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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 23, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Anybody else concerned about the amount of downvotes people are throwing around on the site? I started commenting about Georgism and got downvoted to hell on multiple comments.

Seemed like on the sub only irrational or low effort comments got downvoted - not people trying to argue something intelligently. Idk, maybe I have a higher estimation of my own comments but I see posts that seem very civil and well-written getting downvoted, which makes me concerned.

And in the 25 minutes since you posted this, you already got two (gross, not net) downvotes. You were civil and well-written here still, you're asking an important question in an intelligent manner ... and although "don't whine about being downvoted" is generally a good rule in the topical threads where the downvoting occurs, you're not there now, you're starting a separate thread in the right forum for "meta" questions.

I'm unpleasantly surprised. "Moderate based on quality, not opinion" (more commonly phrased as "The downvote button is not a disagree button") was perhaps the most famously ignored aspect of Reddiquette, but it was one that TheMotte at least partially lived up to; I wasn't expecting it to get even worse after the move.

Yeah there seems to be a much more conflict-oriented / Straussian focus of many of the new posters, or at least the ones I'm noticing. I wonder if that has something to do with it?

Anyway, thanks for the sanity check.