Rogue Leader :
If the entire post and 42 warnings we posted above weren't enough heres another.
Various editorial responses have understandably focused on the idea that the site wishes content and conversation to be factual. Problem is, the original article that has created so much ire was itself not factual. Likewise, responses have cited a prohibition against personal attacks & suchlike, ie. the way in which people have responded to the article, yet the article included a barely veiled insult towards a TH employee (of course some responses have been worse, some without a doubt unreasonably nasty, but the base contradiction persists). What's amplified the reactions though is the senior position held by the article's author; one cannot escape from the inevitable inference many will take that the
quality of the article must reflect on the site as a whole, whether that's true or not.
Lastly, though one may personally believe (for IMO it is indeed a viewpoint) that multiple posts saying much the same thing deserve to be deleted, someone here did point out that doing so does greatly dilute the degree to which the
tone and general degree of opinion is being expressed. Afterall, in an election, one doesn't reduce all identical votes for each candidate to 1.
I don't know about the rest of you but these days, after using the site for so long, I kinda filter out a lot of the replies, as I find myself looking for certain names that I know from past reading tend to post things that are worth my time, such as jimmysmitty and ledhead11.
I get the reasons why the deletions have been done (well, some of them anyway), but really it only makes things worse, partly because many will assume (rightly or not) it's just damage limitation, but mostly because doing so doesn't confront the elephant in the room: the original article was badly written, ie. repeatedly saying it's an opinion piece isn't a rationale for justifying its initial publication. Everything that has followed since, whether intentional or not, makes it seem like the article - and thus its content - is being defended. Thus, I think what's going through a lot of peoples' minds is this: the claims and conclusions in the article make no sense; nobody at the staff level seems willing to state they think the same thing; therefore people inevitably infer that either the other staff agree with the article, or they disagree but aren't willing to say so (at least not in public). If it's the latter, and if it's only that way because the author is someone so senior, then no wonder the average reader may conclude that the ship has a poor captain, whether that's a fair conclusion or not. In other words, if other staff aren't prepared to critique something, the average reader will figure why bother.
Insults, repetitive posts, meme pictures and all the other stuff aside, I'd simply like to know whether the other staff agree with the content of the article, because I can't see how anyone who values facts, reason and evidence could. I doubt I'm alone, because quite likely many are thinking, well if other key people have the same weird ideas about how to judge the merits of buying something, how can one trust anything here? This is what some have said about the article reflecting badly on the site as a whole; it's natural human behaviour. We're all strongly Baysian at heart, whether we like it or not. People
will infer things about the site as a whole based on something written by a senior person.
Note what I said before though, such an article
could have been written in a way that explained why some people might decide to buy the new cards at launch, namely bragging rights (and if they can afford it, who cares, it's their money; contrary to what some claim, nobody is gouging anyone, buying a card is an entirely voluntary action), which is not to say one way or the other whether that's a sensible thing to do (impossible to measure the social benefit of such decisions, it's too subjective), but that's not what the article did at all. Point being, something being an "opinion" doesn't mean it's a valid argument; given the nature of sites like this, the article just came across as... bizarre (hence the nature of Steve's GN video response). It'd be fascinating to know whether any other staff read it before it went live, and told its author their true opinions (not that I expect anyone to say). In recent times, much ill has come from those who inhabit an opinion bubble; if any other staff did read the article beforehand, it would be astonishing if none of them were certain that publishing the article was a bad idea, but all the more telling if some did but felt they could not say anything. Telling the king he's about to make a mistake is often a risky move; the messenger might feel they could be harshly dealt with, while the message itself is lost.
Ian.