Daily Tildes discussion - should inviter/invitee info be public?

I posted a comment about this in another topic. I'm not going to hunt it down at the moment, but my feeling is that invites should be private. Maybe it's okay during a closed alpha to help identify if one person is inviting a bunch of trolls, but long term I believe it is counter to the stated philosophy of having people judged by their content. Because as it stands now, personal profiles show who invited you, which implicitly makes your reputation stand on that person's coat tails.

I do not want to be judged by who invited me here. I want to be judged by what I do here.

Nuke the invite info.

I think it should be public in this invite-only stage, like @jgb said. But as @rorso said in my thread about similar thing:

What if the people I invite want privacy? What if friend x or acquaintance y that I trust enough to invite, doesn't want me to necessarily know their username here and that they're into a fetish or have political opinions that clash with mine? We could be friends because we share multiple interests and hobbies and get along fine, but still want to keep some stuff private.

I'd either keep this opt-out (and display something like hidden), or add option to post anonymously, where poster's identity would be revealed only to Tildes admins. So if I want to post something anonymously, I just check a box and instead of my name, there will be hidden in the whole thread (even in comments). If I want to post anonymous comment, I can, again, tick a box, and my name in the comment and all under-level comments will be hidden.

Edit: Maybe somehow differentiate between different anonymous users, so if there are 5 anonymous users discussing in the same thread, it won't confuse everyone. Somewhere I've seen a thread about using the small generated images as user icons - as github uses. Maybe for each anonymous users, generate unique icon shown next to hidden based on hash of their username, so if the same user posts anonymously on multiple threads, he'll still have same icon? Or something like this, I don't really know how it should be done.

I would like to be able to see the invite tree. It could potentially allow 'rotten branches' to be identified and reported by users, since that's quite a hard task for you to do alone.

Edit: I also feel that not showing the invite tree is somewhat similar to not showing a user's comments - it creates a false pretence of privacy when in actuality the information is trivially scrapable.

I think "invited by" should be private since the the site errs on the side of privacy.

It could have practical benefits for admins. But for your average user it'll just be for curiosity and that's not enough reason to reveal possibly personal information (like relationships between users).

The meat of the issue for me, personally, is that the current system creates two problematic questions at certain times.

• When inviting a user, I must decide whether I will ever post anything on the site that I wouldn't be comfortable with them seeing. They could be someone I trust and who I think would get a lot out of the site, but if their presence would influence my experience here, I have to make an unfortunate decision. A difficult problem here is that it's not always possible to know whether you'll end up wanting to discuss something out of their earshot. A new topic could arise that's of interest to you, or your relationship with them might change, culminating in difficulties with your prior assumption that you'd never discuss anything on here that would be worth hiding.
• When making a post, I must decide whether I would be uncomfortable with any of the people I have invited reading the post.

Of course, these are really only issues that exist during the invite-only phase of the site. But if the site ceases to be invite-only anyways, I don't see much utility in the invite tree in the long run.

It's a minor issue to me that the inviter/invitee relationship has some asymmetry, as noted by Deimos, but I think that should be symmetric regardless of what decisions about privacy are made ultimately.

I think that making the list public is too much information. It reveals social relationships between users that can be leveraged for other purposes; while making the information public is really only a novelty "oh that's interesting" kind of thing. Knowing this structure seems useful only to administrators and (future?) moderators.

Maybe it would be okay to give inviters the ability to see their child trees ala private torrent sites since inviters are somewhat responsible for invitees -- but no more.

I'll toss an "aye" in the public pile, with some caveats.

Pros:

• attempts at sockpuppetting/brigading/trolling groups (said "rotten branches" from @jgb) can be spotted by the community
• seeing the invite tree gives us a more intuitive view of how the userbase has grown

Cons:

• bad behavior on the part of invitee accounts should not be a factor for banning the inviter unless some serious shit is going down (illegal content, spam, all of the invited accounts spewing the discourse equivalent of hot nuclear waste, a user reporting attacks from all the linked accounts whether through post replies or DMs)
• users should be dissuaded from witch hunting the inviter should an invitee of theirs somehow rubs them the wrong way

I have a fairly recognizable name by anyone who knows me. If the invite list becomes public, I think people I invite would be hesitatant in posting and commenting, since they can be identified by association. I do not believe this is a good or worthwhile route to go. Other than pure interest, I don't see what this site gains from this info.

I know people irl I want to invite but can't because they'd immediately be able to discover my username.

I don't really have many online friends I feel comfortable inviting.

naturally, I fall on the "private" side of this discussion.

I'd rather it all be kept private. There's not much reason for normal users to know who invited who. This could just lead to

You were invited by OrangeLover626 and that's why you're defending the Orange revolution!

Nuh uh! You're just being fruitmad that I'm disproving the Orange revolution in favor of the Apple Armada

Basically I see it being used in arguments which it has no place in. In addition it has some privacy issues. What if user X doesn't want to know who he invites? Give me for example. I keep all my usernames completely separate in every website. If I were to invite someone from the subreddit I moderate (A fellow mod for example) than they can easily find out my Reddit username which I'd like to avoid.

