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Low effort post, but I don't care, concerning downvotes...
Downvotes are so cheap and I'm happy Tildes doesn't have them. It's like totally spitting on your post in a very passive aggressive way. Downvotes ideally are meant to be used as a kind of "this doesn't contribute/this is a troll post" thing. But the amount of "I don't like this opinion, downvote" is maddening. Do people not realize how ridiculous it is that they're doing that? Terrible phenomenon.
Not having downvotes has led to the interesting phenomenon where you have to upvote the counter-argument you agree with or provide a counter-argument yourself. You can't just squelch someone's comment anonymously.
Yes. Coming from Reddit and not really being part of any other forum, this is the one feature I like the most about Tildes. I try to comment in a productive, constructive and respectful way on reddit most of the time. The rare times when I don't, and I get downvoted, I get it and delete my comment or just disable replies and move on. But on those times when I didn't do anything wrong (or don't know what I did wrong) it really drives me insane not knowing why people are jumping down my throat. Like, okay, if I did something wrong then why don't you tell me what it was so I can avoid doing it again? Hell, you can't even make an edit politely about why people are downvoting you; in such case they will downvote you even further. Always without telling you why.
It's a really toxic behavior, imo.
On Tildes you can't just downvote someone to show that you are right and they are wrong. You have to engage with them in a two sided discussion. It can still go wrong of course, but the chances of it being a positive exchange are much higher than they are on Reddit and its toxic downvoting system.
I think downvotes are a functional misstep. Buoying things either that you agree with or that you want visibility on is a useful way to conduct conversation. Being able to hide things or use a button to register disapproval opens the door to coordinated suppression. It also just grinds peoples gears.
The only thing I can see working on Tildes is forum sliding. Not sure how they can get around that one.
Pardon my ignorance, but what is "forum sliding"?
https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
These are the methods by which people destroy online conversation. If you look closely enough at the right communities on Reddit you can see this happen in real time.
In Tildes context it would be posting a bunch of new stuff to get the bad conversation you don't want seen off the top of the list knowing that the top slots get all the traffic. Can't downvote? Create and upvote a bunch of new stuff. Same thing kinda.
haha I actually do this in a small-ish subreddit I moderate! If someone posts a thread that we mods aren't really comfortable with, but it's not bad enough to act on because it doesn't break the rules, we'll post something new that better represents our subreddit, to push the undesirable content out of the subreddit's top spot.
I didn't know this had a name. Thanks for that. :)
But you can use any consensus-based visibility mechanism to coordinate de-facto suppression if you assume that visibility is a zero-sum game.
I'm still not entirely sold on the idea that downvotes are the problem with reddit tbh. I think the way it is currently implemented does create problems, but I think downvotes are still a useful mechanism for first-line moderation.
I have kind of noticed here, it's only wrong to be off topic when showing dissent and even then just a super specific piece is claimed to be off topic because the group think doesn't agree and wants to be dismissive. Dissent is dangerous here. Plenty of users have been shit on over it.
Pretty sure everyone who has been banned went through this process.
That road leads to the door. Probably always will. If you're just here to rant at people and talk past them without listening, to the point of ignoring a direct warning from the admins about it, you won't be here very long.
That's unreasonableness, not disagreement. One does often lead to the other, though. Grow up a little, it's honestly not that hard.
Not to be pedantic or undermine your point in any way... but I'm going to be pedantic and appear to undermine your point. :)
I'm pretty sure that most people who have been banned have not done Step 3, for starters. If that was the case, we'd have seen a couple of dozen complaint threads here in ~tildes leading up to various bans - and that hasn't happened. I also know that one of the initial three bans that Deimos announced was a person who did the opposite of "get into a 25+ comment nested argument with someone that devolves into shit" - their problem was posting bad faith prompts and never participating in any discussions. And so on.
