I largely agree with you, but I think the whole point is to avoid insular self-reinforcing communities.

Sure. But a hostile community is worse than an insular community. And here we are: you disagreed, I disagreed, you expressed scorn for my hyperbole, I questioned your scorn and reinforced that the discussion is valuable, and thus we have a useful dialog. It's a back-and-forth thing that people who respect each other do.

None of the people I have muted have shown the slightest bit of respect. Without respect, there's no community.

It's a little disingenuous to frame everyone who thinks that the mute functionality may need to be adjusted are all just trying to stir up shit against you.

I thought you weren't going to put words in my mouth? Here we are disagreeing, and here you are, not muted. Lots of people disagree with me about mute functionality - as I said before, the ones that are muted are the ones that are also dicks about it. We're now two rounds deep in which I make this point, yet you bring it back up again as if you didn't hear me.

I question how it could be abused after watching Reddit's decline and manipulation.

Go ahead and question. What solid, evidence-based arguments do you care to make? Because then we're having a discussion, not slinging mud.

I've seen accusations of abuse, with varying degrees of merit, in my opinion.

List them and explain why you think they merit. It then becomes a debate rather than slander.

To be honest, I've given my opinions, you can read them in my other comments.

"I want you to acknowledge the validity of my opinion without my having to state it."

Naw, dawg. If you want to have this discussion with me, you need to have this discussion with me. I'm open to it. I'm patient with it. But you don't get to say "I said this thing to someone else somewhere else, look it up."

That's disrespectful.

I'm still undecided as to whether I will increase my contributions here.

I'm committing the energy to furthering your understanding. I type fast but I can't just empty my head onto the screen. The respectful thing would be to commit your energy to either acknowledging my statements or questioning my arguments.

And if I'm not worth my time, ask yourself why you should be worth mine?

And there we are, back again, as to why I get to mute people on my own posts.