16+ years ago, there was not a 100:1 ratio of opinionated-idiots to helpful experts, like there is today. The "everyone's opinion matters" fallacy and contemporary (deliberately refined) addiction to social-media has spawned a generation of downvote-spammers. The "wisdom of the crowd" is non-existent on all but trivial everyday situations in which all of them are experienced ( https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140708-when-crowd-wisdom-goes-wrong ) and the best way to weed out the idiots is to remove their voice ( "--" )

We're all *supposed* to be programmers here, and supposed to understand problems, and how to fix them. Even ones that might not have been a problem decades ago, but are beginning to be one now.

The best way to work out if any argument you make is correct is as follows:-

1. Check if your motivation or you yourself are being attacked. If yes - your argument is sound and stand. The attacker, absent any rational way to address the subject, lashes out at you for emotional reasons instead.

2. Check if distractions, off-topic examples, and troll-like posts are appearing. As above - avoiding the topic is a sure-fire way to recognise that your original argument is right-on-the-money (albeit against some emotional problem your audience suffers).

3. See if others have raised the same argument before (and themselves suffered (1) and (2) above.)

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Perhaps it's time to retire the "--" and see how much that improves the quality of this site?

We don't go around IRL punching strangers in the face every day because they do/say things we disagrees with, or are idiots - and real-life works pretty well. We should learn from that and try the same thing here.

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