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False. We just don't take up the suggestions that people who want to wage unrestrained culture war would like us to implement.
It's fascinating that this is how you model our thinking. Though I'm not sure I believe you sincerely believe this.
We don't ban randomly, and banning bad actors is quite effective.
I should have saved you guys openly saying that the light hand was there to encourage engagement until you thought you had enough of an audience to keep the place going. How else are people supposed to read that other than adding the obvious "then we can crack down and shape the contributors however we want"?
Alas, dissolving the people and electing another is not a realistic option here
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That you immediately imply that any possible suggestion that might have not been taken seriously enough by the mods here would only come from "people who want to wage unrestrained culture war" (the type of veiled insult pretty much all mods here almost always throw out in response to any suggestion that they may not be as open to suggestions as they claim, which I guess you don't seem to realize kind of proves the point), as if there is no possibility that the mods here could have ever dismissed a valid suggestion (I guess you're perfect oracles of what's a good suggestion or not, no mistakes ever?), is a great example of the terrible mod communication I was talking about. Thanks for proving my point with your arrogant and dismissive tone.
Anyway though I'm not going down this rabbit hole since I've seen where it leads: frustration and zero results for those who try to take the whole "moderation here is driven by user sentiment" stuff seriously (as you've proven by starting off the conversation with nothing but passive aggressive sneering).
I do sincerely believe it. The difference in moderation immediately going from Reddit to the new site was obvious. Maybe it's not something you implemented consciously but it sure happened.
Just keep in mind that with this new site you still need us more than we need you. An independent enterprise is always on shakier ground.
No. I was talking about you and your suggestions. Some people have made valid suggestions, some of which have, in fact, been implemented, some of which were acknowledged as good suggestions but were not implemented for various pragmatic reasons.
Nobody needs anything here. This isn't a business, and we're not your employees. We do want to attract and keep members because we all believe in the purpose of the Motte, but that doesn't mean that every individual member gets what they want or that all demands are legitimate.
My suggestions (the primary one anyway being) to bring back a moderate variation of something originally implemented by you (that is, the mods)? So you were wanting to wage unrestrained culture war?
You know, if you're not just full of shit as usual and cavalierly breaking your own rules, then please, as your own rules state, provide proof (we'll ignore the proactive part since that ship has sailed already) in proportion to your very inflammatory claim that my suggestions are primarily directed towards desiring the waging of unrestrained (a heavy adjective explicitly indicating absolutely zero restraint whatsoever, keep in mind, which would be a weakman as is also against your own rules if, even if you can nitpick my suggestions, you can hardly find grounds to claim that I'm advocating for any sort of free-for-all, for turning this place into Kiwi Farms with less restrictions, which I'm obviously not) culture war.
Go on: quote me. Except you can't, because again I said nothing like that nor even in its vein, even if you can make a credible claim that my suggestions might increase culture warring here a bit or even to some degree (but that's a trade-off implicit in all moderation matters of this kind; this version of The Motte has more culture warring than a hypothetical one with even stricter rules would and yet I doubt you would take that hypothetical version's moderators accusing you of wanting to allow "unrestrained culture war" seriously, same as me being willing to tweak this axis is completely legitimate and not automatically advocating for unrestrained anything).
So, as usual, you could have communicated like an adult (you know, being charitable like your rules state) and said "I disagree with your suggestions because X, Y, and Z." but instead you had to immediately resort to the most arrogant and dismissive weakmen/strawmen possible. (It's like how Barry Goldwater's politics couldn't simply be criticized on their merits; he had to be declared insane and accused of trying to destroy the whole world. This is how you and the rest of the mods so frequently communicate with any critics.) And this is why you persistently end up looking like a petty fool and again just prove my criticisms correct (and also why they weren't made more politely/hesitantly in the first place, if you're going to try to pull a "No u!" on any of the above).
Seriously, if you mailed your Senator or something that you wanted the penalty for a particular crime reduced or a particular law repealed and he accused you in response of wanting complete unrestrained anarchy, would you not think he's a bit unhinged or at least hypersensitive? Have some awareness. (And yes for the record I am well aware that my professed political leanings make me come off as "unhinged" as well to many, but perhaps that makes it even more worthwhile that, other than you, nobody here, including those opposed to everything I stand for, has accused me of trying to "wage unrestrained culture war". I'm not trying to be an authority figure here either.)
If you think I'm speaking only for myself, then you aren't listening. Maybe not everyone agrees with every exact specific I propose, but the sentiment is reasonably widespread.
Or better yet, let me imitate one of your redname posts, as maybe that will make you understand:
Don't do this. Way too "Boo outgroup"-y and uncharitable. Demodded for one day due to prior history pending user discussion.
You want lighter modding in general? We'll take it under advisement.
Note that for all your belligerence and being one of the most frequently reported posters, you have been very lightly modded yourself.
I don't want the modding to go back to what drove away a significant number of people on Reddit. (And yes, it did drive people away. The weekly threads on CWR were up to 500 comments or more each. They've now been below 100 for a while. If you don't trust me, then surely the hard metric that the preferred use of your alternative represents should mean something at least. If you'd been paying attention, you'd notice that I'm actually saying you've been doing more right lately on balance, just in the form of warning you not to screw that up.)
