But also, comments have always been ephemeral. I have had many comments removed, both recently and in the distant past. Many of those comments were good productive comments that had upvotes. We routinely explain to new people that that is the fate of comments. It has always been the way it works.

@Mgetz I'm not sure that would work. Most comments that deserve promotion are super incomplete. If the answerer isn't prepared to put in the effort to flesh it out then you will get a lot of half-formed answers.

@Trasiva most comment threads have gone downhill lately

I had a lot of comments deleted. They were terrible comments. Good riddance I say!

@Rubiksmoose I am on both TWP (read very lax comment moderation) and IPS (probably the strictest) So I do understand how attached some people get to their comments

@JourneymanGeek agreed

mobs are rarely a great idea

I'm terrified it will turn into a witch hunt

because if it does I can almost guarantee I am a target

@AGirlHasNoName you would have witches roaming free across the land?!

@Trasiva yes but no one has to prove that people are doing this. They just start casting aspersions that their content is being deleted because of brigades.

@Trasiva Unless you're a toad I guess. Perhaps that is an unfair stereotype.

@Rubiksmoose I don't know they've hot some pretty sketchy people in that role

Oh hai JG

@terdon I do not do much, but I wish I did more!

One of these days.

🙂

@Trasiva If you mean this then you are catagorically wrong

@Trasiva people seem to be making a lot of claim that people are flagging for disagreeing. Yet no one can see anyone's flagging history - outside of mods and CMs. It's a pretty nebulous and destructive claim to make

Oh good this discussion again.

@KevinB when the conversation is one person screeching transphobic garbage and the other side calmly trying to stand there ground it makes sense

@KevinB true

orphaned coments should be removed

@Trasiva who is calling for flag mobs? It's been ok across the site to ask for flags or votes on posts or questions. In fact there's several chatrooms dedicated to just that

@JohnDvorak anyone with an unpopular opinion has no strength of a group behind them. So I don't know why the vocal majority is upset by the vocal minority

@Trasiva I apologize for the assumption

@KevinB I have flags pending and the posts or comments are deleted - so I cannot see them and retract the flags :/ wonder if there's a bug

@Trasiva there's nothing disguised. Just because you see a thread as bad, it doesn't mean the thread is not bad.

@Rubiksmoose yep I know- a lot are no longer needed. I'll go check

@JohnDvorak Yes the waters are muddy and it is a sensitive topic and a lot of the civil disagreement is also coming from the people who have had the uncivil disagreement removed. I don't know how to make it less of an ideological war than it is. I just dont.

@Rubiksmoose that's ok :)

@Trasiva then lets stop saying that it is happening

don't we have enough claims that we can't or wont prove

@Rubiksmoose it's also a way to push pressure people. Individuals are sometimes targeted with veiled comments and it's underhanded and really causing problems on the site

@KevinB please prove it. What is happening? There's a lot of accusations and no proof, People are making assumptions about how other people are flagging and they have no clue

@KevinB that's a matter of opinion.

@terdon the people who know are the mds and the CMs

@KevinB If you are going to cast aspersions on the moderation of MSE then you should probably back that up

@terdon I'm agreeing with you. is that ok?

@terdon Aw, thanks, :)

@Rubiksmoose and it's attacking some individual/s

I've been on the fence about taking it up & honing it more seriously as a craft, I really love it when I do get the chance.

@AGirlHasNoName I agree. people are now saying that the mods cannot be trusted

@Bart indeed

@KevinB and you're not the only one.

Oh, wow, okay. So, this flags chat is a really useful case study on how anger at a vaguely-defined 'politics' quickly turns into anger against a vaguely-defined them.

@KevinB pretty dubious evidence of intentional mismanagement by moderators.

@Aza exactly

Like, to be clear, I have been trying to communicate that this is a risk for weeks, now. It's very easy to re-cast efforts to make the site better as a wedge by simply saying, "look at what they're doing to us!!"

Repeating it over and over again is not a coincidence. If these discussions are starting to sound and look repetitive, that's by design.

@KevinB the network is going to side with the CoC. And as for declined flags, you're no the only one with declined flags through this. Why are you assuming people are being favoured. In some comment thread clean ups, Tim Post made it clear it was easier to delete them all - I think Shog did too - they're just doing their best to handle flags and literally don't have time to read each flag

when's happy hour?

this is a drag

@terdon the bottom line is. they are a corporation - or something - but they can actually create whatever rules they want. We have all been working for a for-profit business. It's something I had trouble reconciling and still do at times

Y'all are watching a radicalization process happen live on MSE, and aren't recognizing it as a time-tested radicalization pattern. Stack is deeply unprepared to deal with this.

@canon Unsubstatiated claims of injustice that are propped up by the fact that those people hold the power are still unsubstantiated. If your trust is that far gone that I don't know what to tell you but you are bordering on conspiracy theory here.

@KevinB I agree- but I think there's different people handling flags with different mod styles (mod referring to employees as well) it's adhoc atm