cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
"despondent" is a word that remzem added to the discussion as a way of insulting the posters.
I only used the word "disheartening".
Magnifying another person's complaint to make them seem unhealthy isn't exactly good behavior is it? Or would it be fine for me to characterize you and remzem as "suicidally upset" over this rule scuffle?
cjet79
1yr ago
Perhaps the intro needs to be rewritten. I never read that as saying no smart questions.
cjet79
1yr ago
This is not fun.
Can you not post this kind of thing in the friday fun thread?
It would be fine in the general culture war thread.
cjet79
1yr ago
Maybe the reason this post when to shit was you jumping in all "bad cop" to try and save the quokka effortposters from their despondency. You think of that maybe?
It was shit before I arrived and said anything. There were four 4 relatively low effort post responses, three of which had reports, and one of them was crappy enough that I handed out a warning for it.
cjet79
1yr ago
There is no harm in asking people questions. Which is why we have a small questions Sunday thread. It doesn't have to be used exclusively on Sunday, it can be used all week.
cjet79
1yr ago
We will ban people for making AI written posts.
It is often obvious what is an AI post, unless someone takes a bunch of steps to dirty up the writing. Then all they are doing is regular writing with extra steps.
The length of that post was not the issue. It was the pithyness and the attitude of "these people aren't worth talking to". If they had padded out the length while keeping the same attitude there still would have been a problem.
cjet79
1yr ago
"we police content, not tone"
No, that is what most social media places do. We do the opposite. You can post about Nazis, or how you don't think trans people are real versions of their preferred gender. You need to do it politely and in a way that other people can engage you in conversation.
The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.
They are still shitting on quality posters. I'd rather keep the quality posters happy rather than this user.
With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.
And the top level post provided no insight either. Shared a link story, asked some basic questions, and basically said "discuss". Had it done so, or attempted to do so I might not have banned.
I don't think my minimum level standard for a top level post is very high. People seem to come out of the woodwork every time this comes up acting like I'm asking them to write a novel. I'm not. Just start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. If it looks like you tried and fell short I'll probably only provide a warning. The original poster did not try at all. And there is a group of users that constantly want to resurrect the bare links thread, so they post what they think is just past the line on acceptable. Sometimes I am going to drop bans for this. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
cjet79
1yr ago
We've said not to use AI to write up posts. This is also very obnoxious. 5 day ban.
cjet79
1yr ago
It would have been much better, and I probably wouldn't have posted a mod warning at all.
Pithyness is the bigger sin. We do tone police around here. The comment as you wrote it would allow a democrat to come in here and push back. The comment as it was originally written would be much more likely to start a flame war.
cjet79
1yr ago
As a moderator I'm typically trying to sort people into three buckets:
- Worthless contributor, actively negative, pisses people off, very unlikely to improve.
- Net neutral. Upsets some, but others like them around. Can maybe improve.
- Quality poster. Follows the rules, adds to discussion, says interesting things, doesn't need to improve.
People in group 1 we generally want to ban. If you are going to self label yourself into that category, then no amount of following the strict letter of the rules will save you. We have a wildcard rule for a reason.
I'm not a lawyer, and certainly not a rules lawyer. If we thought it would be useful we'd probably only have the wildcard rule. In some sense the rules don't matter. They are guidelines for behavior.
Did they violate an explicit guideline? No. Did they violate the only guideline that really matters? Yes. Deleting their comment was an improvement over leaving it up. But they are letting me know what kind of contributor they are. And I don't see any reason to hobble myself in figuring out which bucket users fall into.
cjet79
1yr ago
They started it off with a criticism where they basically call the purpose of themotte "embarrassing"?
I mean this without ad hominem, and without reference to the remzem: if you are not here to discuss the culture war then you don't belong here.
The second criticism is that larger essays tend to have a narrowed scope. I don't think this is even true. Plenty of top level long posts have a large scope. If it was true, their complaint is then that the discussion is overly narrowed, so if you want to post on a separate aspect of the event you need to go create your own high effort top level post. This sounds like a feature of the rules and not a bug. Our rules are meant to facilitate higher effort discussions. Complaining because a rule does exactly that is always going to be met with a "good, glad its working".
