I, a long-term user and contributor, have noticed a clear and steady decline of responses here and it is annoying.
More opinion and unsubstantiated claims are being made than actual knowledge being shared.
If moderators don’t start ruling with an iron fist it will continue to spread like a cancer until the forum becomes worthless.
See, this is your opinion which you can express like others do.
If what you’re saying is actually true, then how come you’ve not followed your own advice with this post?
As in backing my claims? Sure:
How about your post claiming phone calls are private and that carriers only tap lines with a court order when we know illegal mass surveillance has done so otherwise.
Or your post claiming that one should just capitulate to invasive spyware.
Yeah, my opinions. What’s the problem?
What you’re doing here is also sharing your opinion. Your post makes no sense and have no idea what you really want.
If you don’t like the community anymore, leave or make your own.
You’ve joined two days ago and replied a few times to one thread, not quite sure how that is a long time user.
If you see bad faith arguments or users being rude, then report them to moderation for assistance. This helps out everyone. Otherwise, false information and opinions can be corrected and aligned to the benefit of all readers.
There are no requirements to join this forum based on privacy knowledge. Some who wish to be active may need to learn concepts over time. Slamming down everything with an iron fist that isn’t “correct” would hinder discussions and feel draconian - we would get a new Meta thread stating mods are overreaching.
As forums grow and scale, so do the challenges in moderating it. Typically these will be piecewise updates and finding what works best. There are no silver bullets.
This forum has an “enter anonymous mode” feature instead of making throwaways.
I’d say let’s take these as meta case studies: if you find these are wrong, then it’s good to reply and link some sources to state the contrary. Evidence based discussion can be beneficial. If it’s absolutely egregious, you could report it as an information hazard if it’s spreading clear FUD, or even dangerous to share. Right or wrong, and moderator will look into it.
This is only treating it as if it was a symptom, instead of helping the underlying problem.
As more posts like that occur it demonstrates to others that they are acceptable and can even encourage them.
But you’re not the authority on this evaluate all the underlying issues to conclusively determine the diagnosis and the prognosis.
This is an Internet forum. What part of this are you not understanding or able to explain to us in full for what you really want and how you think we can get there.
People will share what they best and their opinions. Not everyone knows everything all the time with all the different types of topics discussed. If one is wrong, they can be downvoted or commented against to explain why.
and just to demnostrate when I was very rude about 2 times now, I was actually reported for inappropriate, and it’s only because the community did their part to keep it a safe place like this.
IronFox vs Tor which is better? - #40
the second one seems to have been removed by staff
So go back to the previous point: report posts you think are violating the ToS or that are significantly hindering the forum environment. Even so, replying with evidence based replies are actually beneficial to incorrect points of view. It is very informative to readers who may have believed one point to learn that it is wrong. It’s a discussion of learning as a community, and we can’t learn without mistakes.
Do you have a proposed solution in mind aside from that?
For a separate discussion point, what is the exact pinpoint underlying problem you feel is occurring?
You are certainly allowed to and even encouraged to flag such posts. We don’t have time to read every single post on this forum so we appreciate the help!
I think we should let it go. I have an intuition this discussion will not yield to anything good for a person like this given how they have chosen to express themselves with disdain toward to the forum with no objective exposition and rational rationales.
I both do reply to posts with corrections/improvements and flag posts.
That doesn’t change that it is still a problem.
The forum imo used to better foster knowledge sharing and that has slipped away as the userbase has grown.
I’m not saying this as a personal attack on anyone or as a holier than thou gatekeeping stance, but just that I want to see a return to roots.
If you don’t think how you have made the original post is not a gatekeeping stance, that does not inspire confidence in you when you say something with such vehemence and as a claim.
What you want are more facts and what have you and yet you have only expressed your opinion thus far. Why doesn’t every comment of yours also express only facts?
Do you not see the monumental irony here?
Yeah. This is tricky because the examples given in this post were neither:
And I’d generally prefer the former FWIW. It’s easy to forget that there are probably people here who were like, 3 years old or whatever when Snowden blew the whistle. For some people the lies that tech companies (and even FOSS projects, etc.) regularly tell about their security or privacy are simply less obvious to them, and they haven’t been corrected yet.
If misconceptions are addressed on the forum and they keep coming up it becomes a problem, but in those cases you can (and should) always link back to older/original discussions instead of rehashing them over and over again. If it’s something that hasn’t been addressed before… I don’t think it’s a good idea to remove it. I agree with others that this is sort of the point of a forum and it’s how people learn. I don’t think anyone learns from simply erasing everything that isn’t true.
My intuition and pragmatism says, if OP really wants what they say they want, literally almost all posts and comments ought to be flagged and checked by moderators for fact and truth all the time. By the same logic, this post itself should have been removed.
How this makes any sense is beyond me.
Please do not mischaracterize me. I’m voicing my concern because I’ve seen many other forums fall victim to this issue and I genuinely believe in this forum and want to see it continue to succeed.
I don’t expect moderators to be a sole source of truth, but to better discourage such posts as a whole.
That’s not mischaracterization. That’s my assessment for what it is. The same way it was your assessment for my comments and your assessment and feeling that made you make this post in the first place.