Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
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philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
I generally prefer social media review systems to be simple like/dislike for that reason, either you like something or you don't. 5 star systems lead to too much confusion over what different ratings mean. Then ideally people are allowed to sort the results of a search by any metric they like, such as best like:dislike ratio, most total likes, best like:views ratio, etc. based on whether they want a guaranteed good experience or if they want to try to find a more niche product that they'd personally love or whatever else they're looking for. And if something does well along every metric you can be very confident it'll be excellent.
My only reservation with a binary system would be that it fails to capture things that resonate strongly with a small subset of the population (like cult classic movies).
I forgot about the method I like for that. For that, I prefer a system like reddit gold. Let people spend money(or some other form of limited rating) on their favourite works. I really miss the days of reddit silver, gold, platinum, it was great for spotting under rated works on /r/anime and /r/manga that only got a few upvotes but managed to impress someone so much it they'd spend money on the thread.
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