Further reading · User research

How users see governance: voices U1–U4

Governance mechanisms can be drawn as flowcharts, but how governance actually feels to those who “use” it never shows up on any diagram. This page moves the lens from the engineering side to four experienced users — why they hit the report button, why they once took part in co-governance and then cooled on it, and one motive that is rarely said aloud yet matters most: freedom from censorship and identity safety are themselves the strongest implicit incentive.

Beyond the public report, this project invited a group of experienced users who had been deeply involved in the Matters community and its governance to sit for semi-structured, in-depth interviews. As promised in the informed-consent form, every interviewee is quoted under a de-identified code — transcripts replace names and job titles with codes＊深度訪談知情同意書（Matters）Interview transcripts will replace names and job titles with codes (such as G1, C2, A3, etc.). — and the research team further pledged that “if a quoted passage could be highly identifying, the research team will generalize it＊深度訪談知情同意書（Matters）If a quoted passage could be highly identifying, the research team will generalize it..” This page labels that group of interviewees U1–U4; anything touching identifiable on-site identities, event names, or overseas circumstances is abstracted or turned into a role. An honest caveat up front: what follows is the subjective experience and observation of individual users, not the platform's official position; its value lies in restoring the side that engineering documents cannot see, not in statistical representativeness.

Reporting is self-defense — cleaning up your own doorstep

The site's Crowd Power chapter splits community-assisted governance into two entirely separate paths: “reporting,” which anyone can use and which takes nothing down directly, and “cleanup,” which requires permission and hides a comment immediately. Seen as a mechanism, reporting is a low-barrier signal channel. But over on the user's side, how people feel about the feature is completely different: to them, reporting is more like clearing the trash off their own doorstep than eagerly going out to police others.

One user often flagged in the platform's data as a “high-frequency reporter” (U2) did not even realize, at the start of the interview, that she used the feature so often. The scenario she described is very concrete: she first collapses a comment, judges that “it's definitely spam,” and only then reports it — and she only handles comments that land under her own articles, never reporting other people's content. The targets she acts on fall into two types: one is the obvious pornographic accounts, and the other bothers her more:

It replies with something that looks like a comment on your article, but it might be a bot, machine-generated — or a person who hasn't read the piece but writes a line that seems related; there'll be a blank line, then another gap, and below it they start going on about fraud at some Wuhan hospital or whatever… Every time I see this kind of thing I find it especially annoying.

This passage holds two details worth noting for governance design. First, she volunteers that “there aren't many porn accounts leaving comments below, but the search function turns up a lot of porn accounts,” even complaining that when she links her own articles “the porn articles come up especially fast” — yet that situation is one she would not report. In other words, users' reporting behavior happens almost entirely under their own posts, not on cross-site patrol. Second, she is especially sensitive to bot harassment that “looks relevant but actually injects unrelated political strings,” which maps precisely onto the comment-layer spam and flooding discussed in Chapters 03 and 04 — only rendered as how it feels on the user's side. Put together, the two points give the Crowd Power chapter's judgment that “reporting is self-defense” its first-hand support: reporting is useful precisely because it lets users hold their own little patch of ground, without having to serve as the platform's obligatory police.

Another user (U3) surfaces a second source of reporting: bailing out fellow writers. He describes himself as someone who “comments more than he writes,” trading the time he'd spend on mobile games for time on the site, reading friends' articles more than writing his own — and in that steady back-and-forth he casually helps deal with “problems fellow writers can't solve on their own.” So in practice the reporting path carries two motives at once: self-defensive cleanup and mutual-aid errand-running. For operations, neither is something the platform ordered up; both are by-products that grew naturally out of community relationships — exactly the genuine grassroots basis on which the Crowd Power chapter built the watch team's founding premise of “solving your own troubles yourself.”

