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Yes that heavily downvoted post... great example! The community obviously thought it was below some standard on some level, and I would tend to agree. We will see where FC's post will stand in 24 hours.
Given how conservatives still seethe about the moral mutant post, it seems to me an obvious net negative in its impact on the discourse. In fact, I think I recall FC, or some other, citing that post as a justification for their tone. Well obviously defection begets defection. I think the ideas in that essay could have been presented another way, and should have, but the OP chose the way of brash, arrogant condescension. And we see the fallout from that.
I'm sorry, what definition of "tolerate" are you using?
No. They disagreed, and clicked the "I disagree" button.
Now this would be a violation of this community's decorum.
This is weird. If you think the substance of the post is fine, it's just the way it's presented that has issues, I have no idea what is the issue with FC's comment. He was nowhere near as condescending as Ozy, and the substance is pretty much the same, the big exception being that FC does not want to indoctrinate blue tribe kids, just shield the red ones from blue indoctrination.
On reddit, the mantra was that the downvote was not an "I disagree" button. If that's not the case at the motte I sure would like to know that.
How so? To seethe means to get angry or become highly agitated. It seems to me factual that many conservatives did angry over the post. And I don't blame them really. It is no less factual or inflammatory than FCs follow up claim that 70% of blue tribers hate his kind and vice versa.
I am baffled by what you consider acceptable decorum. Do you believe Ozys essay meets the decorum standards of this community? Yet my use of seethe does not.
Full disclosure, I think both the substance and the tone in Ozys essay are both quite bad. If there is any kernel or value to be had in discussing it, then the discussion should proceed in a tone that inversely proportional to how inflammatory the subject is. This is a basic principle I think that allows highly charged topics to be discussed productively. I don't think Ozys or FC's posts meet that standard.
Despite the mantra, the downvote button is pretty universally used as a disagree button on Reddit: I think the main reason the mantra exists is as a push against the clear regular use.
It's a good question to ask what the intended use here is. I vaguely recall a discussion where it was useful to have a button to push as a way to let off steam in response to a post that you dislike: instead of writing an angry retort that drives down the quality of the discussion, you just push your dislike button and move on to a conversation you can productively engage with. I don't know if mods were involved in that discussion or what their thoughts on that philosophy were.
Certainly with our aggressive modding of tone and the community moderation effort, there's a question of whether downvotes meaningfully imply "this shouldn't be on here": that's what the report button and janitor duty are for, and downvotes seem rather redundant with that.
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You can chant the mantra all you want, you're not going to stop people from using it as an "I disagree" button, and if that's how they're using it, that's what it is.
For the same reason calling someone's ideas "retarded" would be a violation of the decorum, but calling them "immature" would not, even though they mean the same thing.
It would need some edits ("moral mutants" is past the line, I think), but the substance is fine.
Well, I agree to an extent, and both of the posts we're discussing have their strengths and weaknesses re: productive discussion. Ozy's is better in the she elaborates on her views, explains where they come from, and why they are irreconcilable with conservative ones, the issue is mostly her tone. By contrast FC's tone is perfectly fine as far as I can tell, but elaborating on his views could soften the blow for any progressive skimming through The Motte. In his defense, he was responding to "Hanania is literally the only thing keeping me from falling back into white supremacy, someone please throw me a lifeline!". He did. I understand how the post might be a turn off as a stand alone one, but surely even a progressive could see the value in providing peaceful and non-racist alternatives to white supremacy?
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