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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   6442 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for August 2023

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@Hoffmeister25:

@lemongrab:

@cjet79:

@ControlsFreak:

Contributions for the week of July 31, 2023

@naraburns:

@ChestertonsMeme:

@pro_sprond:

@raggedy_anthem:

@satirizedoor:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

Contributions for the week of August 7, 2023

@charles:

@ymeskhout:

@iprayiam3:

@FCfromSSC:

Contributions for the week of August 14, 2023

@IGI-111:

@hydroacetylene:

@roystgnr:

@Hoffmeister25:

@Soriek:

@ryandv:

@iprayiam3:

@FCfromSSC:

@sodiummuffin:

Contributions for the week of August 21, 2023

@satirizedoor:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@ryandv:

@naraburns:

Contributions for the week of August 28, 2023

@hbtz:

@raggedy_anthem:

@problem_redditor:

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but because I want that author to have a realistic idea of how relatively popular those views are in this space

In other words, you are trying to build consensus?

There's no rule about how you can/should vote (we wouldn't really have a way to enforce it anyway), but admitting that you do this certainly affects how I view your participation here.

No, because I can’t control how other people vote. I see it more as providing real-time information about the current ideological balance of the community. I’m not trying to build anything, but merely to provide a snapshot. Just like when people show me, through voting, a sort of snap poll on where my own views fit in the ideological balance here.

Look, obviously I would love it if everyone here came around to agreeing with me about What Needs To Be Done about the issues I care about. In that sense, I am trying to literally “build a consensus” by actually persuading people to agree with me. So is everybody else here. But I’m not trying to use my upvoting/downvoting to alter other users’ perception of the validity of a particular comment. Again, they can’t even see how I voted until a full 24 hours afterward, which means hopefully we can avoid the sort of downvote spirals that take place on Reddit.

I think that for the most part, people interpret votecounts as "people want to see stuff like this", even if it doesnt effect visibility anymore. And I think this interpretation is correct, in the sense that most people vote like this, too. If you use your votes differently, youre propably not sending the signals you want.

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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.


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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."

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