Should we keep problematic posts visible rather than deleting them?
There was a post here the other day asking women about their preferences in a partner's emotional attachment style (not the exact wording, but about as close as I can remember). The responses were overwhelmingly critical of the framing of the question and how it mischaracterized the qualities of a healthy relationship. Upon looking at life.women a day or two later, it seems to have been removed.
While I agree that the post showed problematic thinking and was kind of a nuisance post rather than one which fostered healthy discussion, I'm not sure I agree with removing it entirely. The original poster did not seem to have any malicious intent, but instead displayed a flawed internal view of healthy relationships. Though the feedback was likely not what they were hoping for, I think it could be instructional not only for that original poster but also for any other site visitors who may have a similar way of thinking. If someone were to read the post and not recognize anything wrong with it, only to then read the criticism in the comments, it's possible they may discover that their own thinking is flawed in a similar way to OP and seek to change the way they view the topic. If we hide every problematic question, people with similar thinking won't ever see that 1) other people have similar problematic views and 2) those views are problematic for reasons X, Y, and Z.
More simply, if people come here and ask questions that we find distasteful, instead of deleting them should we leave them up with the relevant feedback so that other people learn from that interaction and develop a better idea of where the poster went wrong? It feels like there are a lot of folks out there that might be simply ignorant about social and relationship norms and could learn by example. If these people never see a post where someone is getting called out for their misguided thinking, how do we expect them to learn what's acceptable and what isn't?
I'm curious to hear your opinions. Should we tolerate entertaining some troublesome questions in order to better educate others, or is it not our job to teach them proper social skills/those posts don't belong here at all?
(To be clear, I do not support leaving up anything overtly abusive or malicious/hateful, those should obviously be removed ASAP).
That’s how it’s been done on Tildes for a long time. If you have the URL (such as if you’ve replied) then you can usually get some access to the discussion, but new readers aren’t going to see it.
A problem with your suggestion is that people don’t just learn from controversial posts. A new reader is likely to continue the controversy because they will likely want to post their reaction. Continued conversations appear high on the activity page and draw more people in. (This chain reaction is much like reply-all email chains.) The only way to avoid that is to not reply, and inevitably someone will want to reply. So discussions are likely to continue when people aren’t enjoying them or finding it useful.
Not appearing at top level at all prevents more people from getting drawn in. It is a rather abrupt end to the conversation, though, if you’ve already seen it.
Perhaps if a discussion is worth continuing, it might benefit from a fresh start? But more often, though I might disagree at first, on second thought I find I’m actually fine with it being over.
I didn't see the post and I get that we wouldn't want to keep bumping a problematic one to the front page to avoid a pile-on, but I do see some value in keeping it up for education's sake? In this example, it sounds like there was discussion on healthy vs. unhealthy relationships. I mean, as long as the comments are genuinely helpful and not inflammatory. Like after enough has been said, just locking the comments instead and providing a reason?
Again, I didn't see the post so I don't know if it became inappropriate at any point. But I'm just saying to delete posts with care, because that's the kind of stuff that leads to echo chambers.
I didn't see this discussion either, so I'm writing about it abstractly.
One way to think about is it is that there are lot of articles on the Internet that we could potentially discuss. There can also be a lot of overlap. For example, for any given news event, lots of news sites and bloggers will publish articles about it. We don't need to discuss every take on it. Better to try to pick the best article to start off our discussions, rather than posting the first one you see.
Similarly for less newsy discussions. Sure, there may be some valuable insights, but there's also no shortage of articles about relationships. Rather than hanging onto a discussion that got off on the wrong foot, someone could start another one that discusses similar things, and hopefully avoids getting stuck in a bad discussion again?
For example, someone who participated could take it as a writing prompt, write up some thoughts, and post that at top level if they wanted. (Maybe wait until tomorrow to post it, though?)
I agree that providing a reason would be nice. My ideal forum software would treat stopping bad conversations more like a time out or circuit-breaker.
I definitely agree that Tildes' system of bumping the thread with every comment could perpetuate the discussion and cause pile-on effects. If we wanted to avoid that issue but preserve the original post and core responses, could there be a "lock" system for the post to prevent additional comments/bumping but allow wider access to the post? I understand that you can still access removed posts if you commented on them, but if you didn't and want to reference that post later, you're SOL (like I was when I wanted to reference the OP for this post).
