About the truth that the user should not know

Hello.

One of the key moments in Gorky’s play “At the Bottom” is the dialogue of the heroes about the truth, about whether truth is needed, in what quantities and under what sauce it should be served. Today I also want to talk about the truth about the administrators and creators of the site who speak or hide from the user.

I by no means urge to lie to my users, there is an opinion that sooner or later any lie will be revealed, so it’s better to use the old proven method - not to tell the whole truth.
')
So, a list of what the user should not know:

Users do not have to see who voted how. From my own experience I know what a user is, who knows who puts what grades. In my first project, I allowed to see ratings (they asked for it so much).

After that, the events developed as follows: at first, a holy war raged, offended by low grades went and avenged their offenders with the same unreasonable understatement, sometimes accompanying their assessments with justifications sucked from the finger. After several high-profile scandals, I closed the site until, by common efforts, we did not develop rules that would suit everyone.

The rules turned out pretty tough. One of them said that if you give a bad assessment, then be kind, justify intelligibly. This led to the fact that bad ratings simply ceased to appear. And if they appeared, they were put by novices.

Users do not need to know about upcoming changes. Especially, if these changes are global, such as a full website update. Remember Habr and a bustling story with Superhabr. The fact that the Supergame will be said almost a year ago. The date of its discovery was revealed with pathos. And when the time came, it turned out that people were given a closed alpha. It was a shame, and the user can not be offended, he gets mad at this and starts doing stupid things. Now, somehow, I took it, accepted it, but the print remained. I write this from the user's position.

On the other hand, the barricades look like this - six months ago I announced the release of the project “Seven”, which, according to the idea, should be a logical continuation and an improved version of my first project. At that time I had a TZ, a layout (which, by the way, had to be redone from scratch) and a programmer who had not even started the project yet. It’s quite natural that development, as it happens, has been delayed, and now the second promised time is coming to an end, and only I and the programmer have seen the alpha. What this led to - on my first project a sharp decline in the number of jobs began. All took care of the best work for the "Seven".

The user should not be familiar with the administrator. This rule is most needed by the administrator himself, for his peace of mind and sometimes security. This, of course, is a double-edged sword, on the one hand, how else to unleash your startup without having friends in the network who would go to the resource first just because they simply know the creator.

On the other hand, there is a problem that I wrote about in one previous post . The administrator must be an invisible, mysterious and ephemeral creature. On the aforementioned Habré, they tried to achieve this by inventing the notorious UFO. In my opinion, they did very badly. Not less famous creators of Bashorg cope with this task brilliantly.

Naturally, there were and will always be dissatisfaction with the administration, whatever that administration is. But when the attacks, sometimes not quite adequate users, do not receive any reaction - the rebels are choking in their own anger. And rare flashes do not grow. Otherwise, if the administration reacts violently - the rebels get a second wind.

The user should not see "unwanted" comments. The degree of "undesirability" for each resource is determined individually. This is where moderators should work very well. Unwanted comments are those that theoretically lead the majority of users in one direction or another in the style of communication.

You want on the site of cultural communication - cut comments obscene and "other" vocabulary. Just cut at the root, with all subsequent "where did my comment go?". And do not be afraid that users will leave. The most inadequate will go away, but how many doubters you hold will have to block this outflow.

In principle, such a selection can achieve almost any result, but you just need to remember that removal should not be abused. And if 99% of comments on a site with obscene anecdotes contain a mat, then it is unlikely that you will be able to help with anything except changing the content.

The list was compiled on the basis of personal experience and if you have something to add - I will only be glad to read about it in the comments.