To add to what other people said: As a casual user who didn't go deliberately looking for bots, I mostly caught them when they posted a comment that was a complete non sequitur to the comment they replied to, like they were posted in the wrong thread. Which, well, is because they were--they were copied from elsewhere in the comment section and randomly posted as a reply to a more prominent thread. Ctrl+F came in very handy there. (They do sometimes reword things, but generally only a couple of words, so searching for bits and pieces of their comment still usually turns up results.)

Also, the bot comments I caught were usually just a line or two, not entire paragraphs, even if they were copied from a longer comment.

I remember being good at google-fu, and then thinking my google-fu was failing me.

No, it was the Google that failed me.

Same here; I change my mind about upvotes/downvotes all the time (especially since I have the terrible habit of voting while I'm still reading the comment), but the ones I've done that for are still there. Heck, the first couple I see when I look at my profile are ones I did that for. Read half the comment, upvoted out of the corner of my eye while I was still reading, read the second half, went "Hoo boy, nevermind," and un-voted.

Related to that, upvotes/downvotes being public is a dealbreaker for me. I don't feel safe upvoting or downvoting anything here unless it's completely uncontroversial, because I don't want to open myself up to harassment by people who disagree.

I'll hang around for a bit to see if that changes, but I'm very unlikely to stick around if it doesn't.

YouveCatToBeKittenMe

joined 1 year ago