Keep in mind that Deimos has banned quite a few people we don't know about. He explicitly said as much when I prompted him about it a couple of weeks ago. The big dramatic bans are only the tip of the iceberg. Most of the bans have been handled quietly and discreetly by Deimos without any big dramas.
However, while the detailed process you've laid out might only have applied to a minority of bans here, you're right in principle that the bans were enacted only as a last resort, after Deimos couldn't convince people to change their behaviour. I'd simplify the process slightly:
I'm also not sure that @trojanhorse was even talking about bans... just being told that their comments were off-topic.
My guess is that it's a bit more than just "refusing." As a mod on reddit, I see this all the time - other than bans for obvious spam accounts - the most common reason we end up banning someone (or upgrading to a permban) is because people will flip out on you if you ask them to cool their shit. Like, we will remove a comment and say "hey man I know things can get heated but please refrain from using directed abusive language" and the immediate reaction will be something like "fuck you nigfag soyboy cuck don't censor me or I will rape your sister."
This has been the cause of about 90% of the bans on r/WoW for the last six months.
People get a 1 day timeout that explains the rules and asks them to calm down, and they flip the fuck out and then eat a permaban.
Idk. For me Reddit mods have always just picked a side and deleted one sides comments. Like you have someone post and people all borderline shit on them, but in a way that can be walked back. OP gets fed up and says one thing. They all say I can't believe OP got upset, we're just trying to help... Then OP gets permanently banned and if they follow up they get told stop arguing we won't argue and mute them.
Or the age old, ban them 5 days later over some small comment and refuse to discuss it.
That's a broad statement. Care to be more specific?
Nope.
I can tell you that in the many subs and many years I modded reddit it was almost never like that. It's much, much easier to nuke the whole thing.
I've seen a couple complaint threads that vanished rather instantly with almost no votes and no comments. I can promise you that everyone received a warning and decided to ignore it. That's what counts. ;)
It'll get a lot easier once we have muting, too. Then you can just slap a gag on the user for a day or three until they cool off, give them time to sleep on it.
Okay. But I still don't think that's everyone who got banned (or even most of them).
Absolutely!!!
Best opening line ever!
Would you care to expand on that? I'm not quite sure I understand what you're getting at.
I checked your history, and you seem to have had some kind of kerfuffle on your very first day here, only a week ago. I assume you're referring to that?
There was some good discussion of this phenomena a few weeks back. I don't know if I'd say that 'dissent is dangerous', but it certainly is very easy to get several commenters on your case if you express something not in-line with the prevailing political / social views here (which admittedly, sometimes is warranted, sometimes not).
Nope.
Is this one of those "if you don't know what you did wrong, I'm not going to tell you" moments? If you don't actually explain and/or demonstrate the problem, it can never be addressed. Dark hints that "Dissent is dangerous here." aren't going to change anything.
Just another day on the internet. Can't prove someone wrong if they refuse to share their evidence!
Edit: I actually just realised I'm not interpreting their actions charitably. I'll try to be a bit less cynical and hopefully they come back and discuss their points when they have some time.
This makes me happy. And I don't say that lightly. That's the kind of atittude I wish everyone had. Much, much, much less toxicity that way.
Speaking of not interpreting actions charitably, you're assigning negative motives to me by assuming my goal is to refute trojanhorse's claims, rather than to identify the problem and see what can be done to resolve the issue (even if that resolution means just explaining things to trojanhorse).
You're right that there was some subconscious assignment of motives there, but I think it was more that I assumed trojanhorse's claims were baseless (because they hadn't provided a base) which in turn implies that they're wrong which in turn applies you'd be proving them wrong.
Yeah... I followed that... after reading it two or three times! :)
Agree to disagree
When Reddit started it was just a link aggregator. Downvotes kinda make sense for that kind of website. When you add comments, images and self-posts to the equation, downvotes become inherently toxic,
The only "dissent" I've seen removed is related to hate speach, racism or excessive meta-drama. Is that what you're talking about, or is there something more?