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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28316 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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I disagree and not simply with the position itself, but also with the prospects of such a comment leading to a reasoned discussion that could arrive at some interesting conclusion.

Look at the rest of the thread and my participation in it. Do you believe that I contributed nothing of intellectual value to it? Again, I’m not pretending that the particular comment you picked on was high-effort; however, I’m clearly quite capable of offering much higher-effort expansions of my position, which I did, in numerous parts of that same comment thread. That is the difference between me and someone who contributes nothing but low-effort swipes. If your belief is simply that no commenter, no matter how long-standing and high-quality-on-average, should ever be able to get away with posting anything low-effort, that’s fine, but it is not my position, nor does it appear to be the mods’ position.

Do you think that the discussion writing something like this would lead to is going to be high level?

Yes, absolutely! We see very high-effort and interesting threads branch off from arguments like that frequently here. I agree that you would also probably incite a lot of low-effort and/or uncharitable replies as well, but that doesn’t mean the post itself wouldn’t ultimately be worth it. If you genuinely do hold that belief, why not make an effortful post about it?

If your belief is simply that no commenter, no matter how long-standing and high-quality-on-average, should ever be able to get away with posting anything low-effort, that’s fine, but it is not my position, nor does it appear to be the mods’ position.

It very explicitly is not my belief, you misunderstood me. My point was that upvote/downvote system is bad at weeding out low-effort postings in general, because vast majority of people will not downvote a low-effort inflammatory statement that they agree with. I am with you as far as the idea that low-effort posting only becomes a serious concern when it dominates over higher-effort posting, and that is usually caused by people who pretty much exclusively post low-effort, ideologically-motivated comments.

If you genuinely do hold that belief, why not make an effortful post about it?

I've done the very thing you suggested once 🫠. That's why I'm never going to be able to climbe out of a premoderation hole, lol

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