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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27718 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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We're forbidden to talk about anything unless someone writes a 40k word essay about it first. Simple as.

@Primaprimaprima is correct. Write about a paragraph of original thought and you are fine.

I wrote this up thread:

In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:

  1. Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
  2. Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
  3. Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

You literally just need to write one paragraph. Five to six sentences. I have never seen a post that had at least one paragraph of original thought get modded for effort.

Kind of, but kind of not.

Write too little, and you get a lot of "This isn't what we like to see from a top level post" mod warnings. Write too much, and you risk showing your power level and getting a mod warning for "Boo outgroup" or "consensus building". In fact, posting virtually any topical bit of news often gets you a "boo outgroup" warning, because it's often your outgroup behaving badly, in a public attention seeking manner, driving national policy, that is the news worth talking about.

I wrote this up thread

In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:

  1. Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
  2. Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
  3. Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

There is a definite problem where people skip step 2. And part 3 sounds like "The protestors seem evil, it would be nice if they were shot." Yes that sort of post will get you dinged for boo outgroup.

You keep posting this, but you haven't really added a solution to the problem of missing posts. You can say it's not that hard, but that's belied by evidence that most people don't bother to make posts, and that many of them perceive the barrier to entry to be too high. Saying that they're mistaken, it's really not that high, isn't going to change anyone's mind.

that many of them perceive the barrier to entry to be too high.

Exactly! Its a perception thing, so I am trying to clear it up by changing that perception. WhiningCoil and others are making it more difficult by adding to the false perception. You of course are asking them to stop posting these bad interpretations of the rules, and thus discouraging posting, right?

Saying that they're mistaken, it's really not that high, isn't going to change anyone's mind.

There are different barriers to posting. One of those barriers is being afraid that the mods won't like your post and you'll get banned or in trouble. I can lower that barrier. I can't lower other barriers like "I don't know what to post about", or "I don't really want to talk about anything".

Write too little, and you get a lot of "This isn't what we like to see from a top level post" mod warnings.

Warnings for effort on top level posts are handed out pretty rarely. I made this very short post about Iran's attack on Israel (over half of it was copy-pasted quotes) and I didn't get modded for that. The bar is pretty low.

In fact, posting virtually any topical bit of news often gets you a "boo outgroup" warning

Going through last week's top level posts, the Eurovision post didn't get modded, the Mike Cernovich post didn't get modded, the summary of Trump's trials didn't get modded, the post about DEI at MIT didn't get modded... there are lots of topical posts that don't get modded.

I definitely don't agree with all the mod decisions here. But it's also false to claim that the mods are paralyzing all discussion, because it's just a fact that the vast majority of posts don't get modded.

Warnings for effort on top level posts are handed out pretty rarely.

That's because people avoid making them. Some weeks we go 12 hours without any posts on the new thread at all.

I would like to use this place as the comment section of the articles I find daily (realclearpolitics, for one I don't mind mentioning). But I know better by now.

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