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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26711 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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What I'm saying is essentially the flip-side of "don't do the crime if wont do the time". I understand that you want to discourage users from posting "good job" or "excellent point" and i am ok with that. But that isn't going to stop me doing so, because I genuinely believe that encouragement/positive renforcement is worth the marginal loss of my getting banned.

Edit: To be explicit, if you want to ban me for giving @Walterodim an "attaboy" that is your prerogative, but I also cant help but feel like doing so is kind of proving my point.

Proving what point? Either you agree that discouraging low effort comments (which you say you "are ok with") is a good policy, or you don't.

You have gotten a lot of slack for your long-time contributions and the fact that no one on the mod team really wants to ban you. We get a lot of flack for that, because you have over time become increasingly antagonistic. So now here we are with you raising both middle fingers to the rules and deciding to make a stand over your "right" to say "attaboy." Your constant expressions of contempt for everyone here, including the mods, mean that every day is a "Not fucking Hlynka again" day in the mod queue.

So yeah, if you decide this is the hill you're going to die on, I will ban you for "attaboys."

Proving what point?

Apologies, you're catching a bit of the backwash from a loooong-running argument between myself and some of the other mods.

Short version being that the moderating philosophy of /r/themotte and now theMotte.org not only enables but encourages certain pathologies (see the "geek social fallacies"). And a big part of that is the negative feedback loop. I know I am in the minority, but I still think @ZorbaTHut made a mistake when he ported upvotes and downvotes over to the new site. Votes are engagement. Comments are engagement. And negative engagement will always be easier and more engaging than positive. Hate makes the blood flow, and blood makes the grass grow.

ETA: Someone who writes a thoughtful well-written response often gets few replies and few votes because who's going to get worked up about a thoughtful well-written response. At the same time "good job" is often exactly what those people need to hear if you want them to keep making thoughtful well-written responses. Eating a ban for encouraging good posts strikes me as a small price to pay for encouraging good posts.

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