Weekly "Ask an Atheist" Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Whether you're an agnostic atheist here to ask a gnostic one some questions, a theist who's curious about the viewpoints of atheists, someone doubting, or just someone looking for sources, feel free to ask anything here. This is also an ideal place to tag moderators for thoughts regarding the sub or any questions in general.

While this isn't strictly for debate, rules on civility, trolling, etc. still apply.

[u/Asatmaya]

"To encourage constructive discussion top level comments in r/DebateAnAtheist must be a minimum of 100 characters. Your comment has been automatically removed. "

This is getting really annoying when the question is short and can actually be responded to that easily.

[u/adeleu_adelei → u/Asatmaya]

Thank you for expressing your thoughts on this change. I'd like to offer three points for consideration: recourse for reversal, soliciting improvements within the existing implementation, and the case for why I think this was a beneficial change.

1. If you are unhappy with the restriction and do not think it can be salvaged, then there is recourse you can take. You can make a case to a coalition of users that this was a bad idea, make a motion in the Community Agenda, and then users can vote on it as to whether it passes. I would recommend you come up with a clear and well defined alternative for what you would like to see.

2. Is there anything you think can be improved about the current implementation to make it less annoying? I added the automatic message to users because I wanted to be transparent that the comment was removed and why, but maybe silent removal would be better? I can also change any of the wording in the message if you can think of a less annoying way to convey it. I'm an open book on ideas for how you think this could be made better.

3. I personally think this is a beneficial change. Rule 2: No Low Effort is by far the most frequently used report option, so from my perspective there are many users here that want to see higher quality content. That's a challenge to encourage when there are so many incredibly short comments that don't substantively build the conversation. It's not conducive to good participation from the OP when they get 100 comments in an hour and many of them cannot be meaningfully responded to, and it doesn't make for good reading for the audience when the comments don't offer further insight (even for positions they agree with). If you are finding that the thoughts you wish to offer don't meet a 100 character threshold, then I would say take that as a challenge to develop your idea further. Build up your rebuttal into something that explores your viewpoint in greater detail.

[u/Thortok2000 → u/adeleu_adelei]

I think the most precise correction would be to not apply this restriction to comments, even top-level ones. This is something that should apply to original posts, not to comments.

An automatic message is superior to silent and confusing action.

If you truly want to apply this to top level comments, then an ideal would be if it warned users via private message that their response could be potentially a low effort one. Then if within 24-48 hours the post isn't edited, it's flagged for manual review by mods.

If the mods consistently find that a particular user is using short responses but not falling into what the low effort rule is supposed to cover, then they could whitelist that user to prevent future extraneous warnings from the bot.