“No censorship” is the unspoken yet strongest implicit incentive

The passage with the most policy weight comes from U2's reflection on “incentive mechanisms.” She first takes stock of the most eye-catching incentive from Matters' early days — cryptocurrency tipping — and notes that once that craze faded, “all the other incentive mechanisms were still there”; it's just that the coin was so eye-catching that when the tide went out people mistook the platform for having lost its point. She then puts her finger on something the platform itself rarely brings out into the open:

Some people like money, some like interaction, and then there's self-expression — and most of all, expression without censorship! That's a really good incentive too: I can write whatever I want, and the only thing left is my own self-censorship.

She then makes an observation full of insight for operations: this incentive is “implicit” — the platform hasn't put it out in the open, and “some people probably take it for granted.” And she points out, unprompted, that if you were to interview users based in China, they would probably raise this point sooner＊用戶訪談筆記（U2）沒有審查是一個很隱性的激勵機制，如果你採訪在中國的網友，他們可能會更快的提出這點。. In other words, whether people can see the value of freedom from censorship varies enormously by where they live: for users in a speech-restricted environment, it is not an abstract ideal but a daily, personal value; for those writing in a free environment, it is all too easy to take for granted and overlook.

But the real weight of this passage lies in the “but” that immediately follows. U2 does not stop at “no censorship is great”; she binds freedom from censorship and identity safety into a single, inseparable need. Here is how she framed her hopes for Matters:

Even though you don't censor, you still protect every one of our identities, still protect every one of us — because Chinese people overseas really do care about this: will my identity be leaked? Could you amplify this (advantage) somehow?

This has to be relayed neutrally and with care. U2 is based overseas and has real concerns about identity exposure; her safety concern touches on real-world risk, going well beyond an ordinary privacy preference. This page therefore discloses nothing about her on-site identity and quotes no detail that could locate her, keeping only the argument itself. Her argument is this: for this group, “no censorship” and “no identity leaks” are two sides of one and the same need, and neither can be missing. A platform that only lets you speak freely but cannot keep you safe after you've spoken does not, for these people, constitute real sanctuary.

That concern is borne out in her assessment of product details, too. She specifically mentions that Matters “having no direct-message feature is also very good,” “it makes me feel safe”＊用戶訪談筆記（U2）你們沒有私訊功能，也是非常好的，讓我覺得 safe。; she stays away from writing activities on more personal topics because “the self-censorship is especially heavy,” afraid that “from your work, they'd suddenly find out where you live — you're still scared of being recognized.” On an ordinary platform, the absence of direct messages might be read as a missing feature; but within this group's safety framework, it is instead a layer of protection. That gives the governance conversation an important reminder: for a censorship-resistant platform, “identity safety” is not a line you tack on in the privacy policy as an afterthought; it stands alongside “no censorship” as an equally core commitment — and it is this platform's strongest, yet least spoken, incentive.

From here U2 extends a concrete suggestion of her own, one that belongs to users themselves: in outward communication, don't lead only with “blockchain”; hold a talk or workshop for overseas Chinese-language users and spell out — and make big — the point that “we don't censor, and at the same time we protect your identity and safety.” She says, “at the very least I'd be more interested in listening.” The significance of the suggestion is that it strikes at something engineers easily miss: this platform's scarcest, most user-treasured value may not sit in the column it most often puts up for marketing.

Why co-governance went cold: trust, incentives, and “impersonating a real person”

The Crowd Power chapter honestly records a string of failures in Matters' attempts to devolve governance to the community: community litigation, the architect jury, the nomad program — undone, more or less, by sock-puppet ballot-stuffing, bloc-voting cliques, insufficient expertise, and the “backroom politics” inside the jury. U2 happened to serve on the jury that term, and her recollection translates these structural failures into a deeply personal psychological experience.

She describes herself as “a fairly peripheral architect”: that term she was nominated by the platform rather than elected, so among a core of members who “knew one another” and would write out long voting rationales on a shared form, she “mostly listened.” Her initial picture of co-governance was a rosy one — she likened it to “being in a parliament, having to listen to everyone chime in” — and “as someone from China, I found it quite interesting.” But that freshness was quickly worn down by three problems: the effects of co-governance were faint, the goals were unclear, and her relationship with the platform's staff was blurry. Her conclusion is blunt:

What this kind of co-governance actually achieved never seemed especially clear, so I wasn't very motivated.

