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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Then it looks like the moderation on this site isn't for me.

That may be the case. Based on everything you said, it's unlikely we are going to change our moderation to suit you. Bear in mind, of course, that so far you have only been talking to me, and I can't say how many of the other mods are reading this thread. You can always ping them and try to get their feedback.

If your intent is for this site to be "a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases", then when two people are clearly not on the same page about what "shady thinking", much less what counts as "responding", is, the only person who had the authority to provide guidance is you.

Well, the thing is, the intent is for this to be a platform where people can do that, but we never said that our purpose is to be referees and try to enforce a particular kind of discourse, beyond generally pushing back against people who try to step out of bounds. It was never meant to be a formal "debate club" with judges blowing whistles. We aren't teachers, judges, or editors. If people post shitty arguments and no one argues back, or worse, gives them upvotes and AAQCs, well, that's what the community has decided it wants, and while we will continue to enforce some norms regardless of community sentiment, we're not going to take on the role that you seem to want us to.

By you not checking that 07mk is actually responding to what I'm saying, you're signaling that other users can get away with the same behavior I'm pointing out.

Yes, I am not going to check every time someone replies to you or anyone else and make sure that they are "actually responding" to you. If you think someone is breaking the rules and report the post, I will look and see if I think they are breaking the rules, but "Not answering my question, or going off on what I consider to be an irrelevant tangent," while annoying, is not a violation of the rules.

Nobody wants to argue with someone they think isn't listening to them, so all that you have left is an echochamber.

You can also be selective about who you engage with. Some people here are very low-quality posters and I pretty much ignore them except when they are being reported for being particularly shitty. Some people are worth talking to and some aren't. There are definitely some people who think that about me.