Lately I have been seeing an increased number of users leaving comments along the line of "Why isn't my blacklist working??"

From what I've come to understand, it's usually because the user has turned their blacklist off and doesn't realize it. So, I went on a search and turned my own blacklist off to see what it would look like. The visual difference is almost negligible. If you're not already familiar with how everything works, it's quite difficult for a new unfamiliar user to tell if their blacklist is on or not. Indeed, it's happened to me a few times. I look at a picture and I realize, 'hey wait a minute'... I look and apparently had turned my blacklist off and didn't even notice.

I think a few things could be done to the UI to make it more obvious when the blacklist is ON and when it's OFF. We already use Red and Green colours throughout the site. Green means on, Red means off. Additionally, when you disable the blacklist, there's still bold text that says Blacklisted(33)... This is misleading because now that the function has been turned off, the images are no longer being blacklisted.

I know that presently, there is a strikethrough present on a blacklist entry if you turn it off. However, this can also be misleading to users. If a tag such as "Gore" appears with a strike through it, that can communicate to the user that they've "crossed" gore off of their search results and should not see it. Like making a shopping list and crossing something off when it no longer applies.

What do you think? I'm always advocating for people to use their blacklists instead of complaining about art, because I understand that there are things that can be distressing to see. And so I would like for blacklist to actually work for all users who want them to.

A simpler option might be to make it so that, when you're looking at an image that would be blacklisted if you hadn't turned the filter off, there is still some visual indication. This could be along the lines of a big bold "Blacklisted" label beneath or superimposed on the thumbnail, and on the post page, maybe a banner above the image explaining how to turn the filter back on.

On a related note, I wouldn't be opposed to changing the way search results are displayed so that blacklisted images are shown (with the blank thumbnail) instead of removed entirely. This would make it more obvious that the blacklist is a client-side, rather than server-side, filter (we've had a few users confused about that in the past), as well as making it much easier to tell which images were blacklisted in the case where you have a full page of search results and only one or two blacklisted.

wat8548 said:
On a related note, I wouldn't be opposed to changing the way search results are displayed so that blacklisted images are shown (with the blank thumbnail) instead of removed entirely. This would make it more obvious that the blacklist is a client-side, rather than server-side, filter (we've had a few users confused about that in the past), as well as making it much easier to tell which images were blacklisted in the case where you have a full page of search results and only one or two blacklisted.

A fine idea, though it brings with it the possibility of having your results page just FLOODED with blacklisted images, and that's not exactly an appealing sight.

wat8548 said:
A simpler option might be to make it so that, when you're looking at an image that would be blacklisted if you hadn't turned the filter off, there is still some visual indication. This could be along the lines of a big bold "Blacklisted" label beneath or superimposed on the thumbnail, and on the post page, maybe a banner above the image explaining how to turn the filter back on.

On a related note, I wouldn't be opposed to changing the way search results are displayed so that blacklisted images are shown (with the blank thumbnail) instead of removed entirely. This would make it more obvious that the blacklist is a client-side, rather than server-side, filter (we've had a few users confused about that in the past), as well as making it much easier to tell which images were blacklisted in the case where you have a full page of search results and only one or two blacklisted.

If something were included that mentions an image being blacklisted, I'd prefer it be a small label on thumbnails that are normally blacklisted but currently aren't, that way if I turn off one of my items I can find the exceptions in page more easily.

kemonophonic said:
What about some kind of pop-up that asks the user if they're sure they want to turn off their blacklist?

Might get a little annoying for the user since you're able to turn off individual parts of your blacklist. Wouldn't want like five messages popping up in a row.

Here's not one, not two but three confused users just today alone. And I've seen plenty in this last week. I think the blacklist is proving to be confusing for users.

Lately I've been seeing almost daily comments from people demanding angrily to know why their blacklist isn't working. I still strongly believe visibility needs to be improved.

the simplest solution (assumingly, I'm not programmer dude) is maybe something like

Blacklist ON

Blacklist OFF

maybe some color as well? A lot of people don't seem to read how the blacklist formatting guide either which is also half the problem, that's not really solution fixable other then actually reading how to do something.

versperus said:
A lot of people don't seem to read how the blacklist formatting guide either which is also half the problem, that's not really solution fixable other then actually reading how to do something.

I've been saying this for a long time: the most common error type (no newlines) is auto-detectable, it's much more likely that any such blacklist was created in error than for a legitimate purpose, and you can always add a "yes, I know what I'm doing" button to the warning message to allow for the rare exceptions.

https://i.imgur.com/2HYPKaD.png

Another confused user that I had to help understand their blacklist was turned off.