a blocked account is using taxon flags or taxon changes as vehicles for harassment, the blocked account may be suspended.
That work?
In general, behavior on other sites isn’t taken into account on iNat. It’s can be pretty difficult to prove these are the same people as we don’t have access to detailed info, and we/curators can’t realistically expect to take into account everything that happens elsewhere. I’m not a lawyer, but maybe if a restraining order or something similar was involved, that might change things.
This has already been possible with current functionality. I think in most cases no unless it’s harassment, but I think my text chage noted above makes these questions moot?
Is this how it should be? I question whether anyone involved with a taxon flag, or especially a taxon change, should be unaware of activity on it. And what if person A commits the change? will B still not be notified?
You clarification about the community guidelines is very good and addresses all my concerns
it seems unlikely to me that many people who blocked someone, often explicitly to prevent the blocked person from interacting with them, would want to get notifications of new comments by the blocked person (that couldn’t be turned off—see below). that seems like a not unlikely recipe for potentially reigniting whatever interpersonal conflict led to the block in the first place.
currently, there doesn’t seem to be a way for someone to unfollow a flag or taxon change that they themself created. while comments added post-update by a blocked iNat user to a taxon flag/change created by the blocking user won’t generate notifications for the blocking user, new comments by anyone else will; if the blocking user is in the habit of checking in on their notifications, that’ll accordingly resurface the blocked user’s activity (whether preexisting comments from before the block or new ones from after this update) to the blocking user, which isn’t ideal if the blocking user wants to avoid the blocked user as much as possible. (true, that’s also the case for flags, observations, etc. created by a third party that both the blocking and blocked users have interacted with, but those can already be unfollowed if need be.) given that, and since there isn’t inherently a need for the creators of all taxon flags to be present and involved with the discussion on and resolution of those flags (they may have created a flag to solicit discussion or decisions by others and not necessarily have any information to contribute to it themselves, or they may simply wish to excuse themselves from the discussion at some point and let someone else resolve the flag [especially if the continuing discussion involves someone they wish to avoid interacting with]—and even in the case of uncommitted taxon changes, other curators can commit or withdraw those if necessary), it seems like there’s a decent case for allowing users to unfollow their own taxon flags (and even taxon changes). should that be its own feature request?
Thankyou @tiwane for the update, but especially for the final link about for specifying about the context for the “feature request”. I’ve personally not seen this as a concern from curator perspective, but i’m glad it’s something in response to concerns of others.
Allowing unfollowing of taxon flags and changes would be a good feature to request, yes
I was talking about whether the blocked user gets notifications by the blocking user, I am concerned about blocks being used to hide activity on the taxon flag from someone who would want to see it, in a similar manner to the problematic use of blocking to exclude people from a taxon flag that lead to this feature request
I have personally encountered blocks used to exclude curators who disagree with the flagger from participation in taxon flags, this was definitely an issue