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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   5443 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 24, 2023

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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Small question: what's up with the new user filter? Is this message even visible?

I asked about this a month ago and got a response from one of the mods.

Typically I read all the comments by a particular user. Trolling stuff never gets out. If we have recently banned or perma banned users I have to be on the lookout for similarish commenting.

There are certain thresholds you have to hit before your posts and comments get auto-approved.

Spam and bots are not serious problems. But trolls and ban-evaders are major problems. The time delay of a moderator reading the comments and approving them helps lower the effectiveness of trolling, and makes bans actually costly (unlike on reddit, where they were trivially easy to dodge as long as you didn't piss off the admins).

We try to lean heavily towards approving new comments and posts. So all of your comments will eventually get approved.

And when I asked about reposting a question/topic from the previous week:

As a general rule, reposting from a previous week's thread is ok.

Intentionally reposting from something that is already in the thread is frowned upon.

The rule of thumb I use when modding: is there already a live discussion on this topic, if so, just join that. The deader the previous discussion the more ok it is to repost it and start it up again.

That's helpful but it would be nice to see it fleshed out.

Was planning to comment on that today myself. It makes sense as a hazing/selection process; to select for posters who are committed/neurodiverse enough to not just give up and leave, but patient enough not to chimp out over being ignored.

It does seem to create a dilemma over what to do if the filtered post was one you really want an answer to, though. In most cases it'd be egregiously obnoxious to keep posting the same question; but the filtering/wait period introduces that nagging doubt that maybe the person with the perfect answer is on here and just didn't see it.

I just didn't want to waste effort on it if I was shadowbanned.

[SAURON] I ... SEE... YOU...

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