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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27236 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I don’t understand this. You seem to be saying that A) we have too few top-level posts; B) this one led to several “perfectly interesting discussions;” and C) this post should nevertheless have been deleted before those interesting discussions were allowed to happen.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was? You’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I wasn't intending that comment to push a specific view, just highlight a tension.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was

(iirc) The mod team disagreed with that line of thought the last time it was brought up.

I sort of agree. On the other hand, I think we could have more posts that aren't huge effortposts but aren't 'insane', and since we don't we reply to the insane ones. IMO (maybe) there should be a general space (like the BLR) where it's within norms for people to post thoughts, links, etc about generic topics (as opposed to the weekly threads, which are scoped to questions / fun / etc) that can start discussions. I'm guessing there's a lot more supply of posts that are shorter and lighter, but still decent quality, than 20 paragraph effortposts, posts similar to the good replies to this post. But currently only people who for whatever reason ("I'm feeling rather insane right now so I'll post a screed") are willing to break the norms a bit end up making the toplevel posts.

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