But her sharpest insight pins the dysfunction of co-governance on a collapse of “trust” and “transparency.” She uses an “impersonating a celebrity” incident that once sparked discussion on the site as a lead-in (this page does not reconstruct that incident's specific references to real people), distilling the problem into a structural bind: in online co-governance many people don't use their real names — she doesn't either, and that's fine in itself; what is truly fatal is that someone is “impersonating a real person.” Once these two kinds of people are mixed together, governance loses its footing:

In online co-governance, a lot of people don't use their real names — I don't either, but anyone can tell mine is a pen name. But… (some people) are impersonating a real person, and once all these kinds of people are mixed together, governance may end up with no result at all.

She even pushes the bind to its extreme herself, arriving at exactly the same conclusion the platform reached: “If I had seven or eight sock-puppet accounts and had them all vote for me, and I made trouble from the inside, then co-governance would turn into a farce.＊用戶訪談筆記（U2）如果我有七八個小號，讓小號都選我，我在裡面搗亂，那共治就變成鬧劇了。” This says the same thing as the main failure the Crowd Power chapter records (registering sock puppets to stuff ballots, cliques rounding up votes), but coming from someone who lived it, it carries more weight: users themselves clearly know that zero-cost accounts are a corrosive to any collective decision.

She also points to a second cause: the lack of a sustainable incentive. When LikeCoin's value receded, “without the value of LikeCoin, it seems no one would put that much heart into it＊用戶訪談筆記（U2）沒有 likecoin 的價值，好像誰也不會放那麼多心思在上面。”; and a system can only be perfected through constant discussion and improvement, yet “the people inside it have no incentive to perfect the system either.” She rates the system itself positively — “I think the idea of the system is a good one” — but pinpoints its fatal flaw: a good idea needs someone to keep pouring effort into maintaining it, and effort is exactly what co-governance most lacks. This fills in the user-side version of the platform's own reflection behind “there was no second term” in the Crowd Power chapter: the value is precious; the hard part is what system will let it last.

When “justice warriors” overstep: the platform first, users second

Crowd-based governance has a rarely discussed dark side: after you hand power to enthusiastic users, an excess of “justice” can itself become another kind of harm. One user who prefers to be interviewed in writing (U4) lived through exactly this overstep, and drew from it a clear governance stance.

The scenario he describes: a platform operator contacted him privately to ask whether he “needed help” handling a certain dispute, and he replied clearly, “it's being handled, no need to intervene for now”; yet a certain zealous, report-happy user who learned of it still “sent private messages using very heavy, indecent words,” and even after he stated his position and politely declined the goodwill, that person “flew into a rage.” His verdict on the episode is extremely restrained yet cuts to the bone:

Perhaps these justice warriors don't realize that what they're doing is actually “cyberbullying.”

Starting from that first-hand experience, U4 offers a clear stance on governance hierarchy. He uses a local analogy — the platform is like the neighborhood chief, and users are like residents:

It still has to be “the platform first, users second” — the platform is like the neighborhood chief, and if residents have opinions they can write in to the platform to explain and propose; the residents' actions can count as part of “shared oversight,” too.

This stance dovetails closely with the design philosophy of the watch team in the Crowd Power chapter: the user's role is to provide signals and help with oversight, while the final power to act and to review stays in the platform's hands. U4's experience validates from the opposite direction why this “tiered, subject to platform review” design is necessary: the moment an enthusiastic user is misled into believing he holds the final power to adjudicate, his “justice” can slide into bullying. U4 also draws attention to the inclusiveness of the interview method itself: he admits that live, real-time interaction is hard for him (“I'd keep going ‘huh?’”), and only by replying in writing could he take part smoothly. That detail reminds researchers that the very design of a user-research channel can filter out certain voices.

