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> I remember when the moderators starting closing SO topics as "not constructive". I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy cr

> I remember when the moderators starting closing SO topics as "not constructive". I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. I really like that it's so focused, clearly defines what is on and off topic, and strictly enforces that policy. You're right, such discussion can be very valuable, but if these policies didn't exist or weren't enforced, I don't think the site would be nearly as useful. Doesn't mean that the people with closed questions are bad, or the conversation can't be had in chat or a different site. > Can this descend into a flamewar? Absolutely. But just kill the flamewars and the people who start them. Meanwhile the strong contributors get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity and move on, the signal:noise ratio drops, and it turns into just another (ostensibly) programming-focused forum. Not to mention that the more time mods spend dealing with toxic behavior, the less time they have for work that improves the content of the site.

cletus 4y ago
> I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. There was little to no direction from the top, at least at that time. Mods were just self-appointed community members who organized in such a way to impose their will on the community. It was pretty classic tyranny of the minority. Many of the more prolific contributors (of which I was one at the time) were deeply frustrated by this. It was a frequent topic on Meta SO. You saw these waves of subtle policy changes if you tracked edits to your contributions. Suddenly there'd be a bunch of edits all based on some new formatting policy and a lot of it was just pointless busywork. Some people just fall into this trap of elevating the process to where the process becomes a goal and is treated of equal (or even higher) value to the content it's applied to. Moderation is important and has a place but, left to their own devices, moderators will create work for themselves just based on their idle capacity. You need to avoid this.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity And then "toxicity" just gets redefined to an always leftward-moving definition of anything "right-wing". Every time.

cletus 4y ago

> I don't think that was a decision made by the mods, I think that's policy created by SO. There was little to no direction from the top, at least at that time. Mods were just self-appointed community members who organized in such a way to impose their will on the community. It was pretty classic tyranny of the minority. Many of the more prolific contributors (of which I was one at the time) were deeply frustrated by this. It was a frequent topic on Meta SO. You saw these waves of subtle policy changes if you tracked edits to your contributions. Suddenly there'd be a bunch of edits all based on some new formatting policy and a lot of it was just pointless busywork. Some people just fall into this trap of elevating the process to where the process becomes a goal and is treated of equal (or even higher) value to the content it's applied to. Moderation is important and has a place but, left to their own devices, moderators will create work for themselves just based on their idle capacity. You need to avoid this.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> get tired of dealing with (even more) toxicity And then "toxicity" just gets redefined to an always leftward-moving definition of anything "right-wing". Every time.