I’ve noticed this even when trying to find the name of a song. I used to be able to search:

lyrics “a specific part of the song I remember” whatever random words I can remember out of order

and it would very reliably find songs, even obscure ones. Now the only way it works is if I happen to remember part of the name of the song, usually it’s full of entries for the same popular song that has one word in the title that I included that is definitely not what I’m looking for.

It sounds stupid, but I really miss that working.

I can definitely see getting fed up with dealing with the same arguments or statements all the time. It’s a tight-rope balance to keep a thread from devolving. A lot times an episode or a series will rub you the wrong way and you just don’t enjoy it the first time through. Some of my most enlightening conversations about Star Trek have started with either myself or a friend talking about how bad a certain episode or scene was, but as you talk through why you see it in a different light. Most of the time if I’m saying I didn’t like something in Trek it’s because I’m looking for someone to either confirm my interpretation or point out that I missed something earlier in the episode or in the series that made it make sense to be there. I didn’t dislike DS9 when it first aired, but I couldn’t really get into it. But once I was able to watch it on streaming in order and at my own pace, it quickly became my absolute favorite series. It was an issue with the airing schedule and the pacing didn’t work as well for broadcast TV. A lot of that is pretty well known now, but I didn’t realize it at the time. And if some aspects of a show actually don’t stand up to scrutiny, I think it’s good to have that available in a public forum for the (very slim) possibility that those fan reactions get taken into consideration for future productions. I have been hesitant to voice that kind of opinion based on the perception that it will not be well received.

The thing I was talking about involved a very new user making a similar complaint about getting banned for differing opinions back on reddit, no specific accusation just a general question. Maybe there was a history from reddit, I don’t know, but a moderator responded in-chat and the very first thing he said was inappropriate and demeaning. It was unprovoked and it escalated into juvenile name calling (by the mod, not the original commenter). I can’t remember exactly what he said and he has since removed it. The entire comment thread was removed by the mod, so maybe he realized how inappropriate it was. But he also removed the comment that started it which by itself was fairly innocent and deleted his own comments so they didn’t get stored in the mod logs. It just seemed unprofessional. That’s the kind of thing that can turn people off and lead to a further perception of censorship and is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people came here to escape. A more appropriate response would have been to point the commenter to another thread or post that might be more appropriate for that kind of discussion. Or (like you just did) he could have explained that this is a common perception but it’s a bit more nuanced than it may seem. In this case the post was regarding the move to Lemmy, so a topic of concern regarding community standards seemed reasonable. I think an open discussion or clear statement of philosophy governing the community would go a long way. If one of these kinds of comments get removed they can be directed to an explanation for why it’s better for the community to glean certain comments, but also lays out expectations for how users can express their opinions. It tends to be better to direct people to an appropriate outlet, even if their first choice for that outlet was inappropriate.

Keep in mind that posts removed by moderators are visible and documented on this and every federated instance of Lemmy. Please urge your fellow mods to be more professional going forward and improve their de-escalation skills. There is certainly unfair criticism, but some of that criticism has been well earned.

I’m sure that moderation is a difficult and mostly thankless (and probably pay-less) job, but there’s still a point at which being toxic undoes the positive contributions of a moderator. Please try to use this as an opportunity to build a better community and consider some self improvement as well.

There is no one among us that couldn’t benefit from personal reflection.

If you treat people with hostility they will likely react in kind.

These sentiments are engrained in Trek (new and old), it would be wonderful if we could consider those lessons in our daily lives.

That is likely true for a majority of “the good stuff”, but making that determination can be tricky. Let’s consider spam emails. In our daily lives they are useless, unwanted trash. However, it’s hard to know what a future historian might be able to glean from a complete record of all spam in the world over the span of a decade. They could analyze it for social trends, countries of origin, correlation with major global events, the creation and destruction of world governments. Sometimes the garbage of the day becomes a gold mine of source material that new conclusions can be drawn from many decades down the road.

I’m not proposing that we should preserve all that junk, it’s junk, without a doubt. But asking a person today what’s going to be valuable to society tomorrow is not always possible.

I could see that working for everything except for other people and objects brought into the holosuit.

It definitely breaks the explanations that we’ve gotten in-world for how the holosuites work. There’s even comments in other DS9 episodes about the walls being closer than they appear (Garak in Afterimage comes to mind). We never see a large holosuit inactive to get a sense of the walls, but the Vic Fontaine episodes also break this space with lots of people being fairly spread out.

/r/wellthatsucks has gone and it’s poetic.