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 -
I think I pretty much agree with you. But unless you're in a thread with only a few other people, forums also never had the "group discussion" feeling, either. "Shouting at a riot" is more accurate.
This is exactly what happens in an active linear thread, too, but now the separate convos become a lot less readable because they aren't organized by topic.
True, but again, that's just group size. Can you imagine a linear forum with a weekly discussion thread with 1500 replies? It would be unreadable. So each top level comment would need to be its own post with linear comments. This is how Elements and Slack handle replies to messages - you can start a thread from every message, but only once. No nested comment trees. I find it useful, but the way they do it can be just as confusing as tree-style, since the newest messages can suddenly appear far upstream.
Still, probably better group discourse than tree-style comments. 50 replies per week would still work nicely for linear comments. Maybe worth a try.
Forums definitely wouldn't work if you carried on with motte-style megathreads, you'd have to create a new topic for each culture war item.
Which is basically what DSL does, and I find it perfectly readable. You do lose the accessibility that megathreads have, hence why so many people stay here and don't go to DSL, a lot of more niche topics would never get any attention with individual posts.
It's interesting you bring up Slack and Elements, as they are basically the next stage in internet discussion - which is Discord. As reddit cannibalized forums, so discord is cannibalizing reddit. And yet, I think if you polled older internet users who had experienced all three, you would get majority agreement that forums > reddits > discord. Nonetheless, the internet inexorably moves towards the latter.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link