I really appreciate you sharing your experiences, feelings, and continuing the discussing in the comments.
In a way, it does appeal to me to have an efficient way to close out issues that are redundant, given that a link to the existing issue is given and the original user is given a friendly (could be canned) message explaining the duplication, and to redirect the conversation - but affirm they were heard. This could be worded like:
Hi! Thanks for posting on < <insert place here> > - it seems that you are asking a question someone else has already asked before, so here's the link to the existing conversation - if you can't find your answer there, please comment there and we can keep the party going! Feel free to DM one of the mods (here - < <list of mods> >) if you feel this is not a duplicate issue.
As long as it isn't just marked as a dupe like SO posts >.> - It seems like evan is inerestedin redirection over closing - although those examples are just redirecting the "help me with X" type of questions to the discourse.
I'm going to speculate a little here, but one of things I hear a lot from my peers (18-30 age range) is this idea of emotional and social currency. That it can be draining to engage with people who disagree with them, and even more so if it is a harsh disagreement.
I think my peers have taken this to justify convenient disengagement. It's a trend that I see happening a lot in establishing small echo chambers that results in a community that can turn nasty fast.
This is very disheartening to me. I understand differing energy levels, and how social anxiety can play into that, but if people aren't exposing themselves to new ideas and people that make them uncomfortable, that is a bad thing.
I'm not saying that there are not times to disengage, but I'd rather err on the side of letting people talk too much than closing and locking too much. It's definitely a line/spectrum deal.
I agree with everything you mentioned. It seems harmless to me to let people vent a little. Even if it is just misunderstanding how to use the tools and you've heard it 1000 times and you just link them to another thread. Because sometimes people have legitimate issues. But you will never know if you just shut them down because they mentioned some keyword like "native". I don't often do this, but storytime. (Skip the next paragraph if you don't feel like a story.)
I used to play a game called EverQuest2. The mods on the EQ2 official forums were known to be heavy handed. One example was people requesting the Beastlord class which was a favorite in EQ1. They got so tired of redirecting and eventually locking posts which requested this class that they added it to the banned word filter. Eventually they even started banning people for referencing it at all. The community was essentially being told 1) "shut up" and 2) "we don't care." Because the community's voice was squelched (in general, not just about that), another site rose to prominence called EQ2Flames. Except it was like the darkest corners of reddit (before reddit existed). Yet, it was the only place players could go to speak freely (just before being ridiculed). Eventually, the official forums were mostly dead, and even the game devs had EQ2Flames accounts. (And eventually they even added the beastlord to the game.) But in the mean time it was a lot of unnecessary drama and stress on everyone. And for what? To enforce arbitrary rules?
I think we get so focused on marching orders (actual or perceived) that sometimes we don't consider how our actions play out in the bigger-picture human context. This Sandi Metz video really opened my eyes to some interesting things in that regard. One of the experiments she mentions was also the subject of a 2015 movie called Experimenter. It is also a fascinating watch.
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I really appreciate you sharing your experiences, feelings, and continuing the discussing in the comments.
In a way, it does appeal to me to have an efficient way to close out issues that are redundant, given that a link to the existing issue is given and the original user is given a friendly (could be canned) message explaining the duplication, and to redirect the conversation - but affirm they were heard. This could be worded like:
As long as it isn't just marked as a dupe like SO posts >.> - It seems like evan is inerested in redirection over closing - although those examples are just redirecting the "help me with X" type of questions to the discourse.
I'm going to speculate a little here, but one of things I hear a lot from my peers (18-30 age range) is this idea of emotional and social currency. That it can be draining to engage with people who disagree with them, and even more so if it is a harsh disagreement.
I think my peers have taken this to justify convenient disengagement. It's a trend that I see happening a lot in establishing small echo chambers that results in a community that can turn nasty fast.
This is very disheartening to me. I understand differing energy levels, and how social anxiety can play into that, but if people aren't exposing themselves to new ideas and people that make them uncomfortable, that is a bad thing.
I'm not saying that there are not times to disengage, but I'd rather err on the side of letting people talk too much than closing and locking too much. It's definitely a line/spectrum deal.
I agree with everything you mentioned. It seems harmless to me to let people vent a little. Even if it is just misunderstanding how to use the tools and you've heard it 1000 times and you just link them to another thread. Because sometimes people have legitimate issues. But you will never know if you just shut them down because they mentioned some keyword like "native". I don't often do this, but storytime. (Skip the next paragraph if you don't feel like a story.)
I used to play a game called EverQuest2. The mods on the EQ2 official forums were known to be heavy handed. One example was people requesting the Beastlord class which was a favorite in EQ1. They got so tired of redirecting and eventually locking posts which requested this class that they added it to the banned word filter. Eventually they even started banning people for referencing it at all. The community was essentially being told 1) "shut up" and 2) "we don't care." Because the community's voice was squelched (in general, not just about that), another site rose to prominence called EQ2Flames. Except it was like the darkest corners of reddit (before reddit existed). Yet, it was the only place players could go to speak freely (just before being ridiculed). Eventually, the official forums were mostly dead, and even the game devs had EQ2Flames accounts. (And eventually they even added the beastlord to the game.) But in the mean time it was a lot of unnecessary drama and stress on everyone. And for what? To enforce arbitrary rules?
I think we get so focused on marching orders (actual or perceived) that sometimes we don't consider how our actions play out in the bigger-picture human context. This Sandi Metz video really opened my eyes to some interesting things in that regard. One of the experiments she mentions was also the subject of a 2015 movie called Experimenter. It is also a fascinating watch.