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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4063 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is everyone satisfied with the moderation here? For me, it’s getting to unacceptably high levels. For some reason, they recently felt the need to almost double the mods to take care of the shrinking userbase.

Our old charitable custom was to treat strangers as if they were worthy of good faith. Increasingly the mods treat those whose good faith has already been established (such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers.

Like reddit, you can start off as a bastion of free speech, but inevitably mods identify with their function and see mod action as an end in itself, until they become more prison guards than janitors.

So are there good alternatives to the motte out there?

I think the moderation is just fine. The Kulak example you gave is actually one of the most wholesome things I've ever seen while debating on the internet. Seriously, I've been writing and debating on various internet forums for decades now. I don't think I've ever before seen a heated argument get started, the mods say "knock it off you two", followed by both posters apologizing for overreacting and restating reasonable points in a calm and civilized manner. Fucking magic!

I actually still remember to this day, one time like 10 or 15 years ago, I got in an argument/discussion with somebody on some forum, I think it was Slashdot. They were very hostile and insulting and I remained calm and reasonable. After 2 or 3 exchanges, I asked him why he was being so hostile and insulting when I hadn't insulted him once and he actually calmed down some and apologized. Not mentioning that to make myself sound awesome or anything, but to say that it's really remarkable and rare to actually move conversations from hostility back to calm and reasonable discussion.

Burdensomcount is the only one on your list who got a harsh-ish punishment. But the explanation from FCfromSSC seems quite reasonable. I don't have access to mod notes and I don't follow everything that goes on here in enough detail to know stuff like that, but I have no reason to disbelieve the explanation.

In every listed case, the mods have calmly and patiently explained their position, even restating it multiple times in multiple places for the benefit of people who could plausibly be claimed to be behaving disingenuously. 99% of the internet that's moderated gets "Fuck off, troll! ::clicks permaban button::" to that behavior.

Please get Hlynka to cooperate on good faith on point where I asked him to provide counterexamples for intelligent (as rated by him) people/groups with personalities than he dislikes.

I'm extremely satisfied with the moderation on this site (even if I do find one of the specific mod's comments {whether mod hat on or off} very annoying {you're so vain you probably think this comment is about you!}). Comparing to other sites I think the quality of arguments and general politeness here is well above everything else on the internet. In regards to bans, I think commenting here is a privilege, and in wanting to keep the garden cultivated here from joining the surrounding wastelands, bans can be a tool to achieve that. I don't read the moderation reports, but they usually are temporary unless rather egregious.

I hardly ever have the resources to participate here, so one can rightly criticize for lack of standing. That said, as a regular lurker I'm pleased overall with the moderation -- it's the best I've seen.

On the topic of bans for longstanding posters, though, I agree that long duration (> 2d) bans should be reserved for those who act primarily in bad faith. I don't mind @HlynkaCG being sent to the kennel for a day, but I'd be sad to see him forced out.

@HlynkaCG serves an important social function as resident boomer, if he is forced out then surely this place will crumble to dust.

This is undoubtedly the best-moderated community on the internet. I've never seen anywhere that even comes close. Nowhere else allows the free discussion of politically charged topics while enforcing standards of politeness, decorum and basic writing ability that keep out undesirable users.

This is a place for people who want to discuss certain topics without being called a faggot / kike / whore / cuck / whatever by drive-by plebs and that is both meaningful and rare. I suppose it could be 'better', but I don't see how, and the issues I do have (like the lack of leftist users) seem unsolveable given basic social dynamics. So I think this place is probably the best it can be.

/r/supremecourt also looks pretty good at moderation

Personally, I think Hlynka got off lightly, Kulak was only warned, so that hardly merits complaint. Only BurdensomeCount was punished relatively harshly (20 days), which I don't think that comment earned on its own (but could maybe be warranted, in light of a broader pattern?), in my subjective and utterly irrelevant judgment.

Count has a fondness for trolling and has probably been warned dozens of times. I think that (as with Hlynka) moderation of regulars who break rules on civility is very light-touch, and I enjoy his posts, but occasionally the stick needs to come out (and Hlynka has himself been banned before iirc).

[cw: newfriend opinion nobody asked for]

I'm not seeing anything too wrong here, and in fact have been consistently impressed by the quality of moderation here, which almost uniquely among rat-adjacents tries not to embody the quokka meme like SSC/ACX comments (marxbro my beloved) and many other rat-adjacent communities where even obvious, to my shitposting eye, trolls feed like kings for months until they finally slip up in their gluttony and get b&. Even subtle trolls get their due here impressively quickly from what I've lurked.

