And that's what should happen. But I've also seen people banned for saying "and i oop seems silly" and "my conservative mom freaked out when she saw a trans person in the bathroom, what should I say to her?". I know histories can play into these bans but we have no visibility on that.
I don't really want to drag this back up, but I also can't ignore how this example was
wildly out of context. You got into it a bit more in later posts, but it is shocking to me that it was not immediately apparent to you.
That posted was banned for many readily apparent reasons, starting with how they suddenly posted it in the
thread largely about how moderation has badly handled transphobia which contained a lot of discussion of how trans posters have to put up with politely answering things like that
exact kind of post as if they always are in good faith and merit their time. And when it wasn't about that, it was for its original purpose: trans awareness week. There was 0 precedent for bringing that kind of request into the thread.
The user then insisted on continuing to post about it when multiple people (me included!) did our best to politely tell them that it really wasn't appropriate to suddenly ask for help in that way and especially in that thread. The vast majority of responses were not insulting; some were harsher or more flippant than others, but very few directly insulted them and they were given resources and information. But they doubled down on the transphobic wording in this process, and even explicitly positioned the request as them deserving others in the thread (as in, mostly trans people who were talking about how unwelcome the site has made them feel...) to share in their personal burden on dealing with their mother, etc. etc. There was a lot more to it than them just asking an innocuous question or using "transgendered" by accident. If it wasn't trolling, it was still wildly inappropriate and selfish of them in a time and place that was already very uncomfortable for the people they imposed that on.
These kind of things never happen in a vacuum, even in situations where it's not as obvious as that one. You don't always see the context but that doesn't always mean it doesn't exist; you don't always need to be the one to know exactly what's going on. And people still may be a little too trigger happy about calling out bad faith posters/JAQing off, and it may be good for everyone involved if they don't have to see any off-sounding post as being intentionally harmful, sure. But for these issues and related ones specifically, I'd so much rather the mod team get better at paying attention to potential problems (and this can just include quicker warnings, not only bans) before we start policing how people react to them. I think it would be best if people stop having to be so wary of potential bad actors
because they don't need to anymore, instead of it being forced upon them while the problem is still happening. We should care much more about how people get away with being transphobic, than how some posters that may have meant well but still were hurtful aren't trusted.
Pretty much where I'm at. Note that I'm not talking about calling out bigotry, but I am talking about instances of dogpiling that amounts to virtue signaling (e.g., "showing your ass," "this ain't it chief," "ok boomer," and whatever else). It appears that some posters feel that unless they express disagreement with a particular viewpoint that others will view it as tantamount to agreeing with it, and therefore they basically tag threads with brief comments that signal which side they're on without providing anything of substantive value.
This is symptomatic of Extreme Onlineness.
I also agree that there's a non-trivial amount of threads that appear under the guise of seeking advice but which are really better viewed as invitations for a support group or just venting.
There is nothing wrong with any of these premises -- therapy threads, vent threads, or a call for substantive discussion -- but issues arise when posters disagree about what kind of thread they're posting in.
I agree with the viewpoint up-thread where someone suggested allowing the OP to tag the thread with the type it is, thus subtly steering the thread. Frankly, I'm all for letting OPs determine some parameters for discussion and empowering them to enforce it.
I don't want to be dismissive, but frankly- are you sure
you aren't being Extremely Online in turn? Seeing people speaking up about issues that are important to them and/or directly impact them as some sort of mindless nominal "virtue signaling" feels symptomatic of it as well, just in a much more apathetic direction. Even when not about bigotry, this does still apply: sometimes people do actually believe in what they're posting.
...now, completely separately, I will also agree with the thread tagging idea. I think there would have to be some well thought out rules around it, though. Since I think there are times people could abuse it to demand sympathy for things that don't deserve it, and so on, and if that's the case then there should be some understanding that reasonable pushback isn't against the rules. But overall, it's a pretty simple idea that should help counter people's attempts to force a thread backfire and get people to think more about how even well intentioned advice can come across as overly harsh to others or be completely unrealistic for someone's situation.
