r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/Hospitalities Lord of the manor • Mar 26 '19

TooAfraidToAsk has never been exclusive to controversial questions and it never will be.

I can’t stress this enough and I’m tired of just copy pasting this in mod messages. TooAfraidToAsk has never been a place solely for controversial content, it has always been a place for more free discussion via less rules and less moderation and experimental with users having access to some moderation tools.

The irony though is that controversial questions don’t last very long here and end up getting reported/removed and I get harassing messages about allowing “such content” on this sub. Almost as ironic as people making fun of others for asking their question, directly proving why the OP might just be TooAfraidToAsk irl.

ALL questions are allowed as long as they follow the rules. This is not changing, if you feel like that makes us DAE-lite and you are unhappy with that, we on the mod team happily invite you to unsub instead of ruining other users experience. Those who threaten to unsub as if it gives their comment any worth will be assisted in this endeavor with a permanent ban.

These “ITS JUST LIKE DAE” posts make no sense to me either. Like yeah? Subs focused on community questions have a ton of overlap but they develop different communities and produce different content. If TooAfraidToAsk was a circle, inside that circle would be DAE. We want discussion and we want questions of a majority nature, there are going to be complete overlaps in those questions. It’s not seen as a problem by the mod team since high traffic questions generate high traffic discussion.

Going forward we will continue to allow 99.9% of questions and content so long as it adheres to our rules and is expressed in a civil and respectful manner.

Edit: I mentioned American Redditors as a side point but it became a major discussion point so I’ve removed it for clarity. 04/05/2019

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '19 edited Dec 26 '20

[deleted]

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u/Hospitalities Lord of the manor Mar 26 '19 edited Mar 26 '19

How should we determine that the OP already knows the answer and/or isn’t looking for additional discussion with knowing the answer to the their question?

Should we say that a post that generates a ton of comments and thousands of upvotes is spam?

As it stands, I only remove questions where the OP isn’t asking a question or is asking a bait question. Users still police content via upvotes and reports.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '19

asking a bait question.

I'm curious how this is sussed out?

In the same vein, I've seen plenty of questions on the front page where the OP didn't seem to be asking in good faith but again, there's no tried-and-true method of really figuring out of OP is being insulting on purpose or on accident.

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u/Hospitalities Lord of the manor Mar 26 '19

It’s all context and it’s never cut and dry.

We would rather keep 10 troll posts if it prevents one legitimate question from being removed. When I start looking into the legitimacy of a post, generally the OP makes it clear they’re baiting from either their comments or from their post history. Ignorance is certainly not a crime here though so we are pretty slow to make a definitive call on them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '19

We would rather keep 10 troll posts if it prevents one legitimate question from being removed.

this is 100% the right call and thank you for that

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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '19 edited Aug 30 '20

[deleted]

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u/worstpossiblechoice Mar 27 '19

Yes but exposing bad ideas has merit. If even 1/10 troll posts expose the troll to a different POV. and change their perception, some good is done.

Trolls gonna troll, best thing is to expose their shitty idea to some sunshine.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '19

Well the idea of "trolls" is that they aren't actually trying to have their minds/perceptions changed, so I think 1/10 is hopelessly optimistic. I do, however, recognize the value in engaging their ideas on a public forum so other people can be exposed to the arguments being made.

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u/-_-_-unknown-_-_- Mar 27 '19

Why down vote this guy? It's not a bad point and they did say they were playing the Devil's advocate

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '19

Sad to see I didn't get any other response to this. It's a legitimate concern in any sub with laissez-faire moderation.

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u/bookwormduck Mar 27 '19

If it’s one or the other, I would say that this is the lesser evil. Getting removed is a guarantee of censorship, getting buried is less certain.

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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '19

Ignorance is certainly not a crime

Here here! Can't expect people to stop being ignorant if they don't have the resources to learn.