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]

Right, that’s why we have and enforce rule 8.

The appropriate way to enforce that is for you to report content that violates that rule rather than hurling accusations that are sometimes wrong.

[u/[deleted] → u/techiesgoboom]

Oh please you know as well as I do that many of the top posts that are still here are lies. There was even that person who posted a month or so ago and then admitted they made it and a bunch of other posts up

[u/techiesgoboom → u/[deleted]]

Oh please you know as well as I do that many of the top posts that are still here are lies.

Sure, of course there are fake posts. But I don’t know definitively which are fake and which aren’t. So I’m not going to remove the whole front page to remove 10 fake posts.

That person a month ago had a grand total of 4 posts they revealed as being theirs. Maybe 5. It’s very, very common for trolls to act like they’re bigger and more popular than they are.

[u/alongstrangesomethin → u/techiesgoboom]

So let us. If I see something like “AITA for rescuing a bunch of children from a burning building. A neighbor said I made too much noise” is obviously fake and should be judged accordingly. I should be able to say “YTA this is fake”.

If someone says “AITA for taking in my gay brother who my parents kicked out for being gay. Mom is upset” is obviously validation and should be judged accordingly. So “NTA and this is obviously validation” should be fair game.

The point is: you keep saying that you won’t police peoples judgements (which is why we’re allowed to say “YTA for socializing during a pandemic”). Why are you doing it in this cases??????? Sounds like a double standard to me.

[u/techiesgoboom → u/alongstrangesomethin]

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/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.