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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32440 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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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

The top-level post was terrible, that's the exact kind of post that drives discussion and newcomers away from this place. It's not like it's insightful at all either.

Mate, we make an effort to ban people for that kind of behavior. If you choose to leave anyways you only contribute to the evaporative cooling effect; we're doing what we can to prevent it.

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