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What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I actually found The Motte subreddit in the posting history of a /r/drama user on Reddit a while back. I liked the cut of their jib so decided to see where else they post.
I’ve been pleased with the success of rdrama.net. What are some other successful exiled subs? Ovarit? Any others?
I’d love to see more this build up. Someone should clue in the politicalcompassmeme dudes if they are at all are interested in a long term future online.
Hope this place works out
The lesson I've drawn is that the only way to make a successful offsite is to kill or severely neuter the reddit sub. Otherwise nobody will move over, and you'll have a dwindling group of ever witchier witches.
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The lads over at rdrama made a spin-off site for the politicalcompassmeme dudes, but nobody used it so they gave it to... I forget. Some other weird little online community. You can check the wreckage and/or new construction out at https://pcmemes.net/
That explains so much. I remember being excited to see PCM have a shot at moving off-site, but the number of PCM users who joined was dwarfed by the number of rdrama users who did, so the culture was very different.
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The_Donald's spin-off, patriots.win, has been happily chugging along.
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