Re^3: discouraging flamebating

[tye]

Regarding your proposals, please see Possible changes to Voting/XP.

In point of fact, I expect people to disagree with me violently and at length almost any time I open my virtual mouth in Internet public. I have very strong opinions, and have an aggravating tendency to be difficult to logically argue against.

In other words, you're a habitual flame bater (perhaps unintentionally but unapologetically), have already prompted a variety of people to reply to you trying to get you to realize that arguing endlessly about word definitions isn't particularly useful, and (I'm sure) you've gotten an even wider variety of people to downvote you (and some of your co-arguers) for endlessly arguing word definitions and commenting on the stupidity of others.

If you keep this up, you'll soon have people characterizing you as a troll and many won't be able to read your nodes that happen to not be arguing about the definitions of words and commenting on the stupidity of others without letting a large volume of your other nodes influence them.

And to be frank, I post this less in hopes of getting you to realize the errors of your ways and save you the likely spiral of frustration (for more than just you) than I do it as an early public notice that can be pointed to when this comes up again; because I'm doubtful you'll be able to overcome your strong attachment to your beliefs and modify your behavior.

I'd rather you try to figure out how to produce more light and less heat when you argue. One great improvement would be to not get distracted by arguing about aspects of the argument (or at least drasticly limit it).

[been42]

I don't think he's a troll. I think he just walked into unfamiliar territory, butted heads with a very respected and influential member of that community, and the community reacted in a very predictable manner. He showed his ass, and the monastery kicked it. (As a personal aside, if I were going to get into a semantic flamewar with someone here, I would be careful not to pick Tilly. Tough luck, pal.) Now apotheon is upset and he wants to change the rules.

This happens quite often here. Someone, after spending a few weeks or a month here, wants to make major changes to the Monastery to protect us from our small-minded selves. These changes are usually related to XP, and I'd almost be willing to bet my tiny paycheck that they usually follow some downvoting. The real problem isn't that it's broken. It's that it's not working for you right this minute. There are two possible fixes for this situation: either stop butting heads, or live up to those claims of not caring about XP.

The voting system generally reflects the thoughts of the community. That's exactly what it's there for. Not to make us feel good, or to rain fire on our enemies, but to give us an inaccurate picture of what the majority of people (who logged in around the time we posted) thought about what we said. And XP is nothing but an inaccurate picture of how much activity we have performed (while logged in here). As you do more stuff here, you get the power to do even more stuff here. That's it. Either I like the post, or I don't. I don't need an excuse to downvote someone any more than I need to justify honking at someone in traffic. I know that people really do care about XP, and I don't see anything wrong with that, so if I don't like a post I'll usually just not vote at all.

So just keep posting wherever you feel like you can contribute, apotheon. If people like it, they'll vote it up. If you get downvoted for something you believe is right, then just don't worry too much about it, man. It could mean that you showed people truths too harsh to bear, or it could mean that you just pissed someone off. Which seems to be a truth too harsh to bear.