This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Never been there until now, but I will confidently predict yes, it is drifting leftwards. They all drift leftwards. "Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left."
That place looks like it's still in the realm of nice, active forum. How long it stays that way depends on how active and interested its mods are in maintaining that. My case study was not a drift. It was a cascade. A different kind of engagement, and a lot of it, just kind of moved in and took up shop.
That's not as likely for moderated forums with more specialized topic discussions, which I assume that place is. So it has that going for it. Unfortunately, it is inherently political, and there are few, if any, quality political discussion forums that value viewpoint diversity of any real size. It has that going against it. Mods and culture can fight the tides of Median Redditor, but the effort required to succeed for awhile longer is proportional to its size and growth.
I predict you have around the 40k subscriber mark until the quality drop starts to be really noticeable, then not long after that the consensus gets more intense, boring partisanship becomes uninteresting to the people that make the place (presumably) interesting, so many valuable content creators users depart, and then dregs take over. I think a really dedicated team of jannies, or very well defined ruleset, can extend the life beyond by 10's of thousands of subscribers. Let me know how it turns out and enjoy it while it lasts!
More options
Context Copy link