Also I've now spent almost a year in a "community" of /g/entlemen and let me tell you, life without jannies is absolutely miserable. Running on the endless attention supply and cheered on by bait posters, two or three ban-evading [slur]s (the established term is "spitefags", etymology hopefully obvious) are enough to derail entire threads, actively screw with people's resources by reporting or DDoSing them, cause endless drama and schisms, etc. etc. for months on end. Moreover, with no moderation the audience eventually gets Stockholm'd into being impressed with the autism on display and starts actually seeing their scourge as "based", which further exacerbates the issue.

Even considering where I'm "from" I found Hlynka's and BC's comments to be in particularly bad taste, it's too similar to 4chan kids that weave insults into their replies because they can and because it's cool (and sometimes because what they say is true, but the former two almost always take precedence), down to the casual drive-by nature of it as they weren't in the chain beforehand. Really only the all-lowercase text is missing from the edge bingo. It's pure brinkmanship, and usually rightly results in mutual shitflinging. Kulak at least took offense and got heated during an actual discussion, which is imo more understandable, I wouldn't have even modded him but who am I to say.

Since Bad Words are unnecessary and carry no actual substance, mods technically can choose to just ignore them, but they're the definition of arbitrary, unnecessary heat, and as I understand this place is focused on preventing that. It's not even just the scary words themselves offending the uh, target audience, it's just when people shoot the shit like this it inevitably spreads and slowly becomes the norm (ask me how I know, cf. "based" example above), people look at it and wonder "hey, you can do that? fuck it, watch me", and the casual tone doesn't help. I'm looking forward to the inevitable day when I'll carelessly drop a stray slur somewhere out of habit and get rightly modded for it, looking back I already have one comment I'm surprised I didn't get warned for in hindsight. Skirted the edge successfully, I suppose.

TL;DR: from a relative outsider perspective, you don't know how good you lot have it. Mods = gods

How did you find us?

I may be a degenerate but at least I'm a cultured degenerate. I was a SSC reader from before the Culture War split, so technically I knew from the start but I only have cursory knowledge from that era, I rarely use Reddit and have no account there so I almost never lurked the main sub before the split. I occasionally read /r/themotte when I remembered, or when someone linked stuff in SSC/ACX comments or on DSL, also witnessing secondary splits of theschism and culturewarroundup.

At some point a year or two back I randomly checked on /r/themotte and saw the meta post heralding the exodus, I followed the link and have been lurking since. I was honestly surprised to see this place going strong, theschism and CWR have fared worse from what I've checked. With Reddit not being a viable discussion platform in this day and age, moving off-site was a great call.

Basically I've been lurking this place on-and-off for a long time and just decided to jump in at one point (kudos to whoever wrote "if in doubt, post" in the sidebar, it worked), I almost always lurk everywhere I go and am trying to break the habit. I still feel my brain physically fog up and my eyes glaze over when I read the pages-long debates people occasionally have here, so my low-IQ ass has little to contribute in comparison, but the first contact seems to have gone well so I'll keep trying.

Tangential but I was surprised to learn there are former rats/rat-adjacents among the /g/oons as well, I had the wildest deja-vu when someone made and posted a certain Chub card (SFW) a while ago.

Even subtle trolls get their due here impressively quickly from what I've lurked.

I think it's been better in recent months than in the past but even in recent months (iirc, not privy to details) people who are very obviously ban evading and trolling still take weeks to get banned.

Different issue, that's not a problem of number of moderators. They knew about that, but extended charity to obvious ban-evading bad faith trolls. I referred to that discrepancy in my OP.

I've not noticed any problems. I visit every day.

I'm extremely satisfied with it. It's imperfect, of course, missing some things and overreacting to others. But in the end this is still the best moderation I know of in the entire interweb.

Overall mod decisions are made for good reasons, are highly transparent, and you can always just talk to them here and get extensive explanations of their decision-making. I don't know any other place on the internet where that's the case.

Yeah, sometimes I too think they're too heavy-handed in individual instances, but that seems to be a very acceptable trade-off.

Oh, to actually answer your questions:

I don't think the moderation is a significant issue. Maybe lower activity is an issue, maybe post quality is an issue (but there are more than enough good posts still), maybe the 'high barrier to entry for toplevel posts so so many topics are left undiscussed' thing is an issue, but I just don't think the amount of moderation that happens is enough to affect the place's activity.

