@Sunflower

Have you seen an announcement yet? Sunday...

well, we are humans...meaning we shoot for things and invariably miss some because there's only 24 hours in a day.

thanks for your patience. :-)

OK James, thanks for the reply.

I'd also prefer the new option being turned off by default.
When I was a new listener, I enjoyed that other listeners reached out to say hi, radio bump, congrats on the quick start, etc...and now I do not mind newer listeners asking questions. I feel that the amount of spam was minimal (and easily controlable via specific account blocking) and manageable and did not decrease my enjoyment of the site.

I'd like to give the same greetings to newer listeners from time to time (like top rookies), but I don't want to fill up my tiny subscriber activity window to do it either.

Quite a community builder this was. Would you want to be part of a community in real life when you couldn't say hi to someone while walking down the street unless they were already on your list of friends?

Congratulations guys....you've just turned t61 into just another radio station for me.

A compromise might be to allow people to post, say, 10 messages a day to non-subscribers. That way there is enough breathing room to make friends, but not enough to make spam.

:-)

A compromise might be to set default to 'Unblocked'.

I agree with the deafening chorus of people saying that this should be an option, not the default. If people get annoyed, then it is easy enough for that person to select the option to block random messages. But as the default setting, it will make it very difficult to build relationships in the community (because a large portion of people will not even know that this setting can be changed).

Part of the unique experience of the site is that the artists are very accessible. Hopefully this doesn't make it harder to have those rewarding interactions.

willie
A compromise might be to set default to 'Unblocked'.

With an introductory message about how to block users or lock your wall.
You could even make it a sticky message that will always be there.

I would have thought that, if the default remains set to 'Blocked', it would be possible for the sites administrators to send out a pop-up message/wall comment/whatever to all users notifying them of this update/amendment and how to amend the settings in the 'edit account' section.
I would think that the majority of listeners on the61 do not check the forums regularly, if at all, especially new users and so would not be aware of this recent update.

James:

Even though you guys might have gotten several complaints from users having their walls spammed, I'd imagine it's a tiny (but vocal) minority of users.

While it's great that you've added the long-overdue ability to block non-subscribed users from posting on your wall, defaulting the option to "block" is going a bit far. I think the vast majority of users have absolutely no spam problems, or don't mind deleting/blocking the occasional message/user. Yes, they could go into Options and enable commenting, but most people don't follow the forums and don't know how (even a front-page announcement is probably going to get overlooked by most users).

I've already had two instances where I wanted to comment on a non-subscriber's wall and couldn't. Honestly, it's making me a lot less interested in hanging out on the site, because part of the social aspect has now disappeared.

How about a compromise? When you first register your account, there's a new checkbox: "Allow comments from users you have not subscribed to?" and default it to checked. There, everyone gets the option, and you're erring on the side of leaving communication open.

@whitehowler

we have had the ability to block any user we wanted to for at least a month. look on your comment wall. underneath every posting are the words "block user" and "delete" which have been there for a while. i don't see how the newest feature is in any sense "long-overdue." if i'm trying to peel an apple i'm not going to look around for an axe when i'm already holding a paring knife. i really don't mean to sound snarky but hearing people talk about this as being "long-overdue" seriously confuses me.

as for your suggestion about the default setting and handling this as an opt-in feature rather than an opt-out: bump

Well, I personally don't think it's long-overdue, but it seemed like the thing to say. =)

block messages from strangers (listeners who you have not subscribed to and artists whose songs you have not added)

These should really be separate options.

@ whitehowler: you're actually speaking the other way around. it's mostly a "tiny group of vocal users" (in your words) that's unhappy about this new privacy change. we wouldn't have made the adjustment if we didn't feel the greater population of thesixtyone (mostly underrepresented in the forums since they're too busy listening to music) benefited. sure, it's an inconvenience to some who are used to the old system, but it's the right thing to do in the long run.

thanks for understanding.

Well, we don't understand. And guess what? I found that I can actually have the music play while I'm in the forum. Great feature.

I'm not sure I understand why a site with both social networking and social gaming elements would block communications between users by default.

If it's a spam problem, it's very easy to delete messages and block specific people if necessary. I'm in the top 250 listeners on the site with over 40 subscribers, and I've never had a spam problem (maybe two or three unsolicited messages from artists I hadn't subscribed to, which were removed with a single click).

If it's a problem with "groupthink" (as you put it), that will be an issue with any system that has gaming/scoring elements. Unless you eliminate the points and ranking system entirely, a song's individual merit will NEVER be the sole criteria for its success.

In spite of this, the most successful songs on t61 tend to be very good. Everyone's tastes are different, but you rarely see "crap" hitting the homepage. Popular artists will have an advantage, and popular listeners will have more effect on which songs do well (at least initially).

It's just part of the game -- and it's not the end of the world. The good stuff still gets recognized eventually, and the not-so-good stuff lingers in obscurity. I'm not sure that blocking communication by default is helping to level the playing field, but it's definitely impeding the evolution of the social atmosphere we've been trying to build (which is one of the things that keeps me coming back here).