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?

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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.