Solution: don’t let people be dicks to each other. Disagree with the ideas, not the person.
On Twitter I have seen some vile things said to other people get likes (stars at the time) and it is just fucking sick and wrong. Like a bunch of people in a circle hooting along at someone punching another person in a fight.
So the root problem in that case is not the presences of likes but broken culture and/or moderation.
I disagree though.
As we have seen here in the past, clearly moderation doesn’t work in many ways though, as you can ban and close accounts, and then people accuse the moderators of banning people they don’t agree with. And that becomes a whole argument. People get mad that someone got banned for being a dick, but it should have been ok, because the other guy was being a dick too! Favoritism! etc.
The thing that likes do, is increase the internet pile-on that happens on posts, and I do think that it has a significant impact on shaping the culture. This is human nature, as our culture and discourse is often shaped around the rules we have placed in society. I think that likes encourage negative conversational traits.
I mean look at like-friendly sites, facebook, twitter, I don’t think I would hold those up as places to have great conversations. That is what I love about this forum, that I can have a great conversation with rational people.
I’d expand that to say that here, we have great conversations with rational people with whom we disagree, because if you disagree strongly with someone, you have to actually put the effort into coming up with a reply, rather than liking the first snarky response. (And there’s no great incentive to make that first snarky response, because there are no likes to give to it.)
I agree with your disagreement—moderation and culture, as products of humans, who are generally terrible, are also terrible. To rely on them to generate a pleasant atmosphere in discussions on contentions topics is to disregard human nature.
Yep, I hate likes too and am happy we don’t have them here.
Or it could be argued that moderation was mostly hands off here until Tom got sick of it and banned a bunch at once. In my position as an armchair quarterback I think that style of moderation built up tension. Tom was clearly reluctant to permanently ban people and they took advantage of it and complained bitterly when he did. Solution? Faster bans and less tolerance for assholes aka more active moderation.
I was a bit against the great purge and change in moderation style, and I certainly miss some of the posters, but it’s hard to argue about the results. We have several threads now with mature, thoughtful responses to posters going through tough times in their life and the asshole responses are basically gone.
I know assholes still exist, and some people just have a bad day, but it’s nice not to see it quite so often on this board. So, thumbs up on the great purge and Tom actually having the balls go through with it.
I forgot about that.
“Hey, I have this crazy family problem I need to vent about!”
“This isn’t your blog! Stop whining”
+8 likes.
Glad that is gone.
Five+ years later, I think we can all agree this was a Giant Fucking Mistake.
I will add that bad moderation is much, much worse than no moderation at all. By like an order of magnitude.