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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   2756 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This is the second reason why I am quitting the Motte. I am so bored of low-effort insults at my character instead of dealing with the subject of my arguments, which is directly against the rules on the sidebar. Constantly having it done with very little moderation shows me this place is not for debate, it’s to dunk on leftists. I’ve said the moderation here is not for me, and it really is.

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Report people when they break the rules, don't argue back at them. This is like, rule 0 of the Internet. Also, it's been not even an hour since the comment you are complaining about was made. It takes time for one of the mods to be online, see the report, and decide what to do with it.

I agree with you that calling you an "unserious person" is a violation of the rules. But the rules aren't a magic wand that prevents breakage. Bad comments need to be reported (especially in a thread as old as this one), and you need to be patient to let the process work. You can't hold this post up and say "see, this is why I'm quitting" when the moderators haven't even had a chance to respond yet.

I don’t have faith that my reporting is going to be met in good faith. I have a history of comments calling me trans, insulting my intellect over my gender, and general potshots at me being unserious, a troll, someone who just hates conservatives and doesn’t want to listen to other arguments, straight up mocking at my lack of knowledge despite the rules literally saying “leave the rest of the Internet at the door”. Where is the moderation there? And for a site full of people claiming they want to debate, why is there a constant stream of rule-breaking not-debating happening aimed at me?

I don't recall you actually reporting any of those comments. It's rather unfair to accuse us of not meeting you in good faith when you prefer to complain in public.

Generally speaking we don't jump on every petty snipe. Calling you a "deeply unserious person" isn't very nice ( @Hoffmeister25 consider yourself chided) but you've been kind of snippy too.

Look, stay or do not stay, but you know what irritates me personally? Someone who keeps going on performatively about how they're leaving, but sticks around to keep fighting.

Fwiw I would rather you stayed, but you cannot decide you're here to poke people with sticks and then whine that you get poked back.

I’m trying to be polite towards the efforts to respond to my initial post and attempts to change my mind without adding more to the Culture War thread. I didn’t even know there was a reporting option, much less that it would be taken seriously. It’s surprising to me you want me to stay, and it makes me reconsider some of my stances.

When you aren't getting in snark fights with people you do a good job of representing a point of view that is rare here. It is a very unpopular point of view, so yes, people are going to be mean, and they are going to downvote you. There is only so much we can do about meanness. Personal attacks are not okay, but being edgy and condescending, rude but not quite attacking? It's a judgement call, which means some of the unkind things you think should be modded won't be.

I assure you, you are getting reported a lot and you can take satisfaction in the knowledge that we're not going to ban you just because some people really want us to ban you.

That said, a common failure mode of leftist posters here is to get in lots of fights, get reported constantly, and eventually lose their cool. We won't give you any special consideration or passes, even if you are being dogpiled. So, that's just how it is.

I don’t take satisfaction because the fact that I’m getting reported so much is a dismal sign for the purpose of this site and tells me a lot of people aren’t listening to what I’m saying. It seems like I’m getting reported for having an opinion people don’t like, not for breaking the rules. But like I said, the moderation here is not for me. I have been hasty in my judgement on Ukraine due to my sensitivity to the Bucha massacre, and there do seem to be a handful of people who aren’t breaking the rules when interacting with me, but mostly my hastiness was unwarranted and therefore my reason to leave is unwarranted. All this to say I have changed my mind.

It’s ironic that I feel I have done a deliberate job of attempting to not be snarky with the belief the mods have eagle eyes on my behavior since all the reporting happens, but it’s not my call to say if I’m snarky or not, just ironic that I deliberately try not to and fail.

It seems like I’m getting reported for having an opinion people don’t like, not for breaking the rules

Unfortunately, yes. We ask people not to do this, but they do. For what it's worth, it's obvious when (and who) does this.

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And did you report those comments? I don't disagree that you take a lot of heat (though not all of the things you mentioned are legitimate grievances). But nobody said that the people on this forum are angels. You are expressing views that are unpopular here, and for better or for worse that means you're going to get people dogpiling you. To some extent, that simply means you have to have a thick skin. Go look at @Amadan posts sometime - he routinely gets dogpiled and downvoted into oblivion just because some people don't like him. He still posts here, though, even though I'm sure he doesn't like it any more than you do. That's the kind of mental toughness that you frankly will simply have to have to post here.

To the extent that people are violating the rules while piling on, then you need to be reporting them. If you have been, and if there hasn't been anything done about any of those posts (which you would need to follow up and look at, because it's not like the mods are going to ping you when they warn someone), you should take that as a sign that the moderators disagree that people are breaking the rules. And then do with that what you will - if you think that means you don't want to hang here then don't. But I find it very frustrating that, at least in this specific instance, you're refusing to even try to get the mods to intervene, and then using it as an example of why you think the site is bad. That's not fair in the slightest. And if you haven't been reporting other interactions you felt violated the rules, then frankly your complaint has no legitimacy at all. The mods aren't omniscient, and they need people to report violations of the rules if they are to help enforce them.

