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practical_romantic  2yr ago (text post)   3914 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 23, 2022

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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Anybody else concerned about the amount of downvotes people are throwing around on the site? I started commenting about Georgism and got downvoted to hell on multiple comments.

Seemed like on the sub only irrational or low effort comments got downvoted - not people trying to argue something intelligently. Idk, maybe I have a higher estimation of my own comments but I see posts that seem very civil and well-written getting downvoted, which makes me concerned.

Anybody else concerned about the amount of downvotes people are throwing around on the site?

Yeah, I don't know what's going on. If I didn't know better, I'd think we gained lurkers changing ships... could it be rdrama? Are they even interested in huge textwalls? Or does the visibility of downvotes encourage spite voting? Or is there a hostile actor with alts? Has JuliusBranson somehow returned?

I made it a personal policy a year or so ago to never downvote anything that doesn't break the rules. Even if I absolutely hate it. It's a good, Motteian kind of policy to have. I think it's possible that there any many here, potentially newcomers, who just don't understand what etiquette is appropriate for the site. I wonder if there is an effective way to orient new users to the mores of the community? I'm not sure how it would be done, other then people generally making it known that downvoting someone is an ill-mannered faux pas in this community.

Well they just made votes invisible for the first day so I think that will help!

And in the 25 minutes since you posted this, you already got two (gross, not net) downvotes. You were civil and well-written here still, you're asking an important question in an intelligent manner ... and although "don't whine about being downvoted" is generally a good rule in the topical threads where the downvoting occurs, you're not there now, you're starting a separate thread in the right forum for "meta" questions.

I'm unpleasantly surprised. "Moderate based on quality, not opinion" (more commonly phrased as "The downvote button is not a disagree button") was perhaps the most famously ignored aspect of Reddiquette, but it was one that TheMotte at least partially lived up to; I wasn't expecting it to get even worse after the move.

Yeah there seems to be a much more conflict-oriented / Straussian focus of many of the new posters, or at least the ones I'm noticing. I wonder if that has something to do with it?

Anyway, thanks for the sanity check.

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