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I'd say the "WEF conspiracies are an IQ test" post crosses the line a lot more than this.
The WEF post spends 7 paragraphs @ 1k words on non-accusatory exposition about the details of the WEF itself and the history of right-wing beliefs about the WEF, limiting the 'attacking people' part to the title and a short 100-word conclusion that makes a valuable strategic point.
OP by contrast is peppered with unfair generalizations and jabs all the way through, with no evidence to back it up.
Now, I don't really care about personal attacks or unfairness or jabs, my only issue with chris's post is that it's in large part wrong, but it is much more 'rule-breaking' than rafa's when we weight usefulness with bite. "necessary, true, kind: pick two".
The WEF post literally says "you're dumb for believing this", calls people "an embarrassment", and contains politically coded slurs like "rightoid". Anyone posting anything similar about the Blues would get banned, and I doubt anyone would bother defending it.
This is lighthearted poking fun at people. I don't particularly like it either but nowhere close to the other.
it's (vaguely) "criticism of your team" - "rightoids believing the WEF conspiracies is an embarrasment for us, and makes us less effective / likely to accomplish anything"
It's not. "Rightoids believing WEF conspiracies" are not part of his team, and this place is about discussion, not being effective or accomplishing anything.
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I won't try to defend my post; if people take it as bullying and mean-spirited it's not my place to argue, only knock it off. That being said - I could have written seven paragraphs on each point, but would that have changed the fundamental argument I was trying to make or just obscured it? Was that length beneficial to the WEF post, or could detail have been cut in the interest of clarity and efficiency?
I've read the rationale behind making post length the low-bar to be cleared for many posts, and I even agree with it to an extent. That being said, it's still a kludge and should be treated as such rather than exalted as a terminal value or a virtue. It advantages the verbose and eloquent without improving their arguments, it encourages bad writing habits and degrades the quality of discourse as discussions fragment and people get hung up on minor, non-central points to your argument. The purpose of writing is to entertain or convey information, and while there should be latitude for the former, many trying to do the latter write far too much. In my opinion, for what that's worth.
Say what? You wrote the post man, you know better than anyone else how bullying and mean spirited you meant it to be. You copped a warning for the op because it got a lot of reports apparently - what would you do if it was reported by people who have decided you are a leftist and therefore should be shut up? Would you still knock it off to accommodate them?
I generally believe the onus is on the writer to craft something for their audience to appreciate. If the audience doesn't like it or find it useful, either find a new audience or change your style. Telling them that they're wrong seems to be a bit futile.
I've also just adopted a general heuristic of 'if enough people are telling you you're being an asshole, you're probably being an asshole.' I recognize that can be particularly dangerous and opens you up to manipulation by bad actors, but it also transformed my life in college from unhappy friendless loner to being a relatively popular and successful guy.
But I am impressed that people cared enough to argue with mods on my behalf...
Well, yeah, probably. If the community wanted to be an echo chamber, who am I to say otherwise?
If you are trying to avoid being an asshole, why did you write a snarky list of people's faults?
A member of the community.
Yes, other members of the community defended you. It seems we made a mistake.
This matters a lot to me, because some people around here interpret everything I write in the most mean-spirited way possible, when I haven't tried to be mean spirited on the motte in years. Which doesn't mean I can't be mean spirited by accident of course, but take the phrase "You son of a bitch!" for example - depending on your mood, you might read that as anger. But it isn't necessarily angry, it could be excited - "You (magnificent) son of a bitch!", or it could be dismayed - "You son of a bitch! (I can't believe you've done this)", or so on. But if you are in a mood to read it as anger, it will change the tone of the whole post. That doesn't make everyone who interpreted it in the spirit you meant it wrong though. Nor does it make those who interpreted it as anger right. What makes them right is you then saying that the way you meant it doesn't matter compared to what they think. You gave them that power, and as a result made yourself irrelevant.
One part to amuse myself and others, one part because I assumed I would have enough in-group credentials for it to be seen as constructive criticism rather than bullying, one part because I thought it might be useful and improve discussion norms, and one part because I thought people would be mature and secure enough to take it as such. When it comes to my ox, I'm expected to take a lot more than that on the nose and any complaints get thrown in the 'thin-skinned liberals can't handle disagreement' bin.
So it goes.
I disagree. I need to assume that at least some people on the other side of a debate are willing to engage in good faith. You're correct that someone could just react with outrage anytime I wrote anything, until the only opinion I could ever voice was essentially agreement with their position in a polite manner. There's probably some people and some topics where this is true and to be honest I try to avoid them.
This case seems fairly split, but I don't think the people who are upset are entirely acting in bad faith. If you want to use this as an example that people should have thicker skin or extend more charity, by all means, go ahead.
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I agree entirely with all of that*, don't mind arbitrarily harsh, short, or slur-filled posts if they are interesting, and as said above only dislike your OP to the extent I materially disagree (rationalists aren't bad because they're willing to do dangerous promethean moral acts, and malaria nets aren't very dangerous or promethean). (* - except specifically cutting detail improving the WEF post, the detail was nice).
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I would say about the same amount, but yeah. Both posts are pretty much just sneering at people.
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