Happy birthday to us! Hard to believe we've been the Internet's leading (possibly only?) independent user-funded (ad-free!) open political speech forum for two whole years. @ZorbaTHut, what a remarkable framework you've constructed; everyone else, what remarkable things you've constructed on that framework. Thanks for hanging out with us and getting into very kind, respectful, politely-worded fistfights about anything and everything under the sun.
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
(Proverbs 27:17)
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Contributions for the week of July 29, 2024
Contributions for the week of August 5, 2024
Contributions for the week of August 12, 2024
Contributions for the week of August 19, 2024
- Several nominated posts on the intertwining of activist politics and medical practice
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I accept my AAQC award with the full backing of my Motte-poster syndrome. Not quite involved or insightful enough to stand on its own AAQC merits. Yet it provides a decent enough platform for someone like @Throwaway05 to show up and share some actually interesting perspective. That's the good stuff.
Happy birthday to the Motte! May the terrible twos lead to a less terrible threes.
A drink to the contributors of today. Many of you have entertained me, educated me, and challenged my thinking as a bystander. I hope you continue to contribute to this strange, intentional game of epistemic gut punching-- and to continue to try to punch with humility, understanding, and as politely as required.
Another drink for the fallen heroes of yesterday. Flamed out, rage quit, opened a substack, or quietly got on in life. For on their shoulders the pillars were chiseled, crafted, and raised. Without them this would be a redundant space. May their final contributions not be their last.
Lastly, a drink to the jannies. Whose sweat and toil allows us to call this place something special. Whose actions so often offend some while greatly offending others. Controversial mod actions could inspire a theatrical comedy. I hope you all keep good humor when dealing with janny work. Without your effort handling Code Red online forum crises all would be lost. They do it for free!
No matter if it has gone down hill, up hill, right hill, or around the hill I consider this project a success. However frequently you believe this place lives up to its ideals, or fails to, I believe it has earned the right to be called special. I could be on the toilet or hiding from in-laws. You all so often give this lurker context and voice I would not otherwise find. Kudos, and carry on
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One of these days, I want to write a 'What the Quality Contribution Report Really Means' parody (in the spirit of old Paradox Patch note memes), and just have a gander making these selections sound worse (or better) than they really are.
Like
"2D3D says Chinese pop culture was ruined by women writing gay fanfiction."
or
"WhiningCoil goes into exhaustive depth on the many ways he handled his wood to the delight of his wife."
It would never work, since too many are too serious to poke too much fun at / humor doesn't translate to diverse audiences that well, but there were more amusing ones than I was expecting this time around.
ahem i wish to clarify that I did not say gay fanfic ruined chinese pop culture. in fact i would submit that gay fanfic is the exact reason why chinese pop culture suddenly started gaining traction within asian spheres, and the ccp being afraid of women having unrealistic standards was the cause of the clampdown. edit: perhaps a better accurate-yet-dishonest representation of an AAQC could be Isekai-Titling the subject. Dean Convinces Bigbrains That Japanese Developers Are Secret Nazis, or MonkeyWithAMachinegun Survives The Wire Immersive Reality Sim
east asian pop culture especially needs to go beyond the romance of three kingdoms, journey to the west, sengoku jida, generic anticolonial resentment and the joseon dynasty for rehashed fodder. if that vector attracts writing and artistic talent because prettyboys in flowing robes draws in the female consumers, thats capitalism baby!
also, the aaqc being feted is indeed quite an honor, since i do actually respect the overall quality of postings and posters on this forum. not that much, since i sometimes try to have a life, but enough to expend brain cells grokking the outputs of this board.
happy 2nd anniversary to this corner of the internet, we culture war refugees that neither fling poop automatically nor disappear our heads up our own ass to sniff our farts. may this delicate balance continue and leave the jannies with no poop to clean up.
(sorry, im typing this out while using the can)
I hope the levity came across clearly, rather than as slanderous, and if it didn't I will apologize.
Nah, I was also delirious from straining in the crapper and while I got the intent I didn't get the joke.
Eat veg, people. Psilum Husk is no substitute.
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I was curious to see what were the top comments from the last month that didn't make it here, so we have:
@Walterodim, on the "factchecking" of Trump
@functor, on the downfall of the UK
A throwaway, on ideological pressure on doctors
@DTulpa, complaining about the media response to Harris
@raakaa, on the double standard of people being against cancelling Home Depot workers, but putting up with cancelled Olympians
@ABigGuy4U, on biased fact-checkers
@DTulpa, expressing discontent with the disorderly homeless
@functor, on the problems in the UK
@Walterodim, characterizing Tim Walz
@Walterodim, on election integrity concerns with a leftist tinge
@urquan, on women, and the words of the delphic oracle
@gattsuru, on European censorship
@SteveKirk, on Musk and corporate (in)competency
@naraburns, on pro-knifing counterprotests
@Walterodim, putting media activity in the active voice
@self_made_human, on immigration accelarationism
@IGI-111, on the political effectiveness of economic idiocy
And that's the first page, down to a net upvotes of 47. (All but two had at most 4 downvotes.)
The Quality Contribution system posts seem to be considerably more effortpostish, and the ones passed over are more likely to be applause-lights. So it seems like good selection. It's interesting that the slate of posters for each kind of post is not the same—some of us (e.g. @Walterodim) seem to be pretty good at making a not overly long reply that's popular, while not making AAQC-style comments. Others of us effortpost more. Both can be good.
Anyway, thanks to @naraburns for the work in collecting these, and to @ZorbaTHut, that we have this place.
Ooho I love this! Pls do this more :)
I'm probably not especially likely to do so in the future—this occasion was more to satisfy a point of curiosity (how do AAQCs and popular posts compare) than to provide a service, and the insights are now sufficiently gleaned. But if you want to check yourself, you can just go to comments and sort by top for the last month.
how do you sort for all the threads at once though?
Here you go:
https://www.themotte.org/comments?sort=top&t=month
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gattsuru has 18 AAQCs.
naraburns has 14.
Urquan has 13
Walterodim has 8.
self_made_human has 7.
IGI-111 has 4.
functor, raakaa, and DTulpa each have 1.
Stevekirk and ABigGuy4U have none yet.
Overall seems like a lot of user overlap with the AAQCs, but matches what some people notice that it can feel a bit like a crapshoot which of their comments make it into the AAQC roundup.
There's certainly plenty of overlap, and you could imagine some of the posts that were not selected being so. That said, the posts that are selected feel noticeably more AAQC-y to me than do just the most upvoted ones, which seems to me to indicate that those categories do not overlap perfectly—it is not just a crapshoot, even if there's a component of randomness.
I did not mean to imply that the people mentioned here don't get AAQCs. I know that's false, some of them did this month. I just wanted to note that the ratio between posts that are well-liked and those that are of the sort that earn AAQCs seems like it might vary by user to some extent.
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Not to toot my own horn, but I believe I have more than just one.
Lol ya I was way off. Sorry got you mixed up in a different tab. I'll fix it above
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Oh nice. FWIW, I actually had a Costanza "Jerk Store" moment soon after posting my comment linked above re Women's Sports, where I realized that I missed the obvious parallels to the Paralympics, and deciding if someone is "disabled enough".
The French call it "l'esprit d'escalier".
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