@EddieKal Close votes are not being mean.

@ColleenV No I know. Neither am I. What I am doing is to provoke dialogue, discussion, and reflection hopefully.

That crossed my mind and I am looking into that. I am having that conversation with Glorfindel and Em. over yonder.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer, username similar to website in answer (63): subject question/please help! by aaaenos on ell.SE

Russia made a vaccine? Damn ...

@AIQ They rushed the trail phase IIRC

Oxford's first human trial has been successful

@EddieKal If you really want to be kind to new users, you encourage people to teach them about what sorts of posts are well-received, not to leave questions open that are going to be downvoted because of a mistake in their presentation.

Sometimes you will be kind to a troll, and a lot of folks have trouble getting past that

So I would save the scolding for the folks that think "Eeeewww!" is a close reason. Close voting questions that are getting down-voted so they can be fixed and reopened is not a bad thing.

Leaving them open just opens up the people answering them to collateral damage from the problem in the question.

Usually my approach would be to close those controversial questions as quickly as possible, put a comment explaining how to fix up the question (maybe even compliment the inclusion of the dictionary definitions as a step in the right direction) and do what I can to make it less controversial

Usually a comment from a moderator solves a lot

in terms of how welcome a new user feels

However my moderator "spidey" sense is tingling on this one for a couple of reasons.

The inclusion of the dictionary definitions makes me think this is not their first interaction with ELL. The truncated nature of the definitions makes me wonder if they were cherry picked to make asking the question about the inflammatory example seem less trollish and the complete silence from the author after posting.

The ungrammatical example is also a bit inflammatory: The men lapped in expensive furs as the models undressed themselves

Was that part really necessary to get their point across? Why couldn't the men be watching a horse race? Or be at the opera?

Regardless, I do think the comments need to be cleaned up to give the question a chance to recover from it's bad first impression.

The discussion of whether it should be closed or not belongs on meta.

@ColleenV Agreed and done.

By the way, is it off key to show flag history here in public? I saw something very interesting and wondered if I could show it here

@ColleenV This brings us back to a conversation we've had before: why censor. I am in the camp that advocates for author discretion as long as the content is not appalling.

@EddieKal Because it is distracting from their English question.

@ColleenV Yeah I hear you. I even asked on Teams as soon as this concern arose.

Because if their examples had been less controversial, they might have had a much better experience here

The purpose of the site is to build up a library of answers to help people with English

and leaving gratuitous controversy up detracts from that purpose

Some questions are by their nature controversial

This one didn't have to be - there are plenty of usages of "lapped" that wouldn't cause anyone to blink an eye

@EddieKal I would hesitate to make flagging histories public

Moderators can see who flagged, but no-one else can I believe

summarizing what was interesting about it would be better

@ColleenV You know I probably have to cue the cliche on this one. Let's agree to disagree. I have things to say about the "distraction" argument and about the downvotes, but I'd like to spare myself the worry that I am not going to present the argument tactfully enough.

@EddieKal Do you think the question would have been better received if you had truncated the example the way MariLouA did in the answer?

Forget about the "as the models undressed" at the end - that is innocuous on its own

@ColleenV Yes, very likely.

That's not censorship, that's improving the question

That's not even their own writing - that's a quote from elsewhere truncated

so that they can get a good answer and to save them some grief

Refusing to help learners by editing text they might not know is controversial or will get their question a bad reaction because "free speech" is not helpful

Everything a moderator does is a judgement call

and having a strong bias toward not changing stuff is good

That I disagree. In doing that people choose to ignore the expected tolerance of things different. Why do we have to see people on two different sides? Learners and nonlearners?

