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Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 21, 2024

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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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?

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.

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