Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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You're basically asking "do you check for red flags on everybody who is not raising red flags?"
In comment threads, I usually only check post history for people I am considering blocking. It makes sense to check post history if people are instigating. If that person is just starting shit everywhere then there's no reason to listen to them, but if they have a history of reasoned discussion then maybe what they say is worth considering. (I realize how ironic this is coming from somebody who has almost no comment history on a new account)
That's fine if you're just trying to avoid whatever you consider 'red flags'.
But your post is drawing a correlation with other post activity and if you want to do that accurately you need a broader sample set.
Yes, this is the "base rate" fallacy. You may find the "red flags" your looking for, but they may actually be more common among other commenters that you don't examine.
Simply, what is the "base rate" of those red flags on average? You have to examine a random sample of commenters to know that.