I’m sure some have seen the discussion around a new rule against the promotion of various substances in this community. This will be the summary based on data collected at this snapshot in time.

Post score (upvotes/downvotes): 33/19 (Note that hexbear users cannot downvote)

Number of users who left comments (including me): 21

Number of comments: 51 = 19 (left by me) + 32 (others)

The following is a crude categorization of the 32 comments left by others, each category begins with the name and a 4-tuple of (number of unique users, number of comments, total comment upvotes, maximum upvotes obtained by a single comment). If the same user left multiple comments that are categorized the same, only the comment with the highest upvote will be counted when tallying upvotes, the rest are excluded.

• Agree (2 users, 4 comments, 7 upvotes total, 4 upvotes max): Comments that agree without giving an explanation, 2 comments excluded from upvotes total.
• Agree because history (2 users, 2 comments, 16 upvotes total, 11 upvotes max) : Comments that agree and mention China’s history.
• Agree because history but questionable (2 users, 2 comments, 20 upvotes total, 14 upvotes max) : Comments that agree because of China’s history, but raised questions
• Disagree (2 users, 2 comments, 16 upvotes total, 9 upvotes max)
• Medical (4 users, 7 comments, 29 upvotes total, 8 upvotes max) : Comments that mention medical properties of certain substances, or their normal use in certain cultures.
• Abstain (1 user, 1 comment, 7 upvotes total, 7 upvotes max)
• Others: Discuss rule (4 users, 7 comments), Joke (5 users, 5 comments), Off-topic (1 user, 2 comments)

The data show that most people agree to the rule partially due to China’s history, but also question the necessity of having this rule and it’s phrasing. Some people raised valid points about the medical properties of certain substances, and discussed changes to the rule to accommodate those points. Disagreements were seen mostly in downvotes or questions about the rule, only a few users left comments explicitly opposing the rule.

Overall I would conclude that there isn’t a strong consensus to keep this new rule, especially not in its original phrasing, and modifications to the rule have not been thoroughly discussed. There has also not been any evidence to an urgent need for the rule. Thus the rule will be deleted from the community rules in the spirit of democratic centralism.