1:56 AM
@BillDubuque Jyrki's "interminable rants", as far as I am aware, concern his interpretations of the people involved. They are often not charitable and would/should be removed if they were in a post in the main site, for example. Chat moderation is more lax regarding that. (Chat moderation is supposed to be even more lax than meta.) Allowing some space for venting seems to be good practice for group endeavors.
Saying that some people are motivated by rep or do not care about the site etc is unverifiable. It is by nature speculation, there is not much to critique (other than to say it is speculation, which would be useless). Saying that mods have closed a big number of questions where they clearly had no expertise on the subject is much more concrete, and should be somewhat easily verifiable.
The observation regarding gold-badges arose due to a perceived contradiction in your point of view. The en passant critique on hyperbolic communication was intended just as a possibly useful tangent, since it is something which is by nature disruptive. Note that I do not critique your speculations as well. (Such as "More projection on your part?")
Unless it rises to unhealthy levels, some degree of speculation ought to exist, so that people understand what others think and effectively communicate.
Now, if you want a general critique of the discussions which usually involve primarily both of you, I think it is not useful to cling to the intentions or people behind the actions as much as you two end up doing. As I see it, it often pendulates around "damn rep-farmers!"->"how dare you say this about our experts and teachers!"
I, personally, think it is not useful to gauge things by that. It doesn't matter if userX wants to get 100k rep, or wants to teach, or is the best "expert" in the world. What matter is the quality of the content they bring, and that is much more concrete (and verifiable) than the motivations one has. The motivations are in most cases correlated red herrings.
3
On a different note, "interminable rants", "character assassinations", "extreme bias" are some examples of the hyperboles I mentioned. (Well, perhaps "extreme bias" can have some value as a political statement.)
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If you wish to continue this discussion or simply address a specific point, I think it may be best for us to go to Math Meta Chat or the Math Mod's Office. (Although I'm leaving soon, we could continue later.)