I'm going to vote "private".

The site administrators (currently Deimos, possibly other people in the future) can already see who invited whom. If there's ever any serious problem, they can track these invitation trails if necessary.

Apart from that, there's no real need to track who invited whom. What benefit does it serve the general public on Tildes to know who invited me? Does anyone know, or need to know, who first introduced me to Reddit or Stack Exchange? How does that information help anyone who is not an administrator?

By publishing this information publicly, we're encouraging people to make a link between inviters and invitees. This might including judging one person by another person's actions. "You invited xyz and they said this thing I don't like, so I don't like you." "You were invited by abc and they approve of something I'm against, so you must be one of those bad people too." It is introducing literal prejudice (judging beforehand) into this website.

I would not want to be held responsible for the actions of my invitees. More importantly, I don't want the person who invited me to be held in any way responsible for my actions. While I appreciate his gesture in inviting me (due to our long association on Reddit), it's not his fault if I say or do anything wrong here. I've already stirred up occasional controversy here to the point where one person has accused me of sealioning and a couple of others believe I've acted in bad faith. However, I am the only person to be held responsible for my words and my actions. I don't want this to reflect on my inviter in any way. "The opinions expressed by this account are the author's own and do not reflect those of his inviter."

I think it should be public. The fact that it would be public would have the potential to dissuade a lot of users to be reckless with who they invite. That would lead to more accountability about who you invite. It would possibly be somewhat open to witch hunting but I think the community is, by now relatively rational on regards to these pitfalls.

The most important thing, if we go that way, would be to be clear about that info being public. @Soptik brought the best arguments against it so far but if we ate clear about what is visible to other users that should not be a significant issue. The invitees will have the necessary information to judge wether or not they want to be apart of th community or not.

I would love to see the invite tree. I think this will increase accountability and make users invite higher quality individuals.

I usually assume that anything I post online is public. If I'm not willing to do or say it on the front lawn of my house, why would do it in this forum?

I don't have a problem with it.

If I'm not mistaken, the idea here is that the invite tree being known could help detecting bad faith chronic behavior, like if someone invites lots of trolls.

I'm fine with this, but I don't see how that is related to the tree being public and, on the contrary, it has deep concerns regarding privacy.

I don't think even admins/high trust users should be able to see this information automatically. I think I system should be implemented so that, for example: if after inviting more than 5 new people, more than 50% of invitees get warnings/bans, then admins (or maybe high trust users) would get to see the inviter tree for further examination. In any case, this should only be applicable for X time. So if i invite someone and they participate and they behave properly (no warnings) for, say, a month or 100 posts/comments, then the link should not only be hidden, but it should be completely wiped. You shouldn't be responsible for someone's behavior after a while if they have demonstrated to be here in good faith. And I shouldn't be responsible either if only 1 or 2 people out of 10 I invite are misbehaving.

Other problems I see:
-Right now it's asymmetric, invitee knows inviter name, but not the other way around (if it were to stay, it should be symmetrical)
-If users invite people they know, there can be a deterrent effect on the types of posts they will participate if they don't want to be associated with those.
-Users might not invite potential good users just because of privacy concerns (imagine I'm gay, for example, and I know someone I know is a good user but they don't know I'm gay and I don't want them to know when I post to LGBT or whatever, just a simple example).
-It ties users permanently and contravenes the active privacy guidelines of the site.
-There are no tangible benefits for regular users to see this information at all, besides encouraging a policing attitude (which I don't think is good) or gossiping.
-The argument that it being public helps with accountability is not enough, privacy should come first, accountability should be built after that.

If anything, it should be opt-in and get approval from both sides. But even then, I think it's totally unnecessary and might create a culture of "castes" and "inviter profiling" which is totally wrong.

I feel that it should be either completely hidden from users or have a page where we can traverse the whole tree, up and down.

I would not invite my friends because this is an anonymous-ish platform If the invite tree is visible but it also would help to find bots and such if it is visible.

Edit: have bad actors shown in red in the invite tree

I would be in favour of having the invite tree publicly available for everyone to see, however there is the issue of accountability and exactly where the blame lies when inviting new users. Does the user who invited the bad user also get punished? Even if I invited someone whom I’ve known for a long time and trust them, I still cannot guarantee with 100% certainty they will always abide by the rules as human behaviour is still unpredictable sometimes.

Personally I feel that showing who invited who, at any depth of detail, would not really add anything to the site in general. I think only the admins should be able to see the complete tree, for finding bad branches, whereas the individual user could always have the ability to see their own tree, i.e. who they’ve invited to the site and the invites following those invited.

As a few have already mentioned, once the site comes out of invite only it may become redundant information anyway.

I vote for public. Transparency is important, especially in a site's infancy.

