In this thread. I’m feeling a little lost with the Abbott & Costello bit, but I know Melz’s comment that was flagged and hidden was directed at a user who seemed to be making it all about themselves.
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Okay, apparently there was a whole exchange here that has since been deleted. Since that makes this exchange moot, I am going to delete my above post, as it concerns a conversation that is missing a ton of context that I am missing here.
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That’s not helpful.
Just be CLEAR in what you SEE as the problem.
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There’s a good reason for this. This community tries to be a safe and welcoming place, but it’s a high visibility site as well. Not just any high visibility site, but one that prides itself on promoting social justice and unashamed leftism. These things conspire attract a certain element to this site.
You have your usual low effort tr*lls who are quickly identified and dispatched with. You also have highly motivated and insidious users who spend years flying under the radar, often subtly subverting topics. Even though they are often exposed, their betrayal can have a lasting impact on the site’s other users. Oh, and there are also literal Nazis that have been known to come here from time to time.
So, yeah, there’s a level of justifiable paranoia here. There are many vulnerable people that contribute, and they have every right to be guarded when there are people who would see them dead just for existing.
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The problem, as I saw it, is that this exchange turned very hostile, and I don’t understand why it turned hostile. And it would appear to have turned hostile over the course of several comments that no longer exist, and I don’t really know what we can do in cases where the instigating remarks are deleted. Without that context, it looks like a very rapid escalation of hostility.
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When someone consistently refuses to offer their views, but instead just says “I agree with the original post” as if that can and does explain it all, then I’m not sure how that’s not meant to cause frustration. That is part of what happened here. Am I and others honestly expected to just know what someone means, when they refuse to explain it? Was my asking for clarification out of line? If so, how? Are ALL my posts taken as attacks? 
What does “instigating” mean here? The OP is right there, but that doesn’t mean that saying “I agree with that” is enough for clarification… Is it really out of line to ask for specific clarification?
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LISTEN. Trust the vulnerable people who have bravely spoken up.
It doesn’t require a forensic accountant.
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You were not out of line, not at all. I am concerned with the total level of hostility from all sides, and that seemed to jump up rapidly in the absence of the context that is missing.
The part about agreeing with OP concerned the claim that the user had said that they thought eye rolls were bullying. I did not see that claim, but it now looks like it was deleted.
Another big problem I see is that this missing context leads different people to remember their experience of a conversation quite differently.
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That’s all true. Buts it’s also true that the OP’s intent was radically misconstrued and turned into a beat down. I read and reread their posts and their responses and I am still unconvinced that I missed something (other than the aforementioned blindness of our individual experiences).
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Rereading all of these past posts without all that context really makes the conversations look like something they aren’t…
At least, that’s the sense I’m now getting.
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Yeah, and that’s one of the compounding issues here, but I also saw that happening in real time and the OP trying over and over again to reconcile their intent with how it was received and being slapped down over and over again. It’s memory-holed can’t be reviewed, but this thread should serve as evidence that there is an issue beyond misunderstanding or simple miscommunications.
That’s fine. I’m clearly on Team Results. The best intentions don’t undo harm.
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Okay.
Okay.
And about my constant requests for clarification that got ignored, as tends to happen when I speak in posts?
then why weren’t those posts flagged and deleted?
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And it seems like pretty much everyone here agrees with that sentiment, yet the issue seems to be bigger and more broadly impacting than some people are willing to acknowledge.
I am reminded of one returning bad actor under several names who started an entire transphobic thread that most here did not see was just that as he was just having a “reasonable discussion” about our place in society. People living those lives had to push hard to educate many others here - and it took a toll on us.
Many others have similar experiences every day with their backgrounds. It wasn’t overreacting- it was others not understanding. And some feeling put out to have to stretch their perceptions.
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This is a difficult request I hope you can appreciate. Without @‘ing users blindly or re-litigating already exhausted threads, it’s going to be nearly impossible to address this without people coming to the discussion as if maybe, just maybe, we all have some culpability and duty to respect other users.
ETA:
I personally try to be very conservative with flagging, but I have also seen recently (re: edgore) how valuable moderation sees those flags. I tend to avoid them to to encourage discourse, but perhaps I’m not fully understanding how the whole apparatus functions.
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I asked the poster repeatedly and directly. I don’t know how much clearer I could have been, in fact.
Does that not extend to questions asked repeatedly and directly?
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I’m sorry, but what I saw was less requests for clarification and more “but you believe this about animated gifs, right?” I didn’t see the user say anything to agree with the initial statement about gifs, and I believe you now when you say that those were there, but without that context, it looks more like a loaded question than a request for clarification.
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No, I don’t think you misread anything or missed context from deleted posts. This is the point of this thread.
How is that not a request for clarification? Please, explain to dumb old me how I’m meant to phrase a question asking for clarification that deserves a response? Clearly, I’m not doing it right…
I am stating what I saw and asking the poster if that is correct. I got NO clear response.
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