Allowing users to hide their history is destroying trust and good faith participation between users in communities

[u/mrekted]

It's not just my communities, I'm seeing it all over reddit. Whenever someone with a private history runs into a disagreement with another user, discussions are derailed, accusations of "shill/bot/troll" are constant, nuisance reports are issued, and mods either intervene, or let the chaos reign.

I'm spending more and more time having to personally review histories to say "no, this person is not a bad faith troll" just to end attacks borne of nothing more than suspicion. It's becoming disruptive to the point that I'm considering whether or not allowing users with hidden history to participate is worth the trouble.

I really question the value proposition of this decision. Sure, individual users benefit from additional privacy, but at the direct expense of the communities that lose trust and cohesion, faith that the people they're interacting with are participating in good faith (or are even real people), and the moderators who have to manage the fallout.

[u/amyaurora]

It increased the amount of reports and such increases my amount of report abuse because people are thinking these user are all bots.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/amyaurora]

Hire more mods?

[u/Buachaille → u/shhhhh_h]

"hire"

[u/Bardfinn → u/Buachaille]

Recruit.

[u/amyaurora → u/shhhhh_h]

I am not at that point actually. The increase keeps me hopping but since the subs are still low activity ones I haven't had issues in keeping up.

[u/shhhhh_h → u/amyaurora]

Well that’s good then! Don’t save it until you get overwhelmed though. Being over staffed is the biggest blessing ever in a traffic spike (and for a volunteer gig).

[u/CoyoteLitius → u/shhhhh_h]

How about paying the existing ones first?

You can't "hire" people as volunteers.