Room for phil1008 and Galerita

Galerita

01:10

Hi Phil

phil1008

01:21

It is possible to create a new conversation by clicking on someone's user name, but I don't think that the conversation will be private. But I did want to say that if you were rude, then you should probably apologize. If you were just "aggressive" I think it would be ok to share with me here what you said. If your comment was deleted and was neither rude nor aggressive then I think we ought to be asking why it was deleted.

Galerita

@phil1008 No I wasn't aggressive or rude, certainly not like ErinAnne.
I complained about a pattern of behaviour by ErinAnne and was upset by the gleeful nature of her response,
'I cannot think of a more textbook "likely to be answered by opinions rather than facts" question'. She voted my question down and immediately voted to close.
I flagged it for moderation, expecting some wisdom...
A far more helpful response would have been simply to say the the original question was asking for opinions, which it was. I wasn't aware of that rule. Not surprisingly I didn't read all of the copious docu…

Re. The Code of Conduct.
"Our mission is to build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, and to foster collaboration within a safe and welcoming community rooted in kindness, cooperation and mutual respect."
I wasn't treated with respect, or kindness. I was singled out. And they were meant to exclude you from the pile on.
So it was just bullying.

I have apologised to other parties who may have taken offence, but not to ErinAnne.
I've offered a few points of reconciliation. None of which were taken up.

I would not have confidence in any appeal process. It's a cultural problem.

And you and I will suffer from being voted, down, excluded and ignored. That's the nature of bullying. And bullies hate to be called out. And are incapable of reflecting on their own behaviour.

I was enjoying SE:Space Exploration until now. I assumed the Code of Conduct was being followed. Unfortunately their priority is rules rather than "foster[ing] collaboration within a safe and welcoming community rooted in kindness, cooperation and mutual respect"

phil1008

01:39

Well, I've learned not to spend too much effort on trying to guess what people's motives are. I think that sometimes is just that something written in a post triggers an emotional reaction of some kind.

Galerita

@phil1008 Yes there's some truth in that. There is also a pattern of behaviour.
But what I found more concerning was the dispute resolution process. There's no attempt to be peacemakers, which is at the heart of the moderators role, and the Code of Conduct.
Instead it's isolate and punish. That happened to you as well. All your sins were dragged out as well.

phil1008

I think it would be better if you stuck around to support other new users who are also not receiving the best treatment. And you're right that people sometimes can't see their own flaws - at least it takes a long time for them to figure out how to change.

Galerita

I'll stick it out for a while. I'm trying to be encouraging of new uses. I've noticed there are are only a small number of regular users. There are quite a few newcomers who don't stick around long, mostly as a consequence of terse and insensitive responses early on.

phil1008

Yeah, I'm working on trying to figure out how to see my own "list of warnings and suspensions". I've learned that mods can see such a list. I think I may have been unfairly "sent to the penalty box" one time.

Well, one long-time user helped me out a whole lot when I first became active on this site. I really appreciated that.

Galerita

There's a power imbalance, which seems to always foster abuse, unless that power is wielded with humility and compassion.

phil1008

01:48

(Although who am I to judge what's fair :)

Galerita

Who exactly can see this? Just moderators, or anyone who is curious?

phil1008

Anyone who is curious I think. Plus anyone can search all conversations for key words.

Galerita

The principle of judging whats fair is removing the log from your own eye before removing the speck from another's. This is especially true for moderators and experienced users.

I'm not that concerned with who can see this. They are criticisms offered in the spirit of improving the site. If they are taken as rude or aggressive I can't help that, but it would not surprise me from my experience of the culture of groups.

phil1008

Part of the challenge is that moderators who stick around are valuable and new users are a dime a dozen. Plus there are lots of terrible posts that probably bore mods to tears. So, we kind of have to work with the moderators we have, even if they aren't perfect.

What bothers me the most is that Erin isn't following this rule: "When should I vote to delete an answer? You may vote to delete answers in the following cases: The answer is extremely low quality: There is little to no scope for improvement The answer doesn't attempt to answer the question; it may be a comment or a separate question altogether."

Of course, I can't be sure that it's Erin who's always casting vote-to-delete, I just suspect.

I created this script. It helps you find long answers that were downvoted so that you can review them.

Galerita

02:14

Then there there was no justification to vote for my my question to be deleted, assuming the same rule applies to questions as answers.

Do you have a link to that guideline?

It was very clear in my case that Erin was casting the delete vote. The delete vote, the down vote and her comment were almost simultaneous. And when I challenged her on the "vote to delete" she said, "I only get one vote"

The script is fascinating. How do I run it? I'm not a programmer.

I do have sympathy for moderators. They are not paid.

I've got to go to work. So I'll catch up later.

Galerita

02:57

OK, I can run it. Duh!

phil1008

05:00

There is a different set of rules for closing questions. Did you read this article? I liked what it had to say.

Galerita

05:42

Interesting!

BTW, are we in a room for Physics SE rather than Space Exploration? Possibly we're less likely to be sought out.

The original question was along the lines of, "Will China be first to Mars?"
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/65899/is-china-on-track-for-landing-humans-on-mars
The first 3 paragraphs of my explanation were almost identical. In the next I made the claim that China has greater risk tolerance because it lacks a free press.
The comment from WaterMolecule, which is still there, was all that was needed.

Instead I got Erinned.

Galerita

06:07

I had a look at some of your answers on that list I didn't think they deserved down votes. I don't know if that makes a difference.

phil1008

I care about posts that were decent and yet for some reason received downvotes. Sometimes I feel that this happens because the post challenges some kind of conventional wisdom. When a post speaks the truth and downvotes are cast because people didn't like what it had to say, that bothers me.

Or maybe they were downvoted because the author didn't get to the point quickly enough. That's why I called the script "TL;DR".

Galerita

06:24

The length of the post matters. I'm not sure what the sweet spot is. Too short and they don't do the question justice. Too long and it's TL;DR. It also matters how engaging it is. I often make the mistake of adding too much detail when a topic interests me, forgetting it doesn't necessarily interest others.

phil1008

BTW, just in case you were thinking of doing some serial upvoting or downvoting, that will get detected and reversed by a bot if you're not careful.

Galerita

I put in max = 10,000, min = -20 into your code.
I got 27,119 total answers.
889/27119 ~ 3.3% (1 in 30). I assume many people delete their poorest performing answers. But it's a shame when you write a good answer, and get Erinned, as I did here:

Supposedly there are 18,913 questions on SE:Space Exploration.

OK, it was only your answers, which I thought were better than they were treated.
I don't downvote as a rule.

Galerita

06:55

Sorry here:
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/65280/could-superheavy-land-downrange-and-return-if-starship-were-launched-from-boca-c/65883#65883
Supposedly Erin didn't think the community would tolerate it.
The evidence is SpaceX were planning ASDS with converted semi-submersible oil-rigs, but abandoned the idea.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/02/spacex-building-a-third-mechazilla-launch-tower.html

phil1008

08:23

Well, Rory just half-retracted his statement designed to discredit me. I guess I was never suspended after all.

Galerita

08:37

I noticed that.

!

Galerita

08:59

I've just realised that down votes are not a big deal in terms of reputation, which arguably not a big deal anyway.
https://space.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation
+10 for up votes, -2 for down votes.
You even lose a point for voting an answer down, but not a question.
So a question I got 3 down-votes then 3 up-votes earned +24.

Transcript for

Room for phil1008 and Galerita