What the heck guys?

Question

So, I'm a member on a number of different sites in this network. Every site has its own community, its own culture, its own take on the various rules to form a unique set of required behaviors and etiquette to fit in and be accepted become a strong part of the community.

Whenever I join a new community, there's a learning process. Most communities are, unfortunately, pretty hostile to new members. It's kind of an ongoing problem with the Stack, but hey, we're human, I understand that and I can put up with it. Usually the moderation team helps sort things out, I ask a couple meta questions on why my questions (it's always the questions, answers are so much easier ^^; ) are so poorly received, I get feedback, I assimilate the amount I want to assimilate and take flak for the things I'm willing to take flak for and we're all good.

I'm telling you this so that when I tell you you have a serious 'Be Nice' problem, you understand that I'm not used to everyone succeeding at that 100%. I'm used to a flawed process where everyone mostly tries to be nice but when people get upset or offended or see something they don't like or think is ameateurish or triggers a 'you should know better' response they lash out at least a little bit and feelings can be hurt, and it can take a bit for people to move from there to a mutual position where everyone thinks everyone else is acting in good faith.

You have a serious Be Nice problem

I joined this community yesterday and in the last 24 hours I've been subject to this:

"I can't phrase this any more clearly, because mainly I'm just a troll trying to draw people into a discussion that wastes time and generates nothing of value. Feel free to downvote this or vote to close it."

and this:

Sorry that you are offended by reality, but your edit, 'meaningless ramblings' doesn't capture the concept I wanted to convey and with which I'm intimately accustomed. If you come up with an idea for a wording you consider non-offensive that accurately describes this very specific style of rant, I'll be happy to accept the edit.

(note: that wasn't even my edit, but that's besides the point)

and this:

What exactly do you mean by text wall? Please don't fall for the silly notion that writing for the web has to be full of shouty headings and bullet points. It is a good idea to keep paragraphs short these days. But the main reason most text is boring is because it is boring. Cut out all the parts of your text that are boring and you will be fine. True, learning to tell when you are being boring is the hard part, but good writing isn't easy.

All of which were rather upsetting exchanges that struck me as significantly more than the usual amount of upsetting.

Of these, only the last one seems to have turned out to have been in good faith (in that case, I was probably just overreacting. I can see in retrospect how the comment was intended to be derisively pointed at a particular belief, rather than at me or my question, though such a prevalence of derisive language is still off-putting to me). The first one hasn't been around long enough for me to see if was in good faith I guess, but I really don't think that's necessary. That was completely and unambiguously insulting behavior delivered via an inappropriate channel. This is upsetting and I am upset :(

Relatedly, I've flagged a couple things here as in need of serious moderator intervention, and those flags are still pending like, after 12 hours or something. I've never had flags wait that long before, but maybe you guys are a smaller site and that's why? I don't really know. And the lack of diamond mods in this discussion also worries me cause it seems to me that proposing policy on stuff like that is sort of their job.

Answer 1

The edit to your post was inappropriate and correctly rejected. I'm sorry another new user made an inappropriate edit, and now that something has brought it to moderator attention we'll take a closer look to see if there's a pattern. (Before this meta post, I was unaware of it -- no flags.)

The disagreement about the use of "shizophreniac" has gotten somewhat heated. I just flushed most of the comments on that post; the place for that discussion is meta, where it's now happening, or perhaps in chat. (I believe the post author hangs out in chat sometimes.) I also made a suggestion for alternate wording (on meta). I'm not sure what to do about the flags; I don't see the post as blatantly offensive the way you do, but I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and see how other members of the community weigh in.

I don't understand why the "text wall" comment was so upsetting to you. Can you help me understand? I believe it was offered in good faith (unlike that rejected edit on your post).

This is a small site and we don't have 24/7 moderation. It's not unusual for a flag to sit for half a day -- sorry about that, but that's just life on a small site. We also prefer that the community resolve differences when there's not a blatant, pressing issue. Nothing here triggered my "nuke on sight" reaction (I'll let the other moderators speak for themselves). We disagree on what is offensive, so instead of assuming bad intent or absentee moderators or the like, let's talk about it.

A general note: it's very easy for comments to fly under the radar. When in doubt, flag.

Answer 2

The common advice to newcomers in one infamous other community is: "Lurk moar."

While you can expect the members of this community to be friendly to newcomers, the community can also expect newcomers to show some polite restraint and observe the "culture" before they blurt out something inappropriate. That is what you do, when you join an established group in person. For example, when you meet a group of physicians at a party, you don't start blabbing about all the illnesses you had. You don't have to be an expert, but you have to be ignorant in a socially acceptable manner.

While one of your posts has been much upvoted, I see it as part of the fundamental problem of this site.

As the site tour explains, Writers.SE was created for "authors, editors, reviewers, professional writers, and aspiring writers". It is not a social media help site.

If you read around here on meta, you will quickly note that this site has a problem attracting the necessary expertise to give non-amateur answers. That is, professional or experienced writers do not find this site attractive and stay away. Instead, the site draws in users from Stack Overflow and other Stack Exchange sites, most of which haven't even written the first sentence in their very first story and encounter pseudo-problems like what software they should write in. Your question about how to "write" a good post on another SE site is now the bottom of the barrel.

I can therefore very well understand that your questions inspired some irritated edits and comments.