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This is not what we are looking for in a top level post. And is boo outgroupish. One day ban.
Edit after the fact (14 hours later):
I have seen a pattern happen before where a single troll posts a dumb question. We don't moderate it very quickly and the top level posts following the troll post also become low quality. There could be many reasons for that. Maybe the troll is setting the tone, maybe people think 'well if thats allowable, then surely my post is fine too', or maybe they are trying to be helpful and just knock the troll post from the top of the discussion list.
I wanted to short-circuit that whole downward spiral, but I was also about to leave for a few hours, and then would probably need to go to bed afterwards. I saw my options as: act quickly and stop the downward spiral with little explanation. Or leave it until morning and potentially have a lot more cleanup to deal with. Bad posts sometimes create good discussion, but they just as often create bad discussion (I've already had to go back and ban someone else for one of the sub-conversations that popped up from this).
I am always willing to offer explanations of my moderator actions, but because things tend to spiral so fast here, I can't promise I will always offer those explanations in the exact moment of moderation. Expect it within 24 hours if someone asks for it. If I know I don't have the time or energy to explain myself later I just add my report to the pile, rather than moderating the comment.
This top level post had something like 8 reports. I thought it was obvious that it was a bad top level post. It pattern matches a low effort trolling attempt. I am surprised that people were surprised by this moderation.
What the actual fuck
@cjet79's reason was good enough (it's perfectly obvious this was a trollish shit-stirrer asking questions in bad faith), but in addition, @bigtittygothgf is a ban evader, so the ban has been made permanent.
No, the reasoning wasn't good enough. If you want people to respond to moderation, you need to give specific feedback. "This is not what we're looking for." is not remotely specific.
Also, since it's perfectly obvious, can you tell us exactly how you were sure that this was a trollish shit-stirrer and not a terse poster asking a question in good faith? Since it's obvious, it should be no trouble, to both cjet79 or you, to say what exactly was obvious about it and how apparently-similar posts that aren't by trollish shit-stirrers are clearly so instead.
Look, you're the mods. You make judgement calls, and our continued presence on this site is evidence that we respect those judgement calls at least enough not to throw our hands up and storm off collectively. But please recognize when you are making those judgement calls and don't just fall back on heavy implications of "It's obvious, and if it's not obvious to you, then clearly you're also a trollish shit-stirrer and probably a ban-evader, so stop asking questions or you might be next." If multiple members of the community are not reacting the way you are to the post and, well, obviously do not find it obvious what is going on, then perhaps it is not actually obvious.
This has never been implied. You have been around plenty long enough, and lobbed enough brickbats at the mods yourself, to know better than accuse us of threatening to ban people for questioning or disagreeing with a mod decision.
Quite often a low-effort shit-stirring comment will nonetheless start a decent discussion. That doesn't validate the comment after the fact.
Doesn’t it “validate” it after the fact? It seemingly proves that the comment was useful from an instrumental perspective. I take your use of the word “decent” to suggest quality not quantity.
No.
Yes.
Can you explain? Basically, I imagine we want moderation to improve themotte (ie increase quality conversation and decrease non-quality conversation). If a statement increases quality conversations, why are we trying to remove?
I guess one could imagine where it directly increases quality conversation by X and indirectly decreases quality conversation by X+N but that seems like a rather big leap.
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