[new] notification of collection contribution deletion

Ideas to improve Criticker and new feature requests, as well as announcements about new enhancements.
livelove
Posts: 759
0 Ratings
Your TCI: na
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 9:36 pm

[new] notification of collection contribution deletion

Post by livelove »

I have been thinking for a little while now about the way public collections are handled, as there is always some degree of trade-off between collaboration and control, which is shown in the following scenarios:

    scenario 1 (current situation): all users can add films, only creator can delete contributions
      + advantage for collaboration: all users can contribute
      + advantage for creator: maintains control of his collection

      - disadvantage for collaboration: contributors have less rights than creator, their work can be erased
      - disadvantage for collaboration: shared community knowledge can be erased by 1 person (in theory the collection creator can empty the whole list)

    scenario 2: all users can add films, only contributors can delete their own contributions (important in case of mistakes)
      - disadvantage for creator: does not maintain control of his collection
      + advantage for collaboration: all users can contribute
      + advantage for collaboration: contributed work cannot be erased without the contributor's permission

    scenario 3: all users can add films / contributors can delete their own contributions / creators can delete contributions, but the contributor needs to confirm
      - disadvantage for creator: maintains a bit more control than in scenario2, but still a lot less than in scenario1
      + advantage for collaboration: all users can contribute
      + advantage for collaboration: contributed work cannot be erased without the contributor's permission

Personally, I do like the current situation (scenario 1) and prefer it to scenarios 2+3.
But all scenarios have their advantages and disadvantages.
For example in scenario 2, it's hard to deal with vandalism and another big problem is that a collection creator can have a specific idea in mind and then other users completely ruin that idea by adding films they think (in good faith) match the collection's topic, but which totally don't. To a lesser degree, that problem also occurs in scenario 3, as the creator might request a deletion, but get no answer (as some users may not be active regularly or have left criticker alltogether) and some might just deny the request.

The disadvantage of scenario 1 (current situation), however, is that user contributions (i.e. their work) can be deleted without their permission and without them even being aware.

I think, their work should not be deleted secretly without their knowledge,
so to improve the current situation (which — as stated before — is still the best compromise/trade-off IMO), I would merely suggest that contributors can (optionally) receive a criticker message, when a film they added to a collection is removed by its moderator.

As with all other criticker messages, this should be optional with a setting in the user profile letting the user decide whether to receive such a notification or not.

For example, there might be a collection entitled "cults" to which a contributor adds 2 films about sects (Scientology) and 1 film involving voodoo cults. The collection creator feels like none of them fit in his collection (this is actually a true case), so he decides to remove the contributions.

The advantage for the contributor of receiving a notification would be that the contributor can choose now in which way to react, given that he/she is aware now. For example the contributor could decide to start a public or private collection of his own about Scientology or sects.

When users regularly add films to existing collections (which should be the goal as that helps grow the database and make it more robust and strong), it's a bit of a permanently dissatisfying feeling to never really know how many of ones contributions are actually erased, given that currently there is no way of knowing.
So the notification would improve that situation to the extent that at least the contributor is not left in the dark anymore.

Post Reply