As to whether people learn from controversy, I'd argue that especially for relationship issues, these sorts of examples of what is and isn't acceptable can be helpful not only for naive/misguided men, but also for women who may not recognize signs of abuse or what sort of behavior they shouldn't tolerate. On Reddit (for lack of a better comparison, sorry), r/TwoXchromosomes was constantly filled with posts asking if something was abuse, if their experience counted as rape, etc. There's a startling amount of women who are simply unaware of what sort of behavior is normal and what manipulative or abusive behavior looks like.
At the end of the day, I'm totally fine with the site the way it is and am not looking to completely shake things up, I just wondered what the community (specifically the community of women) thought about these sorts of discussions and whether or not preserving them was worthwhile.
Until there's a way to properly frame a problematic post as both inappropriate and an educational opportunity for other users, it serves nobody to highlight or tolerate problematic posts. It leads to normalization and compels idiots to rally around problematic behavior. I think people should be willing to discuss difficult topics here, but there's no obligation to give bad opinions a soapbox to thrive. "What is the source of antisemitism?" is a better discussion topic than "I don't like Jews, debate me" for an extreme analogy.
I think a better question to ask is if it's on the users of a forum for discussing women's issues to educate problematic opinions when they come up in unrelated posts. I didn't see the post that OP is referencing specifically, but it sounds like the very nature of the post was unhealthy towards relationships. In other words the poster wasn't necessarily asking to be educated on this topic. It's a big difference from asking specifically for peoples thoughts on if their worldview is problematic, because then they would be going into the situation looking for an opportunity to grow, whereas in the example you gave it might be more the case that the post could be triggering and ultimately unproductive if the poster isn't happy with the responses they're getting.
The users on Tildes, and Tildes itself, has made it very clear since I joined that there are standards that members should be meeting, that Tildes is not a democracy, and that if someone deviates too far from the expectations of the community that they might not be allowed to participate in said community/their post might be removed. I imagine that under those guidelines the post was removed. Y'all can probably guess that I'm in favor of this approach to community building, I'm not someone who necessarily believes that all forms of speech should be protected in a tolerant community, but I'm interested to hear the discussion around this nonetheless.
I've moderated online communities for years now, probably close to 8 years. A lot of those communities had standards for certain discussions and opinions. We removed posts or comments if they were not meeting the expectations of our community guidelines, some things just should not stay up and be discussed.
Granted, I have no idea what the original post was about, but if what you are saying is true; that the OP wasn't wanting to be educated on the said topic but to preach, then it doesn't belong here. It's just bad faith and I'm in complete agreement with this approach.
The OP of the post didn't seem preachy to me, they just presented two hypothetical men with different personalities and asked women which they would prefer, to which the unanimous response was "neither!" They struck me as naive or misguided rather than malicious.
Could someone who's seen the post explain what was problematic about it? Asking about people's preferred attachment style seems like a pretty benign question, since it definitely varies person to person.
Edit: Was sent a link by DM. It seems that the post was more about having a controlling vs passive partner with the title asking about how "sensitive" of a partner you'd want. The post seemed to have an undertone that your partner is essentially a dad-like figure. The text itself was deleted, so I could only read replies and quoted excerpts.
I would say passive aggressive, not simply passive. Someone that doesn't overtly express their dislike of your actions but then goes and withdraws healthy attention as a punishment.
The examples given were both of unhealthy controlling behaviour as responses to what seemed like perfectly normal, unproblematic situations.
That said, I definitely recognized a younger me in the question and the framing. That the negative and controlling reactions were different more or less valid responses... To things that most people would consider unproblematic, thus rendering both reaction patterns unhealthy and emotionally immature at best, controlling and abusive at worst.
People taking the time to educate me when I went online in search of support in how to better tolerate what was actually an abusive situation was what eventually helped me when I was young.
I was in an abusive relationship in my early adulthood, and the two examples of overt vs covert emotional blackmail rung a bell. I would see things that way too back then.
