Ha, yes, I see it. Fair enough. Thank you
Are you serious? This has nothing to do with a free speech, and users shouldn’t just live with a bully harassing them!
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I agree with @fffffffff.
I for one appreciate being given the discretion. We may recognize that lines are being crossed that feel dangerous to us and it feels good to know we have the right to take an extremely concrete action immediately should we feel we need to to protect ourselves.
For a long time women especially have been basically pooh-poohed when our senses told us something was amiss, something was wrong. In my brief time on this site I have seen the following things which technically may not break rules but felt weird to me.
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A male who only follows females and only those with profile photos of their faces, not necessarily in the same geographic area. It appears he has a specific type.
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A male who tags a female to show “interesting observations” in which the species are mating. The species are not of scientific interest to the female, nor has she ever asked to be shown mating observations.
I have neither blocked nor reported either person because while both set my “ick, nope” sensor a-tingling, I do not feel threatened, but I appreciate that if I did, the option to block is available to me. Threatened includes my mental well-being. Someone else’s threatened may be different, that person may feel more vulnerable, temporarily or permanently, and that person should have the right to determine what feels right for them as far as blocking goes.
This is NOT to say anyone here has been creepy or weird, but to say that because creepy and weird do exist in the world thank you for allowing us to retain access to an instantaneous block function.
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Although I have never used the blocking feature and hope I don’t, I think it’s important that it be available. Limiting it to blocking three people seems reasonable.
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Yeah, I think the discussion should not be at all about if the feature should be there, because I think it’s necessary on any platform that involves people talking to one another. Because people are how people are. And because staff has made it clear it’s there for a reason(s), which I agree with. I think it should be more about how can we avoid problems while using the feature, or something in that realm.
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not necessarily… i used to mostly agree with you but ive unfortunately encountered someone who was awful and wouldn’t stop engaging with me and wasn’t banned. So… it does have a time and place.
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It prevents a situation where the blocked user can go through and deliberately misidentify observations (with explicit disagreement) from the person who blocked them.
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People really shouldn’t compare iNat to your everyday social media platform. Clearly this is an identification site.
You just wanna show off pics? Flickr is your place.
You wanna interact on multiple levels with people of your choice only? Join Fakebooze or Twinkle.
But no, you wanna join an identification site! Well, then you have to live with the fact that people will ID your stuff. It’s … implicit, plain as that. Being able to block this essential function is like attending a chess site, but then blocking players for a “check”. “Oh, I felt offended by this guy playing better than me, can’t have that!”
Well, it’s easy for me to talk since I haven’t been harrassed on iNat. I have been annoyed occasionally by a few people who drop a wrong ID and never re-answer the discussion or remove the wrong ID. But nothing blockworthy. So generally speaking, blocking may be neccessary in escalating situations, but I think it should be against etiquette to block someone even once just for IDing stuff. What personal reasons could there be? “I didn’t like his avatar” doesn’t count.
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I blocked a person who is not gonna learn that he doesn’t know what he ids, many users are tired of this one doing “ids” and staff know about that, but that’s not against the rules to be ignorant, so it’s easier to cut the problem from your observations than reuploading them, turning off community id or constantly tagging someone. And also another user who seemingly has some problems decided that I hate him and when I checked my local project and just ided everything there, he wrote me to stop, that he knew a jerk with my surname, that he hates city I live nearby and so on, so even iding correctly can be seen as a reason to block (to clear up he first showed up on my cat obs and wrote a lecture on how he thinks these observations are useless, unprovoked, and I forgot his username since then).
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but iNat IS social media first and second. Unless your pictures are on your hard drive, and for your eyes only. Every identifier and comment - is - social media. The common thread bringing us together is I am a Naturalist.
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I don’t know if everybody sees it this way. I do, but there’s a lot of people on the site and everybody is different. I think if there’s a flagging system, it makes sense for there to be a blocking system. It’s unfortunate but that’s how any site where people interact with one another usually is because people butting heads over such and such is unavoidable.
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Yes, maybe you are right. I might be seing the topic somewhat one-sidedly.
After all, no one says you have to play chess with a chess board, you could juggle the pawns instead … even if it makes the chess player cringe. (I didn’t mean that sarcastically.)
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I wrote “not your everyday social media”, because it follows very special rules usually not implicit in an ordinary platform. Much like a gaming or chess platform were you cannot decide that you want the rules changed for your personal wellbeing or block a user for playing an inconveniently brilliant move.
So: a big “yes” to being polite and all, but the ID rules are pretty clear and shouldn’t be affected by personal issues … in an ideal world, that is, I get it … ;)
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I have not blocked here yet, but on other sites I have for reasons such as following:
- assaulted me
- stalked me
- wouldn’t take no for answer when asking me out
- harassment about gender
And if I saw any of them pop up on iNat, I would do the same here. As a queer femme person in the US South, I certainly get harassment and sometimes assult issues and I really appreciate the ability to do that without needing “iNat Staff Permission”.
I may be blocking a user on iNat in future for poaching reasons and I don’t trust them to see where I’m doing things. Still thinking on that because on the other hand I can keep track of them better if I don’t…they haven’t actually violated any community guidelines of the site to my knowledge, so blocking is my course of action there.
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What if the number of users a particular user could block was lowered to one? I can’t image really anyone dealing with being harassed by more than one person (on iNat).
I am struggling to understand why the existing system is problematic for some, who keep calling for it to be done away with or the limit for how many to be blocked lowered.
I say this because despite the fact that multiple persons, myself included, have given concrete examples of non-identification reasons blocking would, might, or has been necessary, persons continue to ask for reasoning why blocking is necessary and make comments like What personal reasons could there be? “I didn’t like his avatar” doesn’t count.
Please can the community just accept that:
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Blocking exists because there are legitimate reasons it needs to exist.
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If you do not behave in ways that draw blocking, you need not worry that you will be randomly blocked hither, thither and yon.
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However if you find you are blocked on the odd occasion and believe it to be done so as part of a wider pattern of retribution against corrective identification you can bring it up to Staff and it will be examined and may be reversed.
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However if it is not, the world will not end. If you are concerned about being the “only” resource for a particular taxon, for goodness sake, qualify someone to help or ask someone qualified to help. (The healthiest organizations are the ones where someone could drop dead and the organization would not skip a beat.)
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Nobody will assume you are a bad person if you are blocked. Or even know, really.
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That said, nobody is entitled to demand from another a reason for a specific block, even as we recognize that knowing it could be helpful in preventing an unwanted behavior from being repeated.
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The Staff has determined the blocking number that works for this site to be three.
Please if you ask for examples recognize that providing them often comes at an emotional cost for those who provide them. At this point the non-acceptance and “non-imagination” is beginning to feel… aggressive.
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yeah if you ‘cant imagine being harassed by more than one person’ you are … lucky? and/or dont belong to a group of people who are more prone to harassment? The issues caused by blocking seem way less than the issues caused by not being able to block.
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And even if you don’t need to use it, why should it be removed?
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I can. I’ve been wondering whether three is enough.
Definitely. Not only that, but has a bit of a feel of mansplaining/whitesplaining/straightsplaining – done for the same reasons, I mean.
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I think the original issue has been answered so I’m going to close this topic. Thanks for sharing your perspectives, everyone.
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