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naraburns  nihil supernum  2mo ago (text post)   3681 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 2024 - Happy 2nd Birthday to the Motte!

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

@FCfromSSC:

@Glassnoser:

@cjet79:

@WhiningCoil:

@Dean:

@100ProofTollBooth:

Contributions for the week of July 29, 2024

@wqnm:

@Astranagant:

@Tophattingson:

@Felagund:

Contributions for the week of August 5, 2024

@RandomRanger:

@Felagund:

@naraburns:

@SSCReader:

@DradisPing:

@gattsuru:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@urquan:

@faceh:

@felis-parenthesis:

Contributions for the week of August 12, 2024

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@Dean:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@DirtyWaterHotDog:

@blooblyblobl:

Contributions for the week of August 19, 2024

@YE_GUILTY:

@Grant_us_eyes:

@Dean:

@2D3D:

@wemptronics:

@Throwaway05:

Contributions for the week of August 26, 2024

@RandomRanger:

@Goodguy:

@MartianNight:

@Tanista:

@gattsuru:

@Shiro:

@Amadan:

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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.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by 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.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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