You didn’t even make an argument to critique, though! You just said that any discussion of Ukrainian corruption is ipso facto Russian propaganda. There’s no attempt to justify this with evidence. (Was nobody discussing Ukrainian corruption before Russia said we should? What if there’s counter-evidence of neutral parties acknowledging corruption within the Ukrainian government, regardless of anything that Russia has to say?) There’s no attempt to grapple with why somebody who is not Russia-aligned might independently arrive at the conclusion, based on observable evidence, that Ukraine’s government is corrupt relative to Western standards. It’s just “These conversation topics give me the ick.” That’s not a valuable contribution to this forum.

So, if someone makes an argument that you personally think is not valuable, it’s okay to insult them? Can I start calling you unserious for claiming to want to debate and discuss while undermining the entire ethos of the site and driving away the very people you want to argue with with low-effort pot shots? No. Because that’s against the rules, and I would be rightly moderated.

Yes, of course you can call me unserious! I wouldn’t be offended if you did! (Particularly because I know it’s not an accurate characterization of me, and also because I don’t respect the source!) I don’t interpret the rules of this site as prohibiting any commentary on the quality of a user’s output, provided that said commentary is not egregiously acrimonious or ad hominem.

I’m not saying you’re a bad person, or even that you’re dumb. In the last extended exchange I had with you, while I strongly disagreed with your arguments and I don’t believe you’re conversant with all of the available data, I think it’s fair to say that you engaged in a serious and effortful way. That’s the opposite of what you’re doing now, which is just saying that any discussion of a particular topic you don’t like is tiresome and illegitimate, and threatening to pick up your toys and leave because some people here have the temerity not to share your same visceral aversion to the discussion of those topics. That is corrosive to the purpose and ethos of this forum; me calling you unserious in response is small potatoes in comparison.

I don’t interpret the rules of this site as prohibiting any commentary on the quality of a user’s output...

For what it's worth, I think the misstep here was saying "you're a deeply unserious person", rather than "this is an unserious position". The latter is, as you said, a comment on the quality of a person's output. The former is (at least imo) a personal insult.

But if a specific user’s output is consistently unserious, I don’t see an issue with offering commentary on that user as a whole, rather than simply on individual positions they might take. Personally I’m in favor of a bit more of a rough-and-tumble exchange that acknowledges users as having consistent personae over time, rather than just taking shots at individual claims each time.

But even then, it seems to me like you would need to qualify that. If you say "your positions are consistently unserious" that's one thing, but "you're an unserious person" strikes me as a general attack on someone's character. That's how I read the original sentence, at least.

Yeah that’s fair, I probably did express myself too harshly initially. Probably a better way to frame it would have been, “You have consistently failed to engage effortfully and in good faith with the reasons why people here disagree with you. You haven’t demonstrated a serious approach to discussion.” And in fairness to @justawoman, I did acknowledge that I have had at least one back-and-forth with her which, though I don’t consider it to have been especially fruitful in changing either my mind or hers, at least demonstrated her capability to seriously engage. I think it’s very lamentable that she has elected not to apply that ability to discussions about Ukraine.

I wish you would have begun with your last sentence, because it was touching and moved me. I think you are right that I haven’t been fair about the Ukraine topic; the Bucha massacre moves me deeply, apparently enough to push me out of my wise mind.

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No, I can’t. Calling you unserious is an insult to your character, which is against the site rules. Arguing about what I’m insulting, or how insulting it is, is also against the rules. Consistent rulemaking protects all of us; otherwise it starts slipping from “no insults” to “no acrimonious insults” to “well I think your argument was unserious even though I didn’t say “your argument is unserious” I said “you’re unserious” and you should have known what I meant” to “fuck it, open fire free-for-all”. Which is also why the rules are “speak plainly”. You think it’s small potatoes, I think it’s a further indication that the moderation on this site is not for me.

Alright, then let me offer a clarification: I think that refusing to engage with the substance of people’s arguments, and instead accusing them of being unwitting stooges of a hostile foreign power, is the mark of someone who is not willing/able to be a serious interlocutor.

I think that probably a lot of your opinions are rooted, ultimately, in your exposure to top-down messaging which I would characterize as, if not overt propaganda, then certainly propaganda-adjacent. I’m sure you think the same of me! However, this does not give me license to simply dismiss those opinions as “regurgitating propaganda” and making a big show of being scandalized by the fact that someone here would dare to express them. If I did so, I think it would be extremely fair to accuse me of not taking the spirit of open debate seriously. And if I did it repeatedly, I think it would be fair to accuse me of not being a serious person generally. Perhaps that would be an insult, but I personally believe it’d be permissible within the rules of this forum because it is directly related to the question of whether you ought to continue to participate. (Not, to be clear, whether or not you ought to be allowed to participate; I’m certainly not calling for you to be banned or censured.)

and also because I don’t respect the source!

Come now, that's uncalled for / against the rules. An insult expressed in a civil manner is still an insult.

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