How to handle situations like this?

Question

I was just sitting at my computer, watching the main site when this question pops up(now deleted, need 2,000+ rep to view). I open it up, read it, downvoted, flagged it, and then the rest can be seen in the comments. I thought about responding again, but decided I didn't want to make it any worse and so just didn't do anything. It was deleted a few minutes later by motosubatsu.

But now I feel like I just chased away a possible Writing SE user and destroyed a possibly salvageable situation, not something I'm trying or want to do.

Simple question for next time something like this happens;

If there was a better way to handle that, then what was it? How would you have gone about resolving that?

Answer 1

If there was a better way to handle that, then what was it? How would you have gone about resolving that?

If you see content that you're concerned about - whether because you think it is inappropriate or rude etc. then disengaging and flagging is absolutely the correct course of action.

Answer 2

As explicitly stated in the help center...

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where … every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite [blank]?” your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers: “I use [blank] for [blank], what do you use?”
there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.”
you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”
your question is just a rant in disguise: “______ sucks, am I right?”

This question is the very definition of a rant in disguise. It asks leading, loaded questions, attacks other groups, words its question in an inflammatory way, and the author seemingly already has a pre-conceived answer when they asked the question (as noted by the fact that the author answers their own questions with "yes, Writing Stack SE is "just another conformity machine crawling with Thought Police" riddled with "regressive politics"".

This isn't a question, this is just a user who wants to vent about how current social justice issues influence writing and use Writing SE as a strawman to do so. Not to mention even per the user's question Stack Exchange is not a discussion board, it is a question and answer site. There are explicitly not supposed to be long and intricate discussions here. Adding to this is the fact that this is the user's first question to Writing SE and the first question they've posted to any stack in over a year. Good Stack Overflow etiquitte generally involves not trying to directly insult the site userbase with a gotcha question with your first question.

The user clearly does not wish to discuss writing given the details of their post, and it is unlikely the situation was salvageable. They don't seem to want to have civil discourse with other people on this stack. Recommendation: flag it and move on.