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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33236 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Thanks for the sentiment, but - no, there's something to be said for "don't pick people who are too interested in the job" as a perfectly reasonable heuristic for any sort of policing/powertrippy occupations. Also, it seems far-fetched to not expect people to consider personal affinity and vibes in picking future colleagues, and their use as a criterion is easily steelmanned. Moderators are people too. Amadan all but stated that his modhat actions are constrained by his aversion to "getting flack" in public for unpopular decisions. It presumably wouldn't exactly help him moderate if he already had to engage with individuals he finds aversive at the backchannel stage that seems to precede every mod action.

Also, cities like NYC pick Chinese beat cops to deploy to Chinatown etc. for good reasons.

Also, it seems far-fetched to not expect people to consider personal affinity and vibes in picking future colleagues

The Mottes moderation selection system is rather convoluted, where the moderators select nominators from the community, the nominators nominate and vote for nominators of the next round, for several rounds, until the final one, which is the actual moderator vote. All this to say the moderators aren't the only ones with a voice, which is how I got mine. I tried supporting as many left-wing as right-wing candidates.

You're right that vibes matter, but from the debates we were having during the voting process, the vibes in question were "is this dude going to sperg out", not their political views.

I too was actually invited to Zorba's wild ride once (for two non-consecutive iterations, no less). The discussions I remember taking place seemed to come down to something that amounted to "solidly right-wing, but demonstrated grace and level-headedness in interactions with the outgroup" - the specific mechanism was talking candidates up for instances where they demonstrated particularly impressive feats of tolerance, but because no particularly extreme left-wingers were in the running, this naturally favoured the extreme right as their room to impress was greater.

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