Protect Creators, Preserve Trust: Introduce Graduated Comment Controls to Improve Community Health
Timeline
2025/10 - 2025/12
Role
Problem Reframing
Feature Planning
Product Metrics Map
Data Analysis
Goal
Creator Retention
With
Product Designer
Engineering Team
Overview
Dcard aimed to improve the negative tone in its community. The initial direction was to allow creators to hide comments on their posts. I reframed the problem from a platform governance perspective and led the team to ship a set of graduated comment controls that improved creator safety and repeat posting—without sacrificing transparency in public discussion.
Background
Anonymity is central to Dcard’s value, but it also increases toxic commenting and puts sustained pressure on creator supply.
Dcard is an anonymous community platform. While anonymity encourages directly expression, it also increases the likelihood of harsh or toxic comments. This created psychological pressure for creators and risked reducing creator supply over time.
Initial Consensus
To protect creators, the team aligned on an “easy fix”: let creators hide comments on their posts.
🤔 Why it seemed right: immediate stress relief.
🤔 Why it gained consensus: fast, simple, low engineering ambiguity.
Governance Risk
Identified platform governance risk: hiding comments would reduce transparency and weaken trust.
While the intent of initial consensus was valid, I saw the long-term platform governance risk:
😵💫 Limit Judgement: Readers wouldn’t be able to assess the quality of the discussion.
🫥 Weakness Transparency: Readers wouldn't have full visibility into the discussion.
🤯 Damage Trust: Once public information becomes untrustworthy, the community’s trust foundation starts to collapse.
Reframe Problem
Reframed the request as a trade-off: balancing creator psychological safety and public discussion visibility.
My goal wasn’t to argue against the idea—it was to shift the team from a solution-first mindset to a problem-first framing by making the trade-off explicit: creator safety versus transparent public discourse, and aligning on a sustainable path forward.
Define Principles
Introduced a principles-first decision framework to drive alignment and unlock forward progress.
To shift the team from solution-first thinking to a shared framework, I introduced 3 decision principles:
#1 Don’t suppress normal discussion.
#2 Preserve comment visibility as much as possible.
#3 Increase creators’ sense of control.
Key Activities
Replaced an all-or-nothing "hiding comments" approach with "graduated comment tools".
Based on the decision principles, we replaced an all-or-nothing "hiding comments" approach with "graduated comment tools" that offer calibrated control:
#1 Pin Comments
Creators can pin comments they want to highlight.
Notify the commenter when their comment is pinned.
Notify the creator if the content of a pinned comment is edited.
#2 Disable Comments
👉
👉
The comment can be disabled via setting before or after posting.
The comment section will display that the creator has disabled comments for this post.
Achievements
Creators who use the graduated comment management tools consistently showed stronger engagement than the benchmark.
Monthly average comment replies from creators:
2.8～3.0× higher than benchmark (creators who don't use the tools).
Monthly average new posts:
2.0～2.2× higher than benchmark (creators who don't use the tools).
Monthly average active days:
1.7～1.9× higher than benchmark (creators who don't use the tools).
Key Takeaway
This project demonstrates how I influence direction under consensus and protect long-term product health.
When requirements are ambiguous or mis-scoped, I excel at thinking outside the box and reassessing the core issue through the lens of systemic governance to ensure a comprehensive solution.
I specialize in using decision principles to constrain solutions, implementing strategic constraints within the creative process to ensure final outcomes align with the long-term health and sustainability.
I excel at driving consensus and enhancing execution efficiency. Through structured reasoning, I guide teams toward the best possible outcomes, making the most effective solution the obvious path forward.