This is more of a guess than something I've confirmed actually exists, but I'm sure it's going around -- if you've ever had it please say so below.

There's a lot of people who seem to delete comments because they feel like making those comments was a mistake, or regret them.

I also believe there's a lot of people that type up entire responses and then delete them and don't respond. This one happens on reddit a lot but I think it happens more here.

What's causing these and how can we go about alleviating them so people aren't afraid of participating?

--

EDIT: Getting the impression that just talking about this as a thing that exists might help some as there's not actually that much reason to worry. Participation is much better than non-participation!

I think one of the stronger aspects of Hexbear compared to reddit is a completely opposite philosophy on participation. On reddit votes and downvotes were intended to eliminate "fluff" commenting, attempting to encourage an environment where people only comment if they've got something valuable to add to the conversation and downvoting anyone that doesn't (this was the original culture and intention of their system). Here on the other hand we kinda have the opposite going and it's nicer, more human and more about actually chatting an interacting with other people.

  • Mindfury [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Maybe there should be a little bit more disagreement on this site. There’s not much left to talk about when people already agree on everything.

    I feel like when it happens, there is decent disagreement on the site where people will talk it out to a conclusion or clarify that they were even on the same page all along - but also that disagreement usually starts pretty "vigorously" and is probably intimidating a few people into immediately disengaging or deleting their posts.
    (I don't have evidence for the last bit that people actually do delete posts, but it's a hunch)
    Of course everything is contextual based on the discussions at the time, but i feel like we start disagreements by going in hard at eachother (maybe out of a sense of defence of our space, paranoia about reactionaries, idk) and then mellow to a consensus and they result in really good chat - but post 1 of a disagreement can often be pretty full on

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It’s just that the pressure of how intense these discussions get sometimes get people talking about normal, reasonable stuff to freak out and get themselves yeet’d off the site.

        This is a very real problem. There is a huge emotional reaction people have when they feel like they're getting rejected by other people here, probably because people actually like it here, and that means when a conversation is going south like that for some people it causes a huge emotional explosion that then manifests in not-great ways that result in moderation acting.

        Not sure how to resolve that. It's improved over time, it might improve more as the crowd gets larger and less like "everybody here knows exactly who I am and will remember this".

        The other side of this is that people are human and get drunk or have stresses offline that are also contributing.

    • supdog [e/em/eir,ey/em]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I deleted 3 responses so I must submit this one

      When I listen to Marxists in the academy talk, every time they reach a consensus they uncover 5 more disagreements.

      There never is a consensus. There's just pre-disagreement. We're just being sociable. There's a lot more disagreement here than post counts would have you believe.

      • Mindfury [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        yeah, that's true - consensus wasn't the right word but i couldn't think of a better one at the time.

        maybe "amicable acknowledgement" is more accurate