Dog-piling is when someone expresses an opinion and people swarm in the comments telling the OC how wrong they are and how right they are. Typically the person getting dogpiled is downvoted into oblivion in the process. Note that I'm not talking about anything controversial in their opinion or the comment being trolling in any way; just any general disagreement with the groupthink.
Brief example:
User 1: There are lots of factors at play here, not just money. There's X, Y, Z, and those are all independent from money.
|____> User 2: No, it's money. It's always money
|______> User 4: Right? How can anyone think it's anything *but* money? Some people!
|____> User 3: Yes, well, X, Y, and Z wouldn't be a problem if not for capitalism, so it's definitely money, and you're wrong.
|____> User 5: It all boils down to money; always does.
|____> User 6: Of course it's money. Only a capitalist bootlicker would think otherwise.
|____> User 7: Go back to Reddit, troll.
|____> User 8: You're so close, but it's money.
...
|____> User 999: (Same as the last 998 comments; contributes nothing except attacking the opinion for being different)
None of that adds anything to the discussion; they're not engaging on the subject, just attacking the opinion because it differs.
That behavior does not seem healthy to me and seems like it's almost designed to discourage anyone from expressing any opinion that's not part of the established group think. Again, I am not talking about trolls here, just any kind of differing opinions.
Should that kind of behavior be discouraged? If so, as a mod, what would be the best way to address it? After the 2nd or 3rd dogpile comment, start removing subsequent ones that are just piling on?
It's definitely a people problem, so I'm curious what would be a gentle but firm way to deal with it.
Responding when someone disagrees is literally how discussion works. The fact that there a large number of potential participants means there is a chance for a large number of responses, even if some are similar or even identical.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at (though apparently poorly lol).
Disagreements are quite often healthy. It's the piling-on from the peanut gallery without adding any new information or perspective that I'm spotlighting here.
So, imagine 30 replies to your comment here amounting to absolutely nothing but "you're wrong and I'm right!" and nothing else. Is that a discussion? I would say no, it's not.
I don't have to imagine!
So there are opposing camps that all want to avoid shitty behavior but work against each other, and some of the camps overlap. This is because some content gets negative responses when it doesn't deserve it and soe does. This leads to some of the following responses and even moderation.
Don't just downvote, respond with why!
Not everyone needs to reply, just downvote and move on!
Don't downvote content you dislike, block and move on!
All of these are well intended in their own context, but also tend to be promoted as absolutes without nuance. The whole concept of group think is just a representation of what the majority of people happen to share opinions on. It isn't coordinated or intentional, just a statistical representation of who clicks reply and/or the vote buttons.