Other people being shocked at all my offered explanations and (his, parroted through me) explanations/justification helped me realise there are many more, healthier ways to have a relationship.
I would say those topics should stay up unless the poster wants it removed.
There is so, so much emotional immaturity and downright abuse towards women in straight relationships that posts such as those will always help educate more than just an OP.
Only caveat is that replies be measured and helpful/informative.
Agreed, which is why I thought it could be a net positive to lock the thread in some way but preserve it so others can learn from it. Honestly, I also learned something from the post: reading it, I knew something was off but couldn't articulate what was wrong nearly as well as the other commenters did. I found it helpful to see what others picked up on and why it was problematic so that hopefully if I see similar things again in the future I'll have an easier time spotting the red flags and knowing how to explain the issue to others. Examples like this could be useful for women caught in abusive relationships to see what is and isn't normal.
Agreed.
Speaking to the wider world and being met with "oh honey no that's not okay" is what saved me as well.
Whether we like it or not, a LOT of young women are venturing out of a cave of darkness. That's just the reality of how most of us are brought up.
I would like to see posts like that stay up as sign posts for others who walk where we once were.
It was basically "women of Tildes, you have two options: would you pick this openly abusive hypothetical man or this reserved neglectful hypothetical man as your romantic partner?" It was a strange scenario, in my opinion. Many of the comments basically said they wouldn't pick either. I think OP was concerning in the fact he only gave two strange hypotheticals and wanted women to pick one. The title question was not harmful in it of itself and could have been a good discussion question; it was the body of the post where things became strange and took a dark turn.
I think both options are fine but one data point isn't useful enough to decide on an overall policy.
I thought it was good the post was removed. The post compared two different abusive relationships and asked which was more desirable. That kind of content is painful to read, as someone who was in an emotionally abusive relationship. It is also not the kind of content that creates positive, engaging conversation. I was glad to see it removed, and I think the community is better for it.
I hope it helped that every single answer pointed out that neither option was acceptable "good" options, and the majority of the answers pointed out why both alternatives were unhealthy.
It did! I was very relieved that other woman found both options to be bad and said why - and most comments were not written defensively but educationally, which was great.
I worry that if more content that glorifies abuse appears, the tone might over time shift to be defensive, instead of informing, but that may be my own experiences shading my view.
I didn't see the post, so I'm not sure why it was removed but in my experience it's not always content that elicits removal but also conduct. In my experience posts that have too strong of a ‘drama’ contingent are also removed, regardless of content. If people are getting too fired up for productive discussion or there is dogpiling or user callouts etc. etc. the post is often removed because they’re not really in the spirit of building a community.
Removed posts aren’t inaccessible though, you can find them if you’ve commented in the thread or by checking the tildes short urls, which are always sequential if you know around what time it was posted.
That didn't seem to be the case when I saw it. It basically was a post write up saying "what relationship would you rather be in, x or y" and a nearly unanimous response of people saying "neither, both are toxic af" with some "are you ok op?" and a couple of answers related to the title but not the content. I agree with above posters that while the content in the op was problematic, it didn't seem trollish so much as naive. I pictured the person posting as young and inexperienced with relationships. I think there was no harm in leaving it up, and that it could help others gain valuable perspective. I'm new here though so there may be some other aspect I'm missing.
I've not seen the thread earlier, so I can't comment specifically on that. But on the topic of possible admin intervention, I'll mention that there are some solutions between a full approval and removal.
I think the right answer depends on the likelihood of educating people vs. the risk of attracting more people with harmful views while everyone else leaves in disgust. I have doubts that people with such distorted relationship ideas can be easily swayed by comments, so I think removing these posts is reasonable.
Building a strong community that supports healthy relationships is a way to be a role model and make a positive impact. That might be more effective than engaging harmful views directly while not risking the community in order to engage.
I was disappointed that the post got removed. While the body of the post was concerning and dark, the comments from women politely and firmly shut down OP's attempts at manipulating women into choosing between two harmful hypothetical men.
I felt like younger or naive women could have learned a lot from the answers women gave in that post. No woman appeared to be putting up with OP's ridiculous suggestion that women on Tildes "had to" pick one of two harmful hypothetical men.