Recently it was suggested that I increase the post whenever rate. Really the suggestion was to make it dynamic, which I agree, but I'm not there yet because there is potentially more than one factor I'm considering.

But a downside of having increased it is that the comment rate on everything got way too small. It becomes a positive feedback loop where people don't want to comment in a comment section with no comments. And where they feel like no other comments will join them.

This is also one of the factors I'm considering in dynamic post whenever rate is what percentage of the top 5 posts have comments. I don't want to pile on posts if discussion is lagging. But also I don't want the page to feel slow independent of that. So I'm just trying to figure out if it should be a multi-consideration thing, and or what and how.

But in general almost all dev right now if focused on more comments. That is the current era of dev, comments. I've already got new comment counts in. I have new comment highlighting in but could maybe use some help on the CSS. I could in theory just push the comically bad CSS and be forced to fix it. It's actually kind of funny so I'm thinking about it. Then despite the hilarious CSS the usefulness factor makes up for it. Really after thing thing I did today the last element of pushing comments is I'm about to get the comments sorted the same as regular posts with bump trickling up and a bonus for making a comment that encourages more comments.

But the thing I did today for comments is I made it so you get a bonus to a new post if you've made three comments to someone else's posts. It's the same bonus as the post whenever posts. Though I think I want to decrement the PW bonus by one soon.

I'll even say low content comments count. That's fully legitimate. Even a literal "bump" comment shows activity, and interest, and is a way to boost or promote the posts you want. It's not the best but it works. You could literally bump 3 posts before making your own to start your post with an advantage. Watch, I'm going to eat having encouraged that. If you can make a more meaningful comment that's obviously better. I guess I'll say if you are OP just don't bump your own post with an actual "bump." If an OP wants to bump his own post, that's fine, but I think an OP should be expected to offer something more than "bump" to a conversation if he's getting a promotion of his own post out of it. Bump your own post, but if you are OP, make a real comment.

Now to address a recent controversy. A rule is a rule. The site literally has one rule. I want to have substantially fewer rules than most other sites. But I also want to remove subjectivity to rule enforcement. Doesn't that suck when rules are vague and subjectively enforced. Some sites will have a rule "No harmful speech." You share an inconvenient real world stat and "that's harmful and dangerous speech." And then you have others on reddit or lemmy calling for assassinations of anyone and everyone they label with one of their naughty words. Let's face it, anyone and everyone gets one of those naughty word labels. And then suddenly in that case rules don't exist.

This is why I will enforce any rule I make with absolute exactness. But have fewer rules than more. It's not up to me. I choose for it to be that way. Because I don't want to be making subjective calls left and right and be constantly asked why my subjective line isn't an inch further than direction or this direction. I don't care if I like you. I don't care if I agree with the point you are trying to make. I don't care if you contribute to the site in many other ways. The same rules will be applied to everyone equally every time.

If you don't apply rules consistently then the second you do want to apply a rule you have to apologize for it. So what do you do instead? You apply the rule consistently from day one and you never apologize for it. The other thing is only removing the item doesn't work, especially if a user knows the rule. Because then you are having it placed on you to sort through everything. You need users to be a t least a bit self enforcing. You always have to do a little bit extra, even if it is the tiniest amount. So I'm sorry but if you break a rule the post will be removed and you'll get a 24h shadow. It's literally the smallest thing I can do. At least if you've shown no interest in self enforcement despite knowing the rules.

Now I don't expect every user to know the rules. Every site seems to emphasize. "I expect you to know the rules. You must read the..." The problem is no one does that. It's not a realistic expectation. I don't expect people to have done that because I live in reality. Which is the other reason to enforce rules. It's the actual realistic way that someone or other people realize a rule exists. Of course it is also written down. So if it's someone's first time and or they haven't been party to a literal discussion about that rule, then you just remove the post. It causes a conversation. Now they know. But when you literally contributed to a discussion about it only a few days before, then probably the prior case applies. This is how you get people to understand a rule is a rule, and that you aren't going to be guilted into subjective application in their favor, as a matter of personal offense. I don't want to live in that subjective space, because that's a terrible position to be placed it, and I don't care who you are, I'm not entering it for you on your behalf. So I will just blindly apply whatever rules I have in place, (if I made the rule I already made the decision), and do whatever extra I feel I need to for them to get that is the program. If you don't do a little bit extra you will find yourself doing 5x moderation. Some of you guys don't know this but I ran a chan site for a bit, so I've dealt with higher population situations. That is before I passed it onto someone else because it wasn't worth it, just as it had been passed onto me. It was a real dread pirate roberts situation. From there I learned you want to start from the very beginning to not apologize for applying a rule, ever, and not apologizing for taking a light punitive action. If someone wants to feel butt-hurt, in the worst case it ends up being a blessing. Then they know no amount of being butthurt will ever solve a problem.

Now considering the site only has like two rules besides don't break the law, and otherwise it's a complete free-for-all. (The other rule is no self promotion if it ends up poorly received by users, otherwise all self-promotion is accepted and encouraged). Considering the general sparseness of rules most of this will never apply to anyone. But it does I'll remove your post. If I think there was an awareness that either is or should be present in your case I'll go an inch beyond. Far less than most other sites do.

It sucks to have to tack this onto an otherwise positive post to really say comment a bunch. Which is why I want these sorts of things to be relatively unceremonious. I'm going to remove the post. Please don't ask for an apology or cause the site to be gummed up by drama over it. I remove the post, possibly an inch more, and then we move on. Then I continue development and making dev posts without recent moderation being a concern. This is the last bit of ceremoniousness I'm going to give moderation.

So yes, comments are the current area of focus. It always helps my motivation to dev more if I can get user energy pushing behind the same problem. That's why I added a tiny reward, as small as it is. It's only right that if you put some energy into solving the problem we're driving at that you get something for it, even if small. This creates a META of three comments and a post for anyone that wants to tryhard the site. I think will be a good balance. No one has to do that, but they'll get a little extra push if they do.