Again, an accusation pretty much unique to you. Wonder why?
I guess I must not be waging "unrestrained culture war" then. Shocking. It's almost as if, again, your accusation was wholly unnecessary, uncharitable, antagonistic, inflammatory (and belligerent itself) and yet unsupported by any evidence (seeing as you've failed to provide any), and consequently an example of the poor communication people complain about. Do I believe you're going to fix that and not casually throw out such one-liners in the future that a user could easily get modded over? Absolutely not, because you never have. And that's why I made my original claim that all such productive suggestions are ignored. People aren't just pulling these ideas out of a hat.
Thanks for confirming for me that I'm one of the most reported posters here though (which I had already guessed, but it's nice to have official confirmation). (And yet my posts now on this subject are more upvoted while one of yours is at -2. So if I'm really that controversial and disliked here, then surely I must really have a good point in this case to be getting support, right?) It satisfies me greatly that my opposition has to try to resort to "deplatforming" me because they do not feel confident in rhetorically engaging with me. Truly pedofascism as much as it is the ideology of taboo in this fallen age (which is nearly a universal agreement, just with some disagreement on what's fallen about it) seems to me to be also continuously revealing itself further as a difficult to challenge ideology of truth.
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No? This place as a site definitely has a smaller network effect dominance than it did as a subreddit. And if it went down I have no doubt it would be replaced by something else nearly immediately, probably advertised via CWR and the SSC subreddit/forums (or maybe a new site for CWR itself).
The fact that the defenders of this place's mods can only ever argue by spewing bad faith bullshit like this speaks volumes.
The main suggestions I've seen about the moderation here in this subthread are that mod communications should be more professional, more detailed about their particular issues with any given post, and more standardized/less subjective. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with people demanding they be exempt from "the most minimal level of self control imaginable" or wanting to "wage unrestrained culture war" or whatever other insane strawmen you people constantly toss out because some have the audacity to think that occasionally popping in to type "This is not we're looking for here. Don't do this again." isn't actually God-tier moderation. (I'm not even saying terrible. It's not nearly as bad as it's been in the past or I wouldn't even be here. I just also think it's hardly the ideal sage wisdom of the rationalist masters either, despite the mods here seeming to be incredibly offended by any suggestion otherwise.)
Ironically enough if this site's rules were enforced consistently and comprehensively, the mod team and their defenders would be some of the most cited, warned, and banned for how they insist on behaving in response to even the mildest criticisms. I don't think I've ever once seen a single moderator here go "You have a point." or "You know what, you're right, and we'll work on that." in response to anything a user has ever suggested (unless maybe occasionally if it's stated in the mildest, most non-committal fashion while tickling the mods' balls the entire time) as opposed to immediately jumping into "Obviously you want the rules to change so you can wage the culture war and create anarchy in our perfect garden of neutrality!" shit.
I guess we users here must just be the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet then, since none of our suggestions are ever any good and we are all just trying to tear down the grand edifice of discursive order so we can go ape, except somehow there'd also be no site without our posts. We probably are dumb for putting up with it but that's how social dynamics go: the first "solution" tends to stick and becomes a Schelling point despite its many flaws and then you have dozens of cultists who feel like they have to defend it against all criticism no matter how trivial and no matter how bizarre and nonsensical their unhinged reactions to those criticisms are because it's the Schelling point. (And, yes, I know I'm free to leave. I in fact gladly will if things go back to how they were on Reddit. I'm bringing it up in the first place in the hopes that it doesn't.)
Even when Hlynka was finally removed after being allowed to go on a rampage of terrible mod abuse for ages while being defended by the leadership here, I still don't think there was ever any particular "mea culpa" posted about that. Was there? I sure didn't see it. It sure didn't happen quickly if it ever happened. (I went probably a year, maybe more, without even looking at the sub, so I may have missed it, but I bet it just never happened.) It was just brushed under the rug like it never happened without any acknowledgement that the critics were right, any attempt to give them any sort of restitution or reevaluate past bans, etc. If anything serious were run like that, there'd be heads on pikes in a week. (And of course the mods, particularly Zorba, will insist this place isn't that serious but then also get mad at you if you don't take it seriously enough when posting. It's serious when a user's post is too "Boo outgroup"-y or whatever catchphrase of the day they want to use to ding someone, but when they let a crazed cowboy run wild on the userbase for over a year then it's just a cute experimental community and you shouldn't take it that seriously.)
Anyway, I've wasted this much time responding to your shitty ad hominem post which could have been entirely replaced by a loud, vulgar sucking noise (yes that's ad hominem too but no worse than what you and Amadan are both guilty of so if I get a bad boy warning for this I expect to see one for you and him too), so you can't accuse me of not pretending you could possibly give me value in a conversation. Enjoy.
You do realize that both the post and the response can be not that great right? It's not either/or, they're both strangers, and you don't owe either side anything other than what you choose to delude yourself into believing you do. The post obviously isn't the only issue anyway. Any discussion like this is going to be tied into a more general airing of grievances.
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Nope. It has volume because of the network externality, same as reddit on the whole.
I don't know if "network darwinism" is the same term as "network externality". Network externality is "I'm here, because that's where everyone is", which hinders splitting and competition.
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