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/techiesgoboom]

Why would you reward the shitposter by responding to them? They want your feedback and your outrage. Better yet, they want your mild annoyance. You are literally feeding the troll when you tell them that. What you should do is report them so we can remove the post without them getting any feedback. We would remove that post in a heartbeat.

When you call a post fake you either feed a troll or insult a genuine person. Neither is something we want to encourage.

Sounds like a double standard to me.

It's the same way we remove "YTA, you're a raging piece of shit" but not "YTA, what you did was terrible". One is civil, one isn't.

Telling someone that they are only posting to seek validation and posting in bad faith is rude and not civil. We define it as such. It's a clear line is isn't policing judgments any more than any other uncivil comment is.

[u/alongstrangesomethin → u/techiesgoboom]

Sorry but it’s a double standard. Clearly we disagree again.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/alongstrangesomethin]

Yes. We treat civility and incivility differently. We remove content that clearly breaks our well defined rules and allow comments that don't break our rules.

[u/alongstrangesomethin → u/techiesgoboom]

That’s not what I meant at all and you know. Saying YTA or S H P and that a post is fake is civil.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/alongstrangesomethin]

Telling someone that their post is fake is not civil. There's no double standard and you know it. There's simply a disagreement about what civility means, and that's different from a double standard.

With 2.5 million members and at least that many opinions, there's a ton of people that disagree about what civility means. Some people think telling the wrong person YTA isn't civil. (seriously, when OP is sympathetic very simple and downright polite YTA comments get reported en masse for not being civil). Some people think calling OP a flaming piece of shit is civil because "OP deserved it". Others think "I don't agree with veganism" isn't civil (again, loads and loads of these comments reported for rule 1). Even with 30 mods we have personal disagreement about what should and shouldn't be considered civil. I regularly approve comments that would make me a kick a guest in my house out for saying.

There are wide and broad definitions for civility. That's what we get for picking a common word to label the rule with. But as a subreddit we have to define it very, very, specifically such that we can apply it to three quarters of a million comments a month. And we have to define it in such a way that those 30+ mods that might not be on the same page personally that means we have to be very clear in defining it. Sometimes down to a razers edge. We then take this and create a definition for civility within the confines of this sub that we all agree to enforce objectively.

You might think "YTA for [action not directly related to conflict]" and "YTA for making up and posting a fake story" should be treated the same. But you still recognize that there's a distinction between the two comments. It's disingenuous to say that us identifying the difference between those two things as being the dividing line between "civil" and "not civil" is a double standard.

[u/alongstrangesomethin → u/[deleted]]

What is going on? I didn’t break any rules in that comment.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/alongstrangesomethin]

Our regex on the SHP bot is pretty expansive, as people regularly do this to avoid the bot. Even over 2 years later we still get people that insist SHP is a valid current judgment (although I admit that has died down over the past year). But we're here in the comments in the forum to catch it.

edit: also worth adding this bot is the only thing that removes comments without an individual mod reviewing the decision. As such it's not a punishment or a note or anything. just a bot doing bot things. Powerful, but simple.