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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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You like to blame things on other people, but your entire recent posting history is telling everyone they're wrong in their criticism of your moderation. And I know you take pride in being broadly disliked because you think it means you're pissing off everyone evenly, but how can you look at the responses and see them as demonstrating community support for your tactics?

I don't expect this will get through to you. It'll just be another round of blaming everyone else.

I don't take pride in being broadly disliked, I just accept that a small number of people have big emotions.

You speak of "getting through to me" - assuming I actually took seriously the notion that you want to engage in good faith and have a real conversation, have you ever considered, even for a moment, that you might be wrong about something? I mean, I briefly thought that was possible, when I called you out on a false accusation and you admitted it and apologized! "Wow, maybe he's actually calming down and trying be reasonable," I thought. But no, the very next day you were back to the same behavior and the same accusations.

I've just typed more words than I swore I was ever going to waste again with you, because I can't quite let go of mistake theory. I'm actually a very forgiving person - probably too forgiving. I hold out endless hope that our worst posters might someday chill out. But the fact is, yes, a number of people (and you are definitely one of them) just want us to let their side spew unfiltered rage and hate without moderation, ban anyone on the "other" side, and get very unhappy when we won't do that. Most of the criticisms you refer to are along those lines. "Look at how many downvotes you got for telling someone to stop boo-posting! Obviously the community supports boo-posting!"

We have always factored community sentiment into moderation, but you don't speak for the community, nor does "community sentiment" mean it's a democracy. So yes, I can take being hated by people like you. But if you ever decide you want to talk like a human being, let me know.