>>24867there's a mindset it seems like among some mods or just off and on with all of them (since its not consistent) of suppressing stuff that makes the site less fun (which is obviously subjective and will cause disputes like this - there's good reason to think bait has little to add, but personally i like the smug cartoon), instead of promoting stuff that they want.
You have some mods saying they are very hands off and don't want to impose top-down culture, and then you have the wobblys and misatos of the team who don't have any qualms, and so there's a different face for each accusation - under or over-moderation. I hope internally the mods can implement stricter adherence to the plain rules as stated, or stop trying to legislate every action altogether and allow the mods to have some fun, which is its own kind of positive contribution. The current state of the mod team, half deleting shit they dont like and suppressing, and half agreeing with the sentiment "sorry i just remove gore and nazis, i dont want to influence top-down", makes it highly dysfunctional for the users. I still applaud them for keeping the place CP-free and up and running though.
Mods: please just understand the actual demoralizing impact your actions can have on the boards. It only takes a few good people to make the place fun and lively. By the same token, it also only takes a few people leaving to make it dead and sterile. I think the natural oscillations in quality mask the fact that things are going downhill overall.
Think of it this way: what causes you to post? For me it's two things, either frustration (for lack of a better word), or genuine care to educate or be educated. With frustration, what's most enticing is good bait, or someone getting something just wrong enough to make it easy to jump in and feel good about answering a question, or someone making a challenge like "i'm x, i dont like communism cause [misunderstanding]". For being enticed to post for education, there have to be people who show their human side and not just be autistic, and show some real knowledge or desire to learn.
Considering the above, what happens when you remove bait threads or posts, is just that one source of interaction leaves. That's negative, quantitatively. Qualitatively i can't say, but personally everyone has their own view of what's tolerable and what's not.
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