With the new ability to suggest edits to artworks directly, adding a community note of a specific type is less relevant, and it’s slightlyunclear what the difference is between community notes and edit suggestions.
Therefore, I’d like to propose the following:
Community notes get reduced to just being comments. No more special types like ‘Removed’, ‘Wrong artists’, etc. Users can of course still comment about those things, but ideally they mostly suggest edits in these cases.
We get rid of the ‘Community notes’ tab for hunters on the website/dashboard. Instead, we’ll still send notifications to relevant people (the uploader of the artwork & other hunters in the city) when someone comments, and introduce a new ‘Notifications’ screen on the website and in the app, where you can see a list of the past notifications you’ve received.
I think this will make things clearer and simpler, but I also have not yet discussed this with anyone (including @TinyTim and @Bart), so I’d like your input on this change!
The way I see it is there are two types of comments: Actionable and non-actionable. At the moment, all comments are treated the same - remain fully visible until someone marks them as actioned/resolved, at which point, they all get rolled up and are only visible if someone clicks on them.
The problem with that is all actions remain visible in the community inbox until someone sets it to resolved. Well, that’s not a problem if the comment is an actionable comment; you don’t want a comment about a marker being in the wrong place, long after it has been moved. It is an issue if the comment is a non-actionable comment, like someone saying how beautiful it is. Those comments, I think, should be visible forever. If the artist comes along and views the page, the review comments shouldn’t be hidden as default.
But you don’t want a non-actionable comment clogging up the community inbox.
So, I would suggest that whatever you decide to do, have a way of leaving these review comments visible. It could be that you have a “Share your thoughts” button, which leaves comments that don’t get picked up by the inbox. Or you have all comments going through the inbox, but have two buttons to allow resolution. Maybe something like: “Closed; roll up comment” and “Closed; leave visible”. Thinking about it, the latter might be better, as if someone posts something nasty, it will at least stand a chance of being caught by the community.
Firstly, I agree whole-heartedly that things are unclear at the moment, and even as a Country Manager who has always felt he had a fairly good handle on how things worked on the platform, I am not feeling like that at the moment, I am still somewhat confused about how things are working at the moment.
I agree that there should be one stream of things to approve, so merging community notes and the edit suggestions into one stream seems like a good idea, but I think it may need to be well-handled so that the users out there don’t just think the app buttons they’re used to have disappeared, if you get what I mean.
I’d also like to see that approval queues be prioritised so that people in various roles see the items that need their attention (based on their roles) rather than having to scroll through lists to find them (as I think I have to do now in the current “Review Queue”) or to drop-down a filter list (as I have to do to find Australian Community Notes at the moment). I think a lot of my confusion is due to the fact that in the current interface there is no apparent relationship to the queues and my roles, I used to be able to see my Melbourne Community Notes when I was in my Melbourne role, and my Australia list when in my Country Manager role, but now everything is just in my Notifications/Inbox, and it feels like I have to go searching to find the things I want to prioritise. The Super-Hunter role further confuses this (based on feedback to me) I think, and I think for Super-Hunters too it might be easier if they could easily see stuff for their cities as a priority and then have to go to a more general queue if they wanted to spend some time helping process “rest of the world” stuff.
I’m rambling now, so will stop. But I vote yes for something that simplifies the current situation even if I don’t truly understand what that new solution will look like.
Agree with Andrew.
As Super Hunter, I would like too see the comm notes on my cities separately. Not the global list.
An example of confusion (and kind of double action / double check for me as freak lol) A hunter gives a comment which appears in the Comm Note List: “Might be gone”
Few seconds later, suggesting “Removed”.
These two actions comes in two lists: Review Queu / Comm Notes. Which is correct as how the situation is now. Although, the freak inside me checks often the two lists simultaneously (surely for hunters who often gives kind of false suggestions about duplicates and giving a comment duplicate).
These 2 actions (comm note - review queu)about 1 artwork are supposed to be “merged” somehow?
Another thing what I often do is: Artwork X is suggested as removed. Ok, Accepted (when a photo of evidence is given).
What I probably don’t know at that moment, without further checking, is that Artwork X is notified as removed 2 years ago. Hanging in the community notes list.
