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Yes, I know that's not what you want. I am saying that IMO that is what your proposal would result in.
Here is my prediction of what would happen (because it's what happened when we had the BLR back on reddit):
I just have zero sympathy for people who want to post bare links, because our requirements to add something meaningful are not that stringent. Every person who claims we require MOAR WORDS or meaningless verbiage or a ChatGPT sensitivity pass is lying. All you have to do is add something like "Why is this interesting? What is your take? Why do you care? Why should we care? Why do you think it is worth bringing to our attention?" Add some commentary (doesn't have to be very much, does not have to be particularly insightful or long), just more than "Hey, look at what those fucking wokes did now!" It's not a high bar. It just fucking isn't. I am tired of people pretending that we put barriers in the way of their very interesting conversations that we do not.
And here's mine: it would look much like the weekly thread on r/blockedandreported, only better because the quality of commentators here is higher.
Dude, this whole discussion started because a "rather well-written" effort post received a warning. You are definitely setting the bar too high.
Or it would eventually look exactly like that thread or worse, because:
A well-written thing that is not a discussion is still not a discussion. The bar is not high. In this case they went and climbed at a neighboring gym and put in a bunch of effort, but the bar we were monitoring which is much easier to reach was left empty.
Quite a few of the high-quality commentators have already left and while I have no way to prove this, I'd posit this has something to do with the very limited number of topics that are discussed here nowadays.
And yet an interesting discussion it spawned. Which is my entire point.
Let's drop it. I said my piece, I accept I'll never convince you. I'll bring it up again once we reach a weekly thread with less than a thousand comments.
They will often tell us why they have left, and none have given us that as a reason. Usually it's complaints about low quality comments that don't quite break the rules, but are bad enough to annoy them when aggragated together.
Im fine dropping this, I did feel like new things were coming up.
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See, you say this, but then I believe that @4doorsmorewhores easily cleared the bar you are claiming is the minimum expectation with this post, yet he still got modded for supposedly not putting enough effort into his commentary/contextualization.
To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't have modded that post, though it is a bit borderline, being not much more than "Boo outgroup" with MOAR WORDS. The mods are not a hivemind. I stand by my point that you don't have to put a lot of effort into your post, not everything has to be an effortpost, and the BLR would be a net negative. Will the other mods sometimes have a different opinion than me of what constitutes "enough" effort? Yes.
Okay but can you see how this doesn’t inspire confidence? It’s great that you think that the minimum level of effort required is X, but your opinion (presumably) doesn’t carry any more clout than @netstack’s does, and if the modding is going to be inconsistent, with some mods being more overzealous than others, than I think it’s pretty understandable that users (especially those without the post history and reputation that provides some armor) might feel very apprehensive about posting anything less than a maximally-effortful essay about something they find interesting.
Now, for my part, the relative rarity with which I make top-level posts is almost entirely self-imposed. I hold myself to a high standard, and I routinely encounter topics or links about which, while I’d like to participate in discussion about them, I don’t feel like I have enough of a unique or interesting insight to offer to make it worth composing a post I’d feel proud of. So I’m not one of the people who just blames the mods for their unrealistic expectations. But clearly there are other users who do feel intimidated/discouraged by the seemingly capricious way in which effort requirements are enforced.
So, for all of a bare links repository’s potential flaws, at the very least it would not foster any doubt or require people to discern the intentions of all of the various mods.
The mods all talk. Netstack ask us to come by and check this. And noticeably Netstack only said not to do it. Which is basically the minimum level of "mod action" that we can take. It is impossible to be softer.
I don't think as many people would be apprehensive about it if every time this came up there wasn't a cadre of posters making it sound like we have super strict requirements for top level posts.
Doing it after we have warned you not to do it isn't treated very well, but same with most rules.
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Netstack did give his reasoning. He didn't mod it because it wasn't effortful enough, he modded it because he thought it was nothing but "boo outgroup."
Like I said, I probably wouldn't have modded it myself, but I can also see why he would.
We have never claimed 100% consistency. There are days when I might be more strict than others. That's why the vast majority of modposts are just warnings, and if people took those with more grace instead of flipping out and deciding they need to litigate them like they have been issued a traffic fine, there would be less angst about it.
I am sorry (but not very) that some people feel "intimidated" into not making more posts, but being perfectly honest with you again, the people who complain most frequently about how we're too strict and too capricious are not complaining in good faith. They just don't like the rules and don't want to be restricted as to what they can say. Can you see why that makes us less inclined to consider it a problem that allegedly there are all these posters afraid of being told to do better?
Even if we did bring the BLR back, it would not be a "mod free" zone where people can just post things that are nothing but boo outgroup and sneering. Some BLR posts would still get modded, and the complaints about our decisions wouldn't change much.
Come on now. What do I have to do to convince you that I genuinely mean it?
I thought you're complaining about no BLR. I don't associate you with the group constantly bitching about moderation in general. I believe you mean it about wanting a BLR and thinking it would be an improvement. I don't agree, and most of the mods don't agree, but I guess you could try to convince us that everyone else on the Motte wants a BLR.
Oh I'm quite content with the moderation in general. I do have a beef with one particular single-issue poster here who I believe is constantly engaging in bad faith and wish would just leave, but that's neither here nor there.
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