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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   4789 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I mean sure as far as content was concerned there wasn't much self censorship.

But there still was plenty in the form of obfuscation. Even aside from the AEO threat, other redditors were a threat. Many professed complains about not being able to say what they want in the simplest of terms because they fear getting into an argument later in another subreddit and that resulting in someone going through their post history and causing a stink about wrongthink. I consider the elimination of that nuisance a massive positive side effect.

It will be easier to "speak plainly" now. Instead of saying "a certain demographic in the united states tend to cluster around a lower mean in psychometric tests" one can just say "African Americans as a group have lower average IQ scores". Shitty example, ik, but gets the point across.

I think just being able to speak plainly, for real this time! will produce some interesting posts. Yes there are a lot of failure modes, and are still ultimately constrained by "the Rules" but I'm keen on seeing how things pan out.

I'm actually worried that's gonna turn out to be a negative :V I think there's value in people kind of talking around the hotbutton issues. People often have real kneejerk responses to common phrasings, and you can avoid those by using a different less-common phrase.

But I have no idea how to, like, legislate that in rules, so right now I'm just gonna keep an eye on things.

Not exactly related to your point but have you thought about adding the slur filter that rdrama uses? I think it’d be a good idea to have it on for logged-out viewers, at least for certain words

Oh man I would be like a thousand percent tempted to start putting in troll slur filters.

Hmm.

Part of me thinks that isn't a terrible idea, just to get people reading the site and kinda, y'know, ease them in.

But another part of me thinks that this comes across as being ashamed of what we're posting, and I'm just not ashamed of it. I'd sorta rather look people in the eye and say "yes, we are debating controversial things, deal with it".

I'll keep this in mind but my current feeling is that it's not worth the downsides. I'm not entirely convinced by myself yet, though.

"Speak plainly, but not too plainly" ????

Yeah, that's a tough one. But I don't think kicking the can down the road really doesn't help all that much, those destined to have that reaction will have it eventually and will probably flameout and get banned in short order.

I don't see the utility in taking the responsibility to spare the feelings of people who are incapable of not having their feelings hurt. Nth order effects be damned?

Keep in mind that our goal is to be a discussion site for people with differing opinions. Nothing there says we need to coddle people, but it also doesn't say we shouldn't coddle people; if asking that people tone down their most extreme opinions gets us more of what we're looking for, that's actually a good thing.

And there are many many many people who have kneejerk reactions to things.

Yeah I understand that, but "speak plainly" is so self evidently correct/good/useful (imo), that I can't come up with any justifiable reason at all to not do that. Or any excuse good enough to give up a little bit of that.

Speaking plainly. For whom speaking plainly will cause them to have a kneejerk reaction; probably lack the epistemological foundations to be the kind of person you want to visit the motte anyways. I am sure as a mod you have plenty of datapoints to assert that I what I am saying is at least, directionally true.

I am not discussing the legislation, I am discussing your vision for the community. But anyways, I will make an CW post on it later, I think you are chasing a white whale.

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