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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Notes -
How low is "low effort" here?
Specifically, I sometimes see replies that are just 1-3 (non-quote) words, many of those simply expressing agreement or approval — "well said," "indeed," "exactly this," etc. — basically a "+1" verbal upvote. I report them for "low effort" when I see them, and yet, rarely do I see mod action.
The amount of effort we ask is largely proportionate to where a comment is posted.
Top level comment in the CWR thread? Better discuss something novel or add a lot of commentary and context to something you found online. Bare-links are not allowed as top-level comments there.
If discussing or debating something with another poster? Saying nah, I'd win won't cut it. That is mostly because that is refusing to engage in the kind of discussion we wish to encourage here.
But the amount of effort we care to police decreases monotonously as you go down deeper into the bowels of a thread. And as far as I'm concerned, specifically telling someone you like their comment or agree with them is both a very natural instinct and one that doesn't run afoul of either the prohibition on consensus-building or the effort rules. It's when you disagree that we have slightly higher expectations for you to articulate your disagreement. All affirmative comments are alike. All disagreements disagree in different ways.
Just think about it, if conveying the impression, with little effort, that you agree with someone was against the rules, why on earth would we have upvote or downvote buttons?
In a similar fashion, if two people in an argument have been making multiple high effort comments in response to each other, and someone gets tired or annoyed and leaves with a low effort one, that is also not worth modding, contingent on there actually having been a modicum of effort put in earlier.
And for the other threads, especially Wellness, Fun and so on, go for it, that is literally the place meant for low effort comments.
TL;DR: Please don't use the button that way, at least not there.
Eh, I disagree. I don't think it's valuable to have a comment that says "Great post, thanks", it just takes up space, and I think they should be removed. Removed without prejudice or implication of future warnings/bans sure, but still removed.
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I think the point is that if the only thing you're expressing is agreement then you should be upvoting instead of commenting in order to save pagespace and brainspace for substantial comments. Everyone who scrolls past can see the comment and is likely to waste time reading it before recognizing that it contributes nothing and moving on. Rather than having a popular post with 50 "I agree" comments and one actual reply mixed together, we could just have a 50 next to the upvote button and then the one actual reply stand on its own for people to read and possibly reply to.
To the extent that upvotes and "I agrees" aren't actually the same thing, as you can upvote people you disagree with but you feel make good posts, and you can fail to upvote people even if you agree with their point, I've suggested in the past that it could be useful to have two different vote bars, one for quality and one for agreement.
There are some cases where "I agree" is noticeably different from an upvote, specifically those in which the agreer's identity is relevant.
If I post something, and you post a reply making some claim which I don't actually disagree with, then anonymously upvoting your comment doesn't actually tell you that I agree with your claim, only that somebody does. On the other hand, me saying "I agree" does tell you that.
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I swear, when I disagree with a post I'm going to start posting replies under "I agree/well said" posts instead of the post in question. @self_made_human
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