Comment by 7777777phil

dang, thanks for the thoughtful response. I’ve been following your recent comments on the "curmudgeonly" guideline, and it’s clear this is a priority for the health of the site in 2026.

My current analysis was a ~30 day snapshot, but I’d love to help get a clearer picture of the "macro trends" you’re worried about.

If you’re open to it, I’d be happy to collaborate on a deeper temporal analysis. Specifically, I could:

Map the "Sentiment vs. Performance" premium over a 10-year horizon to see if negativity is becoming more "rewarded" by the algorithm/community over time.

Segment "Substantive Critique" vs. "Generic Negativity" (venting) to see if the latter is actually the growth driver, as you suspect.

Run my workflow (DistilBERT, Llama 3.1, etc.) against any internal data you might have that isn't easily accessible via the public API (like flag rates or deleted comment correlations) to refine the "toxicity vs. critique" classifier.

The goal would be to provide a data-driven baseline for the changes you're planning this year. Happy to discuss further here or via email.