What if they’re “just asking questions”? What if they’re “just reporting facts”? Are fake statistics, biased sources, and polite misinformation (they could just be mistaken!) actionable? What if they’re walking right up to the line of civility and putting one big toe on it? These are all things they’re really good at doing.
Basically, no downvotes means either a lot more work for the other users and/or a whole lot more work for the moderators. Every single post has to be carefully examined, compared against the existing rules, potential policy loopholes have to be considered, intentions have to be assumed or guessed at, and by the time all that’s done for one post, there are 30 more from the same user on the same theme (but now they’re not copy/pasted, they’re just different enough to require a whole 'nother full review for each and every one).
I’ve been there, as both a user and a moderator, and I’ve tried to do that out of a sense of fairness and balance, but it’s totally impossible to keep up with the firehose of nonsense.
if they’re spewing hate them we’d report them, not downvote
What if they’re “just asking questions”? What if they’re “just reporting facts”? Are fake statistics, biased sources, and polite misinformation (they could just be mistaken!) actionable? What if they’re walking right up to the line of civility and putting one big toe on it? These are all things they’re really good at doing.
Basically, no downvotes means either a lot more work for the other users and/or a whole lot more work for the moderators. Every single post has to be carefully examined, compared against the existing rules, potential policy loopholes have to be considered, intentions have to be assumed or guessed at, and by the time all that’s done for one post, there are 30 more from the same user on the same theme (but now they’re not copy/pasted, they’re just different enough to require a whole 'nother full review for each and every one).
I’ve been there, as both a user and a moderator, and I’ve tried to do that out of a sense of fairness and balance, but it’s totally impossible to keep up with the firehose of nonsense.
fair enough