If you feel I've decreased the SNR of the thread than I apologize, but when I have a good way to express the issue I have with something, I prefer to express it, for the benefit of the commenter & anyone else reading. I think that's more likely to reduce the rate of comments of this type.
I think that's more likely to reduce the rate of comments of this type.
The unfortunate thing is, it doesn't reduce the rate. The downvotes and flags do, though - most people are pretty responsive to their comments getting nuked.
It won't happen to this emoji-comment but one of their extra-crappy side-effects is that sometimes they end up on the top of the thread and then all the explanations and exhortations to cut the crap end up eating up the page. This happens pretty regularly and then has to be cleaned up. It can't happen if the comment is sensibly flagged.
Well, we can't really know if it does or doesn't reduce the rate (at least without more research than I am aware having been performed, and more than I'm willing to do), but I can only report that my own experience is that reading stuff like this as a lurker has been helpful for me. Given the choice and without the ability to know what is in people's hearts and whether or not I have moved them, I prefer optimism.
I'd propose these ideas are in tension but not contradiction, and that with you walking your path and me walking mine, the community as a whole benefits.
I don't know about research but we certainly have a lot of evidence - people rarely have to explain to other users not to be rude jerks in comments, mainly because people know to flag them and the people who write them learn not to write them. This isn't really about optimism or pessimism but a critical component of the basic social immune system of the forum. You can see this expressed in an infinite stream of guideline-thumping mod comments:
To clarify, I didn't mean to say you were a pessimist, or even that I'm an optimist, just that I prefer optimism in this scenario.
I actually do regularly see rude comments, for what it's worth. We may have different thresholds for what we consider rude. I glanced through the comments in that search, they seemed to be responding to a much higher level of toxicity than what we're discussing, and they're escalating the situation. I don't think nitpickers are trolling or flamebaiting. And to be clear, I'm not suggesting we don't flag comments, I agree that's a critical function to the community.
I think the crux of it is this; if explaining to people the problem we have with their behavior and asking that they change it never worked - why would we be having this conversation? Surely when you asked me disengage in this type of response, you thought there was a reasonable possibility of convincing me?
The main thing I want to convince you of is to flag this type of comment - a thing everyone should do! The engaging (or not) is more practical thing - avoiding the risk of a giant thread of meta sitting at the top of a submission to the detriment of actually interesting discussion. Since everyone loves meta and bickering, this happens quite a bit. If the comment is safely at the bottom of the thread, engage away. I sure can't seem to help it. It just does a lot less good than flagging (which is not just for trolls and flamewarriors).