Status now: Artwork x is removed (suggestion accepted). But maybe two (as example) other comments, or removed comm notes are still (a)live waiting for further action.
If it would be technically possible which might be difficult since Suggestion / Comm Note are two ‘entities’(I guess):
I Want to handle Comm Note Removed of Artwork X , on top of the list. All the previous Removed comm notes are supposed to be handled
After accepting a removal suggestion: All removed communities are supposed to be handled and off the comm notes list.
Whether it’s a suggestion / Comm Note: all the to do actions about the artwork should be included.
A very Amateuristic example:
I agree with @Andrew_Haysom that Super Hunters should have the ability to switch between worldwide community inbox and the inboxes for our own cities. Trying to find one note amongst hundreds, even with that filter in the inbox, is very cumbersome.
Earlier today, I saw on the feed on the App that a mural had been removed, and photographic evidence was provided. Whilst I was on the feed, I clicked on the note, which took me to the marker. I edited the work, and marked it as removed.
Now, I knew there would be a Community Note that needed resolving, so I had to navigate to the community inbox, scroll down to find it, then mark it as resolved. Fortunately, as it was a recent item, I didn’t have too far to scroll.
There have also been times when I’ve been reviewing the community inbox, clicked Edit, made the edits, then i have to try and find the original item in the inbox to mark it as resolved.
Anyway, all this has got me thinking. It would be brilliant if it were possible to mark community notes as resolved whilst on the artwork page. I’m not sure how easy that would be, but it would save a LOT of time. It would also solve the issue that @Stef highlighted, of dealing with multiple historic community notes without having to search through a massive inbox.
I actually think Stephen’s actionable vs. non‑actionable distinction fits neatly into where the platform is already heading. In the new setup, the actionable items naturally belong in the edit/suggestions flow: that’s where hunters, Super Hunters and Country Managers can work with structured updates that require decisions, corrections or confirmations.
The old community notes then become the non‑actionable layer: more like social comments, reactions, observations, or small bits of context that don’t require inbox attention. That layer can spark conversation, give artists and uploaders more visibility into how people experience the work, and keep the artwork pages feeling alive rather than purely functional.
If we follow that logic, the system becomes much clearer:
- Edit/Suggestions = actionable quality tools
Structured updates that need attention from hunters → SH → CM.
- Comments = non‑actionable social layer
Always visible, not clogging inboxes, but still moderated when needed.
For hunters, Super Hunters and Country Managers, it would help to have filters so they can quickly toggle between actionable items in their own territory. That keeps the workflow clean without losing the social dimension that makes the platform feel like a community rather than just a database.
This way we preserve the strengths of both systems while removing the confusion between them.
@SAOS_Street_Art_Obse I really like this line of thinking, because it highlights one of the biggest pain points with the current Community Notes workflow: once you’ve handled the issue on the artwork page, you still need to go hunting through the inbox to manually resolve the note. When it’s recent, it’s manageable, but when it’s older or buried under dozens of items, it becomes a chore.
Building on your example, I think we could introduce some smart automation here.
If a hunter (or SH/CM) updates an artwork based on clear evidence: for example marking it as removed after reviewing photos, then all existing community notes related to that status could be automatically resolved. And ideally, the users who submitted those notes would get a small notification that their input helped update the platform. That kind of feedback loop would motivate people to keep contributing.
This would also solve the “double work” problem you described: you fix the artwork, and the system quietly takes care of the inbox cleanup.
It fits nicely with the broader direction we’ve been discussing:
- Actionable items move into the edit/suggestions flow
- Non‑actionable comments become the social layer
- And actionable notes get resolved automatically when the corresponding edit is completed
That way, hunters can focus on the actual update rather than the admin overhead, and we reduce inbox clutter without losing community input.
I think this would be a big quality‑of‑life improvement for everyone working in the dashboard.
@thomas hope you can find a good technical solution for this.
It might be an idea to have a way of undoing the resolve button, say within the first half hour of making the change, as I could well imagine someone accidentally knocking it. It would be a shame to have someone effectively hide a legitimate note, and then rely on someone else raising it some months later.
Again, not sure how easy that would be to implement… just because something is easy to say, doesn’t mean it is easy to do!
A hunter gives a comment which appears in the Comm Note List: “Might be gone”