Maybe it is the nonlearners that can learn something in this: tolerance

@EddieKal Our goal is not to make people more tolerant of vulgar erotic stories

The case in point is not vulgar or erotic per se

And it's certainly not your place as a moderator to allow an author to have a bad experience on the site so that you can make a point about tolerance

Your role as a moderator is to make the site a welcoming place for everyone

It's frustrating because it limits you in a way you aren't limited as just a user

I get it - I can be quite quixotic at times because someone has to stand for the principle of the thing

but you shouldn't force someone to bear the controversy that they might not have asked for

because they didn't realize that some people would have strong negative reactions to what they wrote

Time elapsed since the OP left the site when their question got closed and their flags got declined (by me): 2 days and counting. Talk about welcoming.

That one user matters. That is the point.

That user matters to the network, to everyone here, to me, and should matter to anyone who wants to chime in on this matter.

They could very well be a troll or a sock. But they are innocent until proven guilty.

And I'd be terribly negligent if I failed to mention their sole post on Philosophy SE has been fairly well received

Actually really well received. 5 answers and net 3 score

@EddieKal And if you had edited that question and taken the discussion about how we can be welcoming of new users even though they've chosen their example text poorly to meta, maybe it would have played out differently. It's your job to mitigate community stupidity.

As everyone is a volunteer here, there is a limit to how much scolding will actually change how a group of people behaves

Usually J.R.'s strongly worded posts were targeted at someone who was out of line

As you are a volunteer with limited authority as well, it's really hard to herd those cats though

so I hope you won't take my hypothetical above as a criticism or second guessing you

What happened happened and it's maybe not the outcome we wanted but it may have been unavoidable

Maybe the first downvote drove them off the site

we don't know

@ColleenV Well I think that's a great idea if Glorfindel or Em. would like to assume that role and balance out my harsh wording. And I consider this an instance where people were out of line and in mob mentality they named and shamed, and banished

Haven't we had enough stigmatization? We kill one Hester Prynne and things are going back to "normal"?

@EddieKal I don't understand what you mean

Normal for whom? Normal to whom?

@ColleenV The "sexual/vulgar" context is the scarlet letter

As a woman, I don't want to come to ELL to answer English questions and have to analyze some excerpt from porn

And I'm no fucking prude either ;)

Vulgarity is unwelcoming

Well but you don't even need to know where it is from, in this case, do you?

The OP didn't say "this is a line from porn literature I am reading" did they?

@EddieKal It was apparently obvious to plenty of people the exact context of that example, including me

If more context would have made it less vulgar, I'd have that argument with you

but it was actually from porn

And you can think that people should be more tolerant of vulgar stuff if you want, but it doesn't belong on this site unless it is a key part of the question

and in this case, it was completely gratuitous

much like my "fucking" in my comment above

But don't you think the real delicate, non-distracting thing to do is just ignore the source? If you were telling me to get rid of the comments such as Michael Harvey's that were drawing attention to the explicit source and distracting from the nonexplicit question, I'd be agreeing with you.

How about quotes from homophobic stuff to ask about transitivity of verbs? Is that OK with you?

Because porn is just as offensive to some people

and saying "you should just be as tolerant as I am of it" doesn't fly

Also I can't let this one pass: women enjoy porn just as much as men do. So I'd say the "As a woman" part was also uncalled for

@ColleenV I wish to respond to this point you made: so let's say someone posted a question with a sentence from an obviously homophobic source. But the sentence is kosher, meaning it doesn't include homophobic buzz words. You are asking me if I'd have a problem with the question. No, I wouldn't. Wouldn't even downvote it. I don't need to know the source.

If it included slurs, it'd be a different story. Although I'd still be hesitant to censor the question if there was no evidence to show the OP was homophobic themself

You know what's terrifyingly telling? What's indicative of lack of understanding or willingness to understand other people? You assuming I would be offended in such a hypothetical situation and would want to demand censorship like you do now. You don't seem to think people who think differently from you exist. And only people who think like you are worth pandering to. That is about as blood curdling and disturbing as the dark times of human history or 1984, take your pick.

People who are different do exist. And they deserve respect too is all.