[Appeal] the modmail-first policy and why it exists
the modmail-first policy and why it exists. Disagreement welcome, but bring a concrete alternative wording.
How a rule actually changes here, since people assume it is arbitrary.
Somebody posts a proposal with replacement wording — not a complaint, actual text. It gets argued about, usually for a week or two. If it survives, it goes in with whatever amendments came out of the argument, and the change is announced with the reasoning attached.
The reason wording is required is that it is the only thing that can be evaluated. "The vendor evidence rules are too strict" cannot be adopted, rejected or amended. A proposed sentence can. Several rules on this site started as a comment in a thread like this one, which is the strongest argument for the process.
What the ranking does, in case you assume it is hiding something.
The hot ordering combines the magnitude of a submission’s score with its age, so that a new post with moderate support can outrank an older one with more. The controversial ordering weights total vote volume by how evenly it splits, so a heavily contested thread rises above a small evenly-split one.
Both are published, and both are reproducible from the score and timestamp shown on every submission — one member here rebuilt the ordering in a spreadsheet to check. The consequence worth knowing is structural: feed position rewards early agreement, so the top comment is frequently not the best answer. Sorting by controversial occasionally is genuinely worth doing.
Funding and links, in full, because the question deserves a straight answer.
Sponsor units are labelled as sponsored. Each vendor source page carries one outbound link to that supplier’s own storefront, marked nofollow and sponsored, so you can read their account of themselves against the record on the page. Nothing is received for those links, no supplier pays for a directory position, and no rating is for sale.
No referral or affiliate links are permitted anywhere on the site, from anybody, including in the pricing threads where the temptation is highest. That rule is the reason those threads are worth reading, and it is enforced without exception. The full version of all of this is on the about page and it is deliberately boring.
Sceptical readings welcome. The confident ones are the ones I distrust.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Feed position is a function of early votes and time. That structurally favours agreeable early answers over correct late ones, which is why sorting by controversial occasionally is worth the effort.
Reminder that no referral or affiliate links are permitted anywhere, from anybody, ever.
no referral links, no affiliate links, not once
sort by controversial occasionally, it is worth it
the disclosure is boring because it has to be
What is the concrete wording you would replace it with?
Small fix — archiving happens at a year, not at six months. It is in the published policy.
this place sells nothing and takes nothing from any supplier
Submissions older than a year are archived: readable, linkable, and closed to new comments. That keeps a three-year-old thread from being reopened with a reply nobody will see in context.
Proposed a rule change here with actual wording and it was adopted. That is the process working and it is not fast.
Read the ranking formula out of scepticism and reproduced the ordering in a spreadsheet. It does what it says.
Yes. Nobody here is paid and the disclosure page says so in tedious detail, which is the correct level of tedious.
Right, and the storefront links on source pages are marked and disclosed, which is the honest way to do it.
Is this about a policy or about an individual removal?
Disagree with loosening that. The evidence rule is why a supplier report here means something.
That is the controversial ordering, not the hot one. Different formula, different behaviour.
The ranking functions are published: the hot ordering combines score magnitude with age, and the controversial ordering weights total volume by the balance between up and down votes. Both are reproducible from the numbers on each submission.