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Yes, I read your edit before I made my comment. I'm asking what value you see in that comment -- why a warning would not have been merited if it had been made several levels deeper, despite the fact that it violates several rules and exists solely to complain bitterly about how terrible the author's outgroup is.
@self_made_human goes into more depth than I would, but his general point is sound: people say a bunch of eye-watering awful shit in the comments, and it’s not always worth policing. The further down in a conversation we go, the more likely that there’s context which we missed. Especially when sarcasm or hypotheticals are involved.
We’ve got at least one user who will report anything and everything shorter than two sentences as
low-effort. Doesn’t matter if it’s five levels down in a conversation, or if the parent asked a yes/no question. That’s the rule which gets the most leniency based on depth, since there are lots of good reasons to have a short answer.boo-outgrouporantagonism…well, it’s a lot harder to find an excuse for that. I’d have modded this particular one wherever it showed up. But I suspect I’ve already earned a reputation as a party pooper.More options
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Us mods aren't monolithic, though we try to present a unified front. I'm sure there are some out there who would be harsher on OP, or more keen to monitor deeper threads. You can't expect perfect consistency. But I happen to be the one up when the more Westward mods are asleep.
If it had been deeper down, then I would assume that:
A) Far fewer would have their eyeballs contaiminated. I don't recall us mods ever being involved in the most degenerate case, namely DMs, at that point one person or the other should block and move on.
B) It might have been in the context of a heated debate, where being somewhat uncharitable can be occasionally excused, if not indefinitely or infinitely. Someone can be provoked into being exasperated, or less than maximally polite, and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt.
C) His mod record is otherwise clean.
Hence I initially wanted to politely tell him to shy away from that kinda thing without putting a dent in his invisible to you mod record, but when it's a top level post, absolutely not, it's warning worthy. He's got 83 comments, and no warnings till today, so as far as I can tell, he's mostly within acceptable bounds. Unfortunately, B isn't true, though that was an error on my part while trying to clear the mod queue. At any rate, a warning would probably be the default mod action, it's unlikely any of us would want to ban him for a first infraction, even one clearly in violation of norms. Repeated misbehavior and being incorrigible? Or just something awful? Banhammer swings.
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