After the tide went out: those who stayed, and the anxiety of having no metrics

Several interviewees, independently, spoke about the state of the community after the LikeCoin tide receded, and their assessments were unexpectedly positive. U3 observed that “the people who wrote for the sake of likes all left,” and the citizens who remained are “simpler, not so mercenary,” now staying “purely for the community exchange”; there aren't many fellow writers, but “interacting with them carries less pressure.” This cross-checks with U2's analysis of incentives: the coin was merely the most eye-catching of many incentives, and its exit weeded out the batch of people for whom it was the sole motive — which in turn let the people who really came for expression and interaction surface.

But the receding tide also left anxiety, and that anxiety is directly tied to governance transparency. One experienced user who has long run community events (U1) — who for years has hosted an online sharing show on the site, spontaneously community-run and symbiotic with the platform — mentions a pain point operations ought to take to heart: he has “no real feel” for the site's activity level, because “there are no metrics to look at.”

Like mainland China's WeChat Official Accounts, which have very clear daily and weekly reports and all sorts of statistics — but Matters doesn't; it used to, and now it's gone. So I have no idea how today's popularity compares with before.

On the surface this complaint is about a “data dashboard,” but at its core it is a transparency issue: when the platform no longer offers the community visible health metrics, deep contributors lose the basis for judging “whether my effort means anything, whether the community is still alive.” U1's overall attitude is warm and devoted. He treats his show as “a personal hobby, not a business,” stating outright that “without Matters there'd be no” such show, because the platform carried it through the early stage he most feared — the stage of having no one show up; he also frankly admits he can't make sense of the platform's business logic, “I never really understood how you make money, even long ago,” yet he still hopes it can survive for the long haul, even suggesting that if it hits financial trouble it should “scale back the front lines and preserve Matters Town as much as possible.” This “it's such a shame to watch forums go dark one by one” devotion is in fact precious — it just needs to be seen and answered, and visible metrics are one way to answer it.

Bringing the human voice back into the governance conversation

These users' voices don't clash with the engineering-side documents; rather, they're like another facet of the same thing. The engineering side casts governance as scores, thresholds, guardrails, and review flows; over on the user's side, it resolves back into concrete, individual motives and feelings. They clean the nuisances off their own doorsteps and look, between freedom and safety, for a platform they can entrust themselves to. They once took part in co-governance full of hope, then cooled on it as trust collapsed, and have been scorched by overstepping “justice,” too. After the clamor died down, the people who stayed stayed.

Put together, perhaps what the policy world and the engineering world should both remember most is that line U2 herself called “implicit”: for a censorship-resistant platform, the strongest incentive is not money, nor traffic, but “I can write whatever I want” plus “I'm still safe after I speak.” The watch team's design of public, on-the-record traces and tiered review — whose service page and public records can be seen at community-watch＊community-watch（服務頁）Source link ↗ — is worth treating as a component other small platforms could borrow precisely because it takes care of both things at once: it gives the community the power to clean up its own environment, while never letting anyone's “justice” cross the platform's review line. What governance must ultimately serve is these people — the ones willing to stay, and to shoulder the risk — not the nodes on a flowchart.

A note on anonymity and quotation

Every quotation on this page is handled per the informed-consent pledge: interviewees appear solely under the codes U1–U4, with no disclosure of their on-site accounts, real names, job titles, or locatable participation details; any events or identity references that could be highly identifying are relayed in a neutral, generalized way, without reconstructing specific individuals. Passages involving the identity safety of overseas Chinese-language users, being politically sensitive and touching real-world risk, have had their circumstances deliberately abstracted, keeping only the argument. Verbatim quotes are marked with “ ” or <blockquote> and transcribed from the interview notes as written, with only the generalization necessary for de-identification (for example, replacing an identifiable reference to a specific person with “(some people)”), and without changing the meaning; the interview notes were originally recorded in Simplified Chinese, and the original wording is preserved when quoted. What this page presents is the subjective experience and observation of individual users; it does not represent the platform's official position, nor is it statistically representative — its purpose is to restore the human voice to a governance conversation dominated by engineering and institutions.