Member Of Species

@Meaningness I don't see anyone trying to test that hypothesis very hard.

@MemberOfSpecies Well… have you tried moderating? It’s hard work, exasperating, emotionally and cognitively difficult, and you get no thanks

@Meaningness Hmm. So maybe I was underestimating the size of the underlying cultural problem.

@MemberOfSpecies I suspect it’s mostly not culture; it’s monkeys.

@Meaningness I think it would help a lot to be up front about "this is an aggressively moderated forum; judge it by its fruits".

@MemberOfSpecies It’s tricky; that invites meta-level discussion of moderation, which typically turns into vituperation.

@Meaningness If it's widely accepted that meta-level discussion ruins things, maybe people would be willing to precommit against it.

@MemberOfSpecies And then a community may die because it couldn’t discuss what had gone wrong and how to fix it.