Hyrist wrote:
I will say for posterity, without any shame, that I am one of those said 'moral compasses' that end up being heavy on the rating arrows. This is for a multitude of reasons - here's two.
1. I'm sort on time most times and don't get the opportunity to type out a full rebuttal, or that the rebuttal was already stated.
Edit: Just want to point out that this isn't entirely direct at you personally, but the type of mindset in this block that I quoted. You may not be the type of rate down the types of posts I'm talking about, and if you're not, then it may not apply to you at all.
This line of thinking is most likely the precise reason why actual discussion is often discouraged on this board. I don't know the exact posts that you personally choose to rate down, but I've plainly seen completely harmless posts with valid points sub defaulted and "hidden" from users scrolling down the page unless they choose to manually unhide them. I've seen it happen since the first days I've been browsing this forum, but just to expand on the most recent example that I brought up earlier, here is a post from the atma farming thread that is currently rated "good."
Quote:
To be fair people waiting for hours for a specific FATE are Google impaired, after my first 45 minutes waiting for the infamous "Giant Seps", I decided to google it and found that the number of FATE's per area are caped and you have to clear the current FATE's to let new ones pop, otherwise you are waiting for the timers to expire.
Afterwards I just started clearing and... bingo! 30 minutes later I was already looking for the next one.
Then a reply, which was sub defaulted.
Quote:
So... how exactly does this information help anyone? You still have to wait. You can't exactly run around and help clear out the current FATEs either, or else the people who are waiting for the specific one needed will zerg it and kill it before you can get back. You also still have no exact indication of when it'll pop again.
No discussion from there on on the subject at all, until I later brought it back up and pointed out that the information in the sub defaulted post is entirely correct, and my post pointing that out was brought down to default. Another rate down or two and my post would/will be hidden as well, to anyone who doesn't manually expand sub defaulted posts, which would leave the opinion that apparently people liked more uncontested to those people. Now, again, I don't know whether you personally would rate down a post like that, but the mindset of "I don't have time to post a reply so I'll just rate it down, if enough users agree it'll just disappear" seems to be common from what I have seen on these forums.
The type of user moderation that this board has could, in a completely hypothetical situation, be a good thing if it were used responsibly. Rating down senseless attacks on users, rating down spammers who post things like "I bought my kitchen at this online web site and it was great!" would definitely clear some unnecessary clutter, but when I can at times find sub defaulted posts that make as much if not more sense than the post it's replying to because it doesn't fall in line with popular group think at the time, it becomes clear how useful the system works within the community.
Then if the subject of karma gets brought up, rather than posting about how posts are rated up and down all the time on a whim and to just try to ignore it, those who are already members come out saying that it's used to silence immature posters, d-bags, etc. How much more unwelcoming could that possibly be to a new user? If a new user comes here and reads that type of thing, and they post something that isn't quite in line with either what others' opinions are at the time or just something that for whatever reason, justifiable or not, grates on another users' nerves and they get defaulted/sub defaulted (which, and I may be wrong so someone can correct me if I am, but I believe new users are even easier to sub default/silence than established ones) and they actually take that to heart rather than just blowing it off as some might, it doesn't exactly make this appear to be a very welcoming community. Even if they do just blow it off, they may still likely just take their opinions somewhere else where the options when faced with an unpopular opinion are to either ignore it and let the opinion stand for what it is, or create a thoughtful counter point to explain why the user is incorrect or at least provide an alternative and let people decide to themselves.
Edited, Apr 22nd 2014 9:58pm by Susanoh