Old habits die hard, but there’s Reddiquette which needs to be revived, and some which needs to die.
Many “golden-age” redditors remember a time when downvoting was reserved for hostility, not a different opinion. For the sake of our growing community I would like to implore everyone to be awesome to each other.
However, this place is not Reddit.
- We don’t measure in bananas here.
- We don’t need to append “edit: typo” to edited posts and comments.
- if you see something which is worthy of a downvote: down vote and move on! Don’t engage with it and feed the algorithm/engament machine so other people are exposed to it when sorting by active.
Whilst I appreciate the pair of you demonstrating an intellectual vivacity and facility for debate that is rarely found on reddit, perhaps I might share a bit of my own wisdom, gleaned from decades spent in online communities.
Namely, know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em; there is no shame in agreeing to disagree. Especially when the subject of disagreement is something so minor.
It may not be possible to formulate a scientifically complete theory of the psychological effects of making edits and downvotes to Lemmy comments and posts. And thus, it seems possible for two smart people to have different perspectives on the issue.
There are situations where someone is clearly incorrect and spending paragraph after paragraph to demonstrate that is warranted, or at least justifiable. But I don’t think this particular conversation really needed to be like that.
The thing about being rational and smart is that you constantly have to balance applying those traits to the external world and applying them to your own behavior. In this case, you two were so caught up in the particulars of the topic at hand that you were forgetting the context of the conversation, and thus leaving your rationality in question from a different angle. If either of you had been able to recognize this angle without my help, you could have effectively “won” the argument by merely accepting that it was possible to disagree on this topic without admitting to being wrong.
You’re absolutely right, no objections from me.
I enjoy a good debate, it’s always unfortunate when it starts out well but then turns sour.
I’m sorry you read all that. I appreciate the detailed reply.
Tbh, I didn’t read all of it, I started skimming at some point.
I think we all need to consciously deprogram our brains from the reddit mindset. We are no longer anonymous specks in a massive crowd, shouting at the top of our lungs for attention and recognition. We are now part of a small community of talented and intelligent individuals and it behooves us to conduct ourselves as such.
But you’re both good, this was honestly much more civil than what things used to devolve into on reddit. I don’t even mind some highbrow intellectual banter from time to time 😅
It’s fun to debate, but I think it’s important to focus on the details. It’s not as fun when the other person uses inflammatory language because they assume malicious intent.
As I mentioned in the OP and in multiple replies here, I want to cultivate a community of civil discourse too. As you mentioned, this place need not remind me of reddit, but it was nostalgic in a morbid way.
Being able to articulate a complex thought and have someone else really respond to what I am saying is an absolute gamechanger for Lemmy right now.
On reddit, I was so sick of typing out a long, well-reasoned argument, only for the other user to ignore everything I said and respond with trolling, sarcastic answers. Here, people actually have some level of self-respect, and they usually engage in good faith.