That's such a strange rule to have for a tech instance. Is there really no better reason for it than that people want to bitch about things without actually wanting a suggestion on how to solve their issues?
- it's often noise because you can't act on it (because you need to use X)
- it's often noise because you already have done your research and are aware of the options. Especially since many people reply even if they don't have particularly novel information or even know a lot less than the person that made the original post. Some people find it grating to get repeated trivial "recommendations" on everything - on Twitter exasperated replies of "guys, I can google myself!" aren't uncommon)
- it's often entirely predictable (i.e. whatever Desktop OS you use, for sure there's someone asking why you aren't using Linux/FreeBSD/MacOS/Windows10+WSL instead (strike the one you are currently complaining about))
- it's repetitive, and especially for more prominent people a large volume of comments
> - it's often noise because you can't act on it (because you need to use X)
"screaming into the void" is noise; replying to those screams with suggestions if anything would be an attempt to denoise the network by promoting actual conversation.
The problem here is as I've pointed out that some people clearly don't want to have a conversation — what the value in that? Why post something on public forum if you don't want to have a discussion?
Especially when mastodon supports private toots — if you really want to went start a journal or toot "unlisted" or "followers only".
When mastodon just started out federated and public timelines was a joy to read but now it's just constant screaming and yelling and utter thought vomit to the point where I'm certain that nobody browses federated or even public timelines anymore.
At the end of the day it seems that it's a design flaw of twitter that promotes toxic screaming rather than structured discussion and Mastodon as a platform hasn't really done anything to address this.
Thanks. It was really bugging me that I couldn't think of optimistic reasons for that policy. I still don't agree with it, but I suppose anyone who doesn't can just make their own instance or find one with different rules.
Remember that having that rule doesn't stop people from asking for advice. If someone wants to say, "this sucks! What's a better way of doing it?" they still can. The rule-as-written doesn't even preclude a replier from asking, "I've got a suggestion, if you're interested?" (although that might still be frowned upon, it still comes across a lot better than "have you tried this?")
