My concern with this proposed change is that it may create more of a problem than it solves.
Is there harm in finding out? It's always possible to turn it back off if it sucks.
There is obviously big upside in allowing authors more control over what types of content have access to their audience. Many bloggers will not blog on sites that permit commenting by anyone.
It is possible to get the best of both worlds by allowing authors to turn on or off this feature on a per-post basis, along with a per-account default. Those authors who want to control comments can do so (along with an indicator to readers the comments being shown are moderated by the author) and those who do not want to control comments can convey to readers that the comments being shown are not subject to author moderation.
This, of course, comes at a cost: additional UI complexity and the need for somehow getting this mental model we've just spent several hundred words describing into the minds of every author who uses the interface. I'm not entirely sold on the benefits of additional customization outweighing the downsides of additional complexity. We are determined to build the simplest possible thing that can work.
Mental model in six words: "Click here to enable comment moderation"
Okay what about viewer-preference? I'd prefer the default-mode to be the uncensored view. Then the other mode would be the "comments censored by post owner" view.
Anyone should be able to leave a note, so to speak. Resteemed..
It is possible that you want this default only because neonazis haven't heard of steemit.com yet. I come from the seedy underbelly of the internet and know that the only reason we don't have problems with content right now is because of how small we are, and fully expect people to spam all sorts of terrible crap on every article posted soon.
It is my personal opinion that we should give an author 100% control over what gets displayed underneath their words, lest they go and publish their words somewhere else (almost every other blogging platform on the planet gives an author this control).
If our decision is wrong, then people will flock to busy.org (or some other site that doesn't lets authors moderate) instead, won't they?
It's a design that makes sense - just worried about the points, similar to what @pfunk has brought up.
I'll take your word for it, I can imagine how bad it can get :)