The third criticism is that searchability is poor on the website. I'm human, not a robot. I do try and hold myself to a higher standard, but the user has quite literally missed the whole purpose of the community, and insulted it while deep into that misunderstanding. So yeah at this point I was annoyed at the user, and didn't address it. If someone who was a respected member of the community had asked me I would have probably addressed it thus:
- We do try and preserve some good discussions via the quality contributions reports.
- Its not entirely clear to me how searchability would improve the quality of discussions. I'm open to hearing that explained.
- Some users don't want searchability. They don't like the thought that their words on this website could be collected and sifted through in order to unmask their real-life identity.
- Searchability would also probably need to be built in from the start. I suppose we could run posts through an AI and have it auto-categorize them. But the typical way to do it on the internet is to have the users categorize their own stuff. That is the only way you get past a simple text search, but you can already text search on this website, so I assume that isn't what they wanted.
The fourth criticism is that navigation is a chore. No details on why, so its hard to know what aspect of it is a chore. The fifth criticism is that nothing is organized. I'd probably have the same responses to that criticism as I would to the searchability complaint.
In general the goal of this community is discussion. We try to have rules and features that serve that purpose.
cjet79
1yr ago
I haven't seen abuse of this recently. Most deleted comments seem like accidental posts. If there is abuse of this somewhere let us know.
cjet79
1yr ago
Some users have been asking for top level deleted comments to be forbidden. So that is one case where deleted comments might be held against a user.
Otherwise not officially. But if you post a trolling comment towards a mod it doesn't go away when you delete it. And I'm not going to completely ignore the fact that they were trying to be a dick.
cjet79
1yr ago
Were you and Dianne close?
@remzem Just so you and others know, moderators can see deleted comments.
This is how I usually figure out the story behind top level deleted comments.
Ignoring the meta ... My general opinion is that the retirement age for social security should be enforced on elected politicians as well. Let the next generation fuck up things.
cjet79
1yr ago
Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.
cjet79
1yr ago
American Football, and ice hockey seem equally if not more complex. The players are more tightly packed together in American football, and there is more of a meta of "everyone rush towards the ball". And hockey plays physics and velocities a lot more.
Basketball is probably comparable. I think the three-d space is a bit more used in basketball, but there are fewer players. And the ability to use your hands adds variables to positioning.
There are also plenty of recreational type sports that seem more complex to me. Airsoft or paintball can easily get fiendishly complex. Knowing your teammates, enemies, and all of their firing trajectories, as well as possibly ammo or gun jam situations. If soccer is Chess, then paintball is Chinese checkers. You'll need an extra decade or two of moors law to beat humans at it.
cjet79
1yr ago
everything other than stamping envelopes is like this
What do you have against my hobby? Getting the stamp to match the paper grain is not something you learn on your first night of stampin.
I'm kidding, but yeah there is a huge amount of depth to a lot of things. I play in a rec league sport and my current skill level is frustrating because my strategic mind is easily outpacing my ability to execute. Not because I have a brilliant strategic mind, but because I'm badly out of shape so execution is harder.
cjet79
1yr ago
The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"
cjet79
1yr ago
3 day ban.
Antagonistic, low effort, culture warring.
To everyone wondering why I moderate heavily on top level posts, this is an example of why. It creates discussions that are all heat and no light.
In case other users have missed the hint like sliders: I am watching this thread. Either start a useful discussion or don't comment.
cjet79
1yr ago
We are for discussion. Start the discussion if you are a top level post.
We are not for breaking news.
If all you have is questions and no real discussion to add consider:
- Maybe the thing is not worth discussing, or doesn't generate any good discussion. If it couldn't generate good discussion for the person bring up, it's less likely to do so for strangers.
- Someone else might have a real discussion starting point. By jumping on the topic too quickly you've forced them to rush out their opinion in order to join the discussion while it lasts.
- The top level post tends to set an example for the posts that follow. Set a good example.
Normally this kind of thing is only a warning or not brought up at all by the other mods. But what's the point of a rule if it is never enforced? Bad luck of the draw getting me as the reviewer of the post. I am not a fan of infinite warnings.
cjet79
1yr ago
There are higher standards for top level posts. This would have been fine at any other level.
Effort on posts tends to taper off from the top level. All the responses I saw when I posted were also low effort. The top level tends to set an example.
Top level posts that are equivalent to "here is a thing, discuss." Are low effort in my books. Start by discussing a thing, not by just asking some questions.
We have a small question Sunday for these types of posts.
The edited down comment that remains:
User dmz has been banned at their own request.
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