(The practical ethics of posting on the internet are sometimes complicated. Ideally, all posts should be interesting, well-reasoned, and germane to the concerns of the community. But not everyone has such pure motives all of the time. For example, one can imagine some disturbed and unhealthy person being tempted to post an incoherent howl of despair, frustration, and self-loathing in a childish cry for attention that will ultimately be regretted several hours later. For the sake of their own reputation and good community standing (to say nothing of keeping gardens well-kept), such a person would be well advised to not make such a post. But the urge to express one’s emotional state even when there is no good reason to do so is not so easily repressed, and one might imagine our hypothetical individual being tempted to make some sort of meta-level comment on the situation, perhaps thinking that this would somehow be more appropriate, or even clever. But to do so would mean overlooking the quite obvious fact that meta-level comments aren’t clever in this day and age: if you shouldn’t say something, then for the exact same reason, you also shouldn’t make self-referencing comments about why you shouldn’t say something, and furthermore, this guideline applies with equal force to all further levels of meta-meta comments that one might be tempted to make. Clearly these observations should be sufficient to settle the matter in favor of the policy of complete silence.)
(The practical ethics of posting on the internet are sometimes complicated. Ideally, all posts should be interesting, well-reasoned, and germane to the concerns of the community. But not everyone has such pure motives all of the time. For example, one can imagine some disturbed and unhealthy person being tempted to post an incoherent howl of despair, frustration, and self-loathing in a childish cry for attention that will ultimately be regretted several hours later. For the sake of their own reputation and good community standing (to say nothing of keeping gardens well-kept), such a person would be well advised to not make such a post. But the urge to express one’s emotional state even when there is no good reason to do so is not so easily repressed, and one might imagine our hypothetical individual being tempted to make some sort of meta-level comment on the situation, perhaps thinking that this would somehow be more appropriate, or even clever. But to do so would mean overlooking the quite obvious fact that meta-level comments aren’t clever in this day and age: if you shouldn’t say something, then for the exact same reason, you also shouldn’t make self-referencing comments about why you shouldn’t say something, and furthermore, this guideline applies with equal force to all further levels of meta-meta comments that one might be tempted to make. Clearly these observations should be sufficient to settle the matter in favor of the policy of complete silence.)