It’s difficult to explore the boundaries and reasons for enforcing a community norm, without running afoul of the enforcement mechanisms themselves. There’s a variety of opinions about what it takes to talk about such things, even on a meta level, and mine is that it’s often mind-killing and more often public-conversation-killing. Exceptions abound, but this isn’t the place to find those exceptions.
Some of this discomfort may include the confusion about whether you are joining a community, or just having discussions on a website. I’m not particularly interested in the group membership signaling or community-feelings that some get, but I don’t mind them. I’m here for interesting conversations, and I’m fine that this forum has interesting conversations on a subset of topics that interest me. That’s still hugely valuable.
For me, it’s a web forum, not a cult. Some topics get you downvoted, and you should pick other topics. That’s as far as it needs to go. Yes, this puts me in the decoupling camp for this. In other media/forums/groups, I lean toward contextualizing.
It’s difficult to explore the boundaries and reasons for enforcing a community norm, without running afoul of the enforcement mechanisms themselves. There’s a variety of opinions about what it takes to talk about such things, even on a meta level, and mine is that it’s often mind-killing and more often public-conversation-killing. Exceptions abound, but this isn’t the place to find those exceptions.
Some of this discomfort may include the confusion about whether you are joining a community, or just having discussions on a website. I’m not particularly interested in the group membership signaling or community-feelings that some get, but I don’t mind them. I’m here for interesting conversations, and I’m fine that this forum has interesting conversations on a subset of topics that interest me. That’s still hugely valuable.
For me, it’s a web forum, not a cult. Some topics get you downvoted, and you should pick other topics. That’s as far as it needs to go. Yes, this puts me in the decoupling camp for this. In other media/forums/groups, I lean toward contextualizing.