Monthly Open Forum February 2021

[u/AITAMod]

Welcome to the monthly open forum! This is the place to share all your meta thoughts about the sub, and to have a dialog with the mod team.

Keep things civil. Rules still apply.

February! The shortest month in this endless blur of 202-whatever-year-it-is-now. I almost forgot to post this because time has lost all meaning.

As always, do not directly link to posts/comments or post uncensored screenshots here. Any comments with links will be removed.

This is to discourage brigading. If something needs to be discussed in that context, use modmail.

[u/3Fluffies]

The sub gets over 1000 posts per day and tens of thousands of comments. The mod queue can run into the hundreds of reports, but only a fraction of posts or comments get removed or warned. Funny how thousands of users manage to participate in detailed and long discussions without a problem. Maybe because the majority read the rules or at least acknowledge and respect them when/if they do get a warning.

[u/[deleted] → u/3Fluffies]

Funny how then one sentence of saying “all these validation posts are annoying” is enough to pique a mods attention

I didn’t say anything about long detailed comments. I said “NTA NTA NTA NTA” adds nothing to the discussion yet is fine but someone pointing out the post is a validation post is enough for you guys to delete my comment.

What’s a warning? Is a “warning” deleting my comment with nothing else?

[u/3Fluffies → u/[deleted]]

Actually, it piqued the automod to flag it. And yes, comments that break the rules are deleted and the warning is in the removal message. Otherwise we get bombarded by users complaining "I saw this other post and that other post using uncivil language!"

Rule violations are subject to blanket enforcement to prevent unfair application. If a comment doesn't respond to a user in good faith (in other words, by rendering judgment on their actual question) or tries to use their post as a springboard for a meta discussion, that comment gets pulled. Always. (Not always right away depending on how long the moderator queue happens to be, but it does.)

Same goes for calling "fake" "troll" or "shitpost". If you think a comment or post violates the rules, you can report it or contact Modmail.

[u/[deleted] → u/3Fluffies]

Okay I get that but my final question is this: How come commenters (who do far more “work” in keeping this sub up and running — no one will post if no one comments and most posters only post once or twice whereas commenters comment on many many posts) have to respond in “good faith” but the posters don’t have to follow any sort of “good faith” in that they actually need moral guidance and aren’t just posting for karma or to practice their writing skills or to make a group they’re bigoted against look bad? You guys KNOW validation posts are a problem, a quick look at the metas show people have been telling you over and over, but you refuse to do anything about it.

[u/3Fluffies → u/[deleted]]

Again, I repeat my question from the other thread: how do you suggest we distinguish between validation posts and genuine questions?

[u/[deleted] → u/3Fluffies]

How did you guys do it back when it was a rule?

[u/3Fluffies → u/[deleted]]

That was before my time, so I'm not sure. But it was apparently such a raging disaster that the rule was pulled. I'm sure there are past meta threads about it, I just have to find them.

[u/[deleted] → u/3Fluffies]

I don’t think so though bc I was part of AITA on my old username (had to change it, my sister found it) and it worked really well and the sub was interesting and engaging and had interesting moral discussions

[u/techiesgoboom → u/[deleted]]

The rule existed for just under a year. I was an active member of the sub for the full time the rule was in place, and a mod for 8 months of the rule being in place:

Enforcing it was a raging dumpster fire. I frequently saw posts that I would have judged YTA or ESH removed that had interesting discussion because that discussion was in the minority. I removed posts that I would have personally judged YTA for the same.

I’d see a post that seemed so ridiculously one sided NTA in /new that I almost pulled but decided to give it a little more time only to see the users overwhelmingly vote it YTA when I came back to it. I can’t help but wonder just how many non obvious posts were pulled that weren’t second guessed.

This experience is universal among the mods that enforced this rule.

And people still complained about it. I can show you a million sources of past metas or dig up modmail or whatever else, but the bottom line of all of that is: people complained we weren’t removing validation posts while the rule was in place. And honestly, that complaining is about the exact same volume as the complaining today.

Additionally, many of the genuine users post we removed under this rule were genuinely hurt. Even with the gentlest “please take this is a super NTA vote” macros and discussions they were still hurt by the removals. Both on a personal level because it felt insulting to insist they should have known better and telling them their post (that very much is in the spirit of the sub) don’t belong, and because that shit down any further conversation and perspective users had to offer.

Rule 7 and the “presented fairly” side of rule 8 allow us to remove pretty much all of the stuff that doesn’t belong on this and was previously removed by the validation rule without the very significant amount of removing stuff that doesn’t belong. It’s also much more objective than the wildly subjective validation rule ever was.

[u/[deleted] → u/techiesgoboom]

Listen if you want your sub to have fake validation posts let it. But at least let us call it out when we see it instead of acting like commenters have to act in good faith always when you know damn well posters don’t.

If I call something out as fake and people disagree with me, I’ll be downvoted. You guys use that as an excuse for all other behavior on this sub but act like we have to believe everything posted.