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My read was that chrisprattalpharaptr was essentially trying to push for conversing politely, and tyre_inflator's main point was that the conversation that happens here is useless.
So one seems closer to me to needing mod action than the other, given the standards of this place.
I agree. "1 day ban" seemed fair for CPAR, vs overly charitable for TI. But:
"When the people like you were diluted by those who were well-meaning", "But whatever", and "Bravo" were not pushes for polite conversation. They were impolite conversation, written as if they were supposed to be subtle enough to superficially toe the line of debate rules, but clearly just jumping into the mud pit to wrestle there too. "Forget about the black person who got taxpayer money for a moment" was an egregious sideswipe, rephrasing a complaint in the least charitable possible way. I've probably posted worse attacks than all these before, and I'm certain I've restrained myself from making worse attacks before, and even when I'm provoked it's usually a conscious decision. I don't think CPAR is someone who would make a mistake like that by accident.
And, though I hate to apply an unfair double-standard, lest it be interpreted as an unfair imbalance in confrontation rather than in concern, I think that's what bothers me most about the whole exchange. Speaking to @Chrisprattalpharaptr:
No, but it's both clear and horrifying that you changed as well as the space! I admit there are usernames here that just make my eyes glaze over and my scroll wheel accelerate, but when I see a @Chrisprattalpharaptr post, it's supposed to be time to stop skimming! You've built up some expectations! I'm not saying we have to make every comment a winner here, but the drop even from "sort-by-controversial" quality to yesterday was great enough that I keep trying to reinterpret it as some kind of "mirroring" performance art that I'm just failing to get. Even granting that the original post was no better: you don't write replies for the other debater, you write them for the audience. Perhaps FCfromSSC here doesn't completely persuade all his interlocutors, but he's probably still doing a good thing for both their and his own mental clarity and mental health, as well as writing something lurkers can see and pick up and benefit from. The contrary "neither cast ye your pearls before swine" philosophy was a lousy one when I used to see it coming from the right, and it's no better these days when I see it (without the reference, this time...) adopted by the left.
I'm torn about what to advise ("advise" sounds too pretentious ... "beg for"?) here. On the one hand TheMotte has gotten a bit worse, and although it's also recovered from bad phases in the past, I'm always worried that maybe this time will be the final "evaporative cooling", where level heads get burnt out enough to leave and hysteresis makes problems permanent, unless enough level heads have the fortitude to stick it out despite the unwarranted negative feedback of doing so. I'd love to stop this paragraph here. But if I'm asking too much, if the feedback is so bad that "level" requires too much effort ... take a break before you break, and wait for a week or two until you're less easily trolled before returning? It's okay that individual people have cycles of good and bad phases too. As a wise man once said, and I repeat with no irony or sarcasm:
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@curious_straight_ca this may also be of interest to you, since you said you wanted Tyre_inflator to stick around.
People with this viewpoint often don't last very long on themotte. If you think this place is useless then the mods enforcing the rules trying to preserve it are just pointless acts of aggression.
The mods' ability to "reform" these types of posters is often limited and doomed to failure, because we only have one stick (banning), and one carrot (AAQC, or recognition for being a good poster). But being banned from a place you consider useless is a mercy and a favor rather than a punishment. And being recognized as a useful contributor to a place you consider useless is an insult.
In general, if you think a place is useless and a waste of time, my suggestion is to not go there and waste your time. If you can't hold yourself to this the mods will happily ban you for any length of time at your request. Its not like TheMotte is in your face in any way. You literally have to know where to go on the internet to be here. We have a minimal presence on reddit that is easily ignored, and otherwise generally aren't on social media.
I think Tyre_inflator's original post was culture warry, and definitely not talking as if everyone was listening. If they were a user with no past history of bans or warnings I'd just give them a warning and move on probably. But:
My preferred course of action is that @Tyre_Inflator requests a permaban from a place they ostensibly think is pointless. Me saying that probably makes it less likely to happen. The likely course of action is we do some token ban time ~7 days for them being bad here, and we double double promise to permaban them next time. And within a few weeks of them coming back from the ban they will trigger the permaban.
@Chrisprattalpharaptr's response was a problem of saying something that is ok: "can you say this in a polite way so we can actually talk about it, instead of just waging culture war towards me?" But saying it in a way that is not ok: 'go touch grass, stop whining, etc'. And they have gotten warnings in the past for sort of taking the bait and getting into shit flinging with others users. But they've also had quality contributions, and the length of times between warnings is pretty large. So mostly they are a good user and they misbehaved this one time. I think we can tell them to knock it off and be better, and they will listen because they actually want to be here and our mod incentive structure of carrot (AAQC) and stick (bans) actually works properly on them. But I'm still in favor of using the stick, because its not ok to antagonize other users, even if that user seems to hate it here and might be on their way out soon via bans.
Tyre's been around for about a little under a year, and the name sounds like an alt name a bit. But the invitation to stay around was implicitly an invitation to stay around while making more valuable posts, as opposed to more of that, yeah. It's not like I like his posts more than the average poster, but I think most people like that could post productively if they genuinely wanted to, so it's good to have some good cop with the bad cop.
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Fair enough, "touch grass" is virtually always condescending.
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