OP is clearly soliciting opinions, and about controversial matters, why isn’t it in IMHO?
My own feeling (which others may not share) was that the OP was fully deserving of some harsh responses as a wake-up call, given the self-pitying manner in which he framed his “problem”. But I note the following comments from mods:
I think if a post solicits opinions, we should be free to give them, and to express them robustly. Obviously if someone crosses the line to just being a jerk that’s a different matter, and that would apply to all subforums. But the snarky and sarcastic responses conveyed important and valid points. I don’t think a thread like this should be assigned some sort of vague “IMHO-lite” status by being left in MPSIMS, where only milquetoast opinions that are gentler to the OP’s feelings are welcome (if that’s supposed to be the etiquette in MPSIMS).
Would the mod response have been different in IMHO? I thought the standards were roughly equivalent in both forums since they both have the no insult rule and snarky comments are close to insults.
I didn’t intend any misrepresentation, but I didn’t think that part of your moderation was relevant to my point.
And, incidentally, I think that part of your moderation might have been based on a misunderstanding of what OP wrote here:
I think you misunderstood this to be OP accusing @Grrr of virtue signalling? But that’s not what this comment means. OP had originally asked how to categorize his own behavior, listing virtue signalling as one possibility. OP was just saying that he understood @Grrr’s stated opinion to mean that @Grrr thought OP himself was virtue signaling. To paraphrase -
So if there were a poll on my behavior, I should put your verdict down as “virtue signalling”.