Yesterday I found a very interesting post of an ipernity member about the different attitudes about commenting that you find in different photosharing sites.

I was very sympathetic because I'm a real newbie and I lived all the same experiences in the last three years.

I was unable to comment, because I wasn't part of her network.

I sent her an ipermail joking on those attitudes and then thanking her about her sharing of shots and ideas.

Perhaps my joke wasn't too direct or well written, so she blocked me :-(

I always try to be tolerant in real life and virtual life gives me an occasion to be more tolerant: I don't have the need to give an answer immediately. I never deleted a comment form my shots or posts or from the groups I admin. I never blocked a member. I only occasionally removed some member from my network to protect my children from content inappropriate for their ages. So I never saw the blocking mechanism in action.

I discovered some things:

  1. you don't have a feedback when you are blocked: no notification! so you don't know one many peoples blocked you, when and why
  2. no notification means no occasion for the member blocking you to let you know why are you blocked
  3. no possibility to contact back the member who blocked you, so no possibilities to give axplanations, ask for explanations, apologize!

I can live with the fact that someone don't like to be my contact, don't like my shots, don't like my way of managing a group or my network; what I don't like are the three above facts.

I'd like to know your and Team's opinions (pro and cons) on these ideas:

  • introducing the notification about a member blocking you
  • giving the possibility to add an explanation to the block
  • giving a ONE TIME possibility to reply to the notification giving explanations or apologizing

I think that these three simple things can make the difference between a photosharing site and a social network.

(PLEASE: feel free to send me translations of this post!!)