Why not let user chose if it is public or not? I prefer my privacy.

This is a question I find hard to care much about. I think the information should be accessible to users of a certain trust level, and maybe that means all users. There is value in being able to see who invited whom (as is being much discussed). There isn't nearly as much value in hiding that information except that you deny another tool for regular users to use to say "look this guy invited that trolling person, that must mean this guy is a troll too," even when it might clearly not be the case.

I do sympathize with the idea that users have very few tools they can use outside of their contributions to brand themselves, and that this persistent fact of who invited them is with them forever. So, as an example, if hypnotoad had used his invites to invite a couple good contributors, it would be a shame to let all users judge them solely on that fact. Users that are in a position to be making enforcement decisions though? That is potentially relevant information if one of hypnotoad's invitees is mimicing hypnotoad's behavior.

One side-effect (intended or not) of having the inviter-invitee relationship made public is that it prevents people making alternate accounts for themselves. If you can see that account xyz was invited by abc, you already know there's some sort of connection between those two accounts. Other clues may lead to the conclusion that user abc is operating xyz as an alt account.

Yes, someone could get another person to give them an invite code to set up an alt. But the point of an alt is usually to attain some level of privacy and confidentiality, and asking someone else to help negates that.

Also, alt accounts are often used to separate one set of interests from another. I believe the most common use for these is to keep porn interests separate from non-porn interests. This doesn't apply here, but there may be other separations.

Regardless of the purpose of alt accounts, having inviter-invitee relationships made public will reduce the number of alt accounts here. Whether this is desirable or not... I'm leaving open to discussion. I'm merely making the observation.

Sure, but make it opt-in.

I think in the invite only stage it's okay. Like I said another thread, I'd like to see a list of people I've invited on my invite page or somewhere. ( but I'm only invited one person so I guess it doesn't even matter) If people can see who invited me then I should just be able to see who I invited because why show one and not the other. But beyond the alpha I would just get rid of showing either or because it's going to just cause headaches.

There's no real reason for the public to have the information I mean they can't do anything with it it's more for the admins.

But I do also think that an individual user should have a list on the invite page of who they've invited just so they can make sure they're not inviting a bunch of trolls.

Because right now people can see who someone was invited by but the person who invited them has no idea who they are so there could be this person out there making them look bad and they have no way of knowing unless they stumble upon their profile.

I'd err on the side of privacy. I think as soon as the site goes open (assuming it does) it will be worthless to the admins because no one up to no good will join via invites in a network, and in general I think the balance of possible usages is highly skewed towards poor outcomes.

Public for accountability and trust.

Pros and cons have been pretty well covered. I think its unecessary to make that information public. Only admins need to know.

I don't really have a preference either way, I've got strong feelings for both public and private and so I can't really choose. However I will mention that I've not invited a friend who I think would've been able to provide quality discussion because they would have a direct link to my username.

While accountability through transparency should be the default approach, I don't see how keeping the invite connections public is of any use to normal members? Watching who invited the most productive members, or what?

Instead, we only inhibit people who wish to stay anonymous from distributing invites among their friends or making that decision at all.

As for opt-in/out, who will be the one opting in or out? If that's the one inviting, how's the public information of any relevance then? Those with ill-intent would just opt-out.

On the other hand, letting only the invited ones decide would be unfair and counterproductive.

I'm late to this post but have two concerns:

One is the quality of those invited. In this early stage we really need quality invites. The current system reminds us that these invites are tracked and probably increases the likelihood that we'll strongly consider who we invite.

The other concern is quantity of new invites. Seeing how the participation is going here, I'm getting a feel for the need for content, or at least the need for enough content of a sort that keeps invitees coming back and participating.

I think it's fine to be idealistic and imagine Tildes growing just because it's a good thing. But there's also the reality that we're all human and if there's not enough here to hold people's interest, they'll look elsewhere, regardless of how going non-advertising and quality content is the "right" thing to do.

This is why I think diversity of interest in the invitees is important. Otherwise Tildes becomes at risk of being one dimensional. So I'm saying that Deimos and the administrators have a challenging task of balancing quality and quantity. It seems to me that one the initial interest in Tildes grows, it will get its own 'reputation' as having certain characteristics, for example either overly nitpicky, arrogant, or some other typically simplistic and unfair judgment. As I said a challenging task.

So. That's my late input.

Private by default.
Analysis of the invitation tree, for finding rotten branches[@jgb], can can be done by administrators or moderators.

Let users decide it.

Visible by default. Can be disabled by either side. For both sides.

I don't see a reason NOT to have it if users (inviter and invitee) have the option to disable it.

I like the idea of being able to analyze invite trees and identify bad 'branches'. However, I think having invite information be public would create an unnecessary risk of harassment. I'm sure everyone here now would use that power responsibly but if it's truly public, who knows what people in the future would be able to do.

It is for that reasoning I believe invite tree information should be limited to administrators and possibly very-high-trust users.