Users acting as authorities

Question

I participate in several SE sites, and nowhere have I seen so many users acting as authorities (prescribing to other users what they should do, discussing questions/answers from the point of view of relevance for the site rather than expressing their own opinion about the content or just appropriately flagging/voting with an explanation). Only at one other SE site have I seen something similar but there the specifics was that it is a site for one particular language and the native speakers feel more competent than the rest and give themselves liberty to act as guides for others.

So I decided to ask whether there is some specifics of this particular site which I have to take into account here?

It is not so much a sarcastic question but rather an attempt to adapt to the local atmosphere better. I like this site, have seen several things interesting for me and want to contribute productively in return, but too much of my effort is redirected toward coming to terms with authoritative users instead of discussing the essential content of my and others' answers/questions, and I would like to know whether there is anything I can do to improve this situation (and from what I've observed I suspect I am not the only one with such concerns).

Answer 1

I guess I don't understand the problem because the whole point of the SE design is that users are the authorities. Even with almost no rep everyone has the power to vote up/down questions which alters their visibility on the site, they can vote to close or delete, etc. It is an error to think of ♦ Moderators as sole "authorities" in the sense we dictate how the site operates or have any real (unique) control over it. We simply try to keep the site in-line with its intended vision and the network vision, and that's exactly what users are supposed to do too (hence the privileges for voting to close, delete, etc.) The only difference is that we need less consensus (1 vote vs 5 votes to close, for example). But again that doesn't mean we make the rules or dictate how the site is run — we're here to help manage this place in the way the community wants, not how we want.

There are a number of users who go the extra step to help clean up the site's content beyond just reading and answering for themselves, and the community really owes them a lot. I'm not suggesting that our wording/tone couldn't be adjusted so that we are interpreted in the least combative manner as possible, but I think a lot of what you have issue with is really more in how you interpret the comments you view as authoritative. Understand that these are just regular people who like philosophy; they work, go to school, raise their kids just like anyone else here. They hate waking up early on monday mornings. They enjoy a friday night after work cozying up on the couch watching their favorite TV show. They enjoy an ice-cold lemonade on a hot summer's day. They are just regular people, they are almost certainly not here spending their time just to get a kick out of being mean to people. While perhaps a particular thing they wrote seemed to come off a bit abrasive or cold, they probably did not mean it that way. Give people the benefit of the doubt. You will know real trolls, real jerks when you see them — those people do find their way to these boards from time to time and it gives you perspective.

Like Keelan said, philosophy is hard. It's hard because asking your question can be hard when we have to shape it to the Q&A format, especially when you really are just groping in the dark yourself and are not sure of what you are talking about. Thus, more clarification and moderation is needed to help people. This is just how our site is, but I don't think there's any real issue with that. It just means we have to do a bit more work than other sites might have to with regard to cleaning up questions. That's all. :)

Answer 2

I also participate in several sites across the SE network. What I see is that this site is one of the most difficult ones. It seems that Philosophy Q&A is hard. Why? Because we are not philosophers, in the sense that the idea of this site is not to do philosophy, but to discuss it. Especially, we always encourage people to provide references to their answers.

You're saying in your question here:

[...] nowhere have I seen so many users acting as authorities (prescribing to other users what they should do, discussing questions/answers from the point of view of relevance for the site rather than expressing their own opinion about the content or just appropriately flagging/voting with an explanation).

Discussing the relevance of posts is 1) because of the above, that Philosophy Q&A is hard, and also 2) because it's typical for a beta to still try and find out what posts are well or ill suited for the site.

That being said, you complain about users acting as authorities. I take it that you are partially talking about me, considering our discussion here. For me it's always easier to take an example, so I'll take this one - if this is not what you meant, please tell me, and show another example.

Your answer in question was:

Having free will means nothing more than not knowing yourself what you will do (or will want to do or will try to do) in future. Even if all of your actions are perfectly known beforehand to everybody else but you you still have free will.

My first comment was:

References, argumentation, ...?

Normally I write a longer comment with a link to the help center or meta. In your case I didn't because you had shown before (1, 2) to be quite stubborn anyway. But considering you're active on more SE sites you should know that we like answers to be supported by references. This is also the way it works in most other contexts (e.g. academical).

So basically with this comment I did exactly what you want: I expressed my opinion about the content and flagged the post accordingly. You then started discussing so I supported my claims with three references: 1, 2, 3. Now you can say you find those references irrelevant, but you can hardly call this acting as an authority. I gave you the references to support my claim: meta and the help center. If you want to dismiss a meta post of one of our moderators with score +12/-0 because it's only a meta-question, that's your decision, but it's not really how it works here.

Essentially, I don't really see what you mean. Users acting as authorities? Not really. We provide references to meta and the help center as much as possible to help you write better answers. In this case I invited you to chat to discuss it further, which you for some reason ignored - that's fine though.

Every SE sites has its own ins and outs concerning what are good questions and answers. You can have a million reputation on some other site, if you come here for the first time, you'll have to learn our ins and outs. There's a small vast user base here which is very willing to help you with that. It is the idea of communal work.