So are there good alternatives to the motte out there?

No. ACX comments are, honestly, not that bad if you're able to weed out the 9/10 posts that are terrible quickly by scanning and clicking the minimize button on the side. Various (almost entirely private) discords have good discussion. I think it'd be interesting to have a discord with the same people as here.

Substack comments are not entirely awful, but still quite subpar for debate. I honestly think the only proper solution is something like a Reddit (and thus its clones, like us), with nested comments and easy to parse chains, as well as an obvious reputation/karma system.

There are internal tradeoffs, like sort by new allowing every comment to get equal screen time instead of encouraging feedback effects, but in general it beats everything else I've seen.

There is a Motte discord. It is also quite dead, and if there are any of the regulars there, they're not obvious. Plus all the disadvantages of using discord for anything but shooting the shit really.

I don't mind Kulak's tone and insults themselves, but I think that pattern of posting is quite closely connected to a lack of intellectual carefulness or willingness to consider that one's latest leap of passion might be wrong. And I think the ultimate reason that rules for tone exist in the first place is that people who have bad tone, accuse opponents of having various bad motivations, and insult are generally are making terrible arguments and create discussions that have terrible arguments. Same to a somewhat lesser extent for HIynka. Burdensome's point is plausibly correct if interpreted correctly, but still, I don't think regulars have ever been given a total pass on the rules, and these blatantly break them.

Also, I remember those three being modded a lot in the past.

(such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers

Kulak has been modded plenty before, and Hlynka and Burdensomecount have long been dancing close to a permaban.

You can dislike the moderation for whatever reason, but you chose some really poor examples of people "suddenly and inexplicably being modded harshly."

I don’t mind if they dance on the ban line all their life, I have a problem with the actual banning. You ratchet the punishments automatically, so their days are numbered – as you sometimes remind your victims, like Hlynka here, which is hardly helpful.

Not "automatically" (we sometimes discuss amongst ourselves what the next penalty should be), but yes, as you continue to behave badly, the consequences will escalate. This has always been the policy. Are you suggesting we shouldn't do that, or we shouldn't tell people who are being modded what's going to happen if they keep it up?

I think the punishment for minor, occasional infractions should be capped at a few days ban.

But if you want to keep the system uncapped, your authority unbounded: when you refer to a permaban in a warning or day-ban, it’s such an outsized threat that it comes across as a taunt and a dare. Like a cop pulling a gun after he caught you speeding.

I think the punishment for minor, occasional infractions should be capped at a few days ban.

Generally it is. We only escalate when the infractions are more than minor and/or occasional, or when they are constant over a long period of time.

But if you want to keep the system uncapped, your authority unbounded

It's always amusing (and eye-rolling) to me that so many people think we do this because we get that sweet, sweet rush of "authority."

when they are constant over a long period of time.

That really doesn’t qualify. Capped means constancy over a long period of time is tolerated indefinitely.

It's always amusing (and eye-rolling) to me that so many people think we do this because we get that sweet, sweet taste of "authority."

Well, you’re only human. You don’t mind having more power rather than less, do you? You could use your power for the greater good, so says the voice in your head. Even from nearly incorruptible demi-gods, some abuse is inevitable.

Warnings that never result in punishments are meaningless, just like a stock that'll never pay a dividend or buyback or ever return profit somehow.

Sure, if by ‘consequences of warnings’ you mean a few days ban to cool off, a slap on the wrist, that’s fine, mods need to work. But I have a problem with weeks-long, month-long bans, they’re pseudo-permabans. You don’t send a guy to the chair for accumulating parking tickets. Near permabans are a far graver violation of someone’s freedom of expression, and should be reserved for grave faults like clear bad faith, constant disregard for the rules, or so thoroughly disliked that the sub produces 6000 shards of pottery with your name on it.

or so thoroughly disliked that the sub produces 6000 shards of pottery with your name on it.

If the length of bans were a function of popularity alone, then @guesswho would need cryopreservation to ever survive long enough to post here again.

Whether the sub dislikes you is, while not entirely irrelevant (because we are quite successful in aligning the desires of the mods and users), it is by no means the deciding factor for who gets banned or for what. If you are deeply unpopular (justifiably or not), and the mods don't think you broke any rules, you're not going to get permabanned.

I'll second that for people who have been quality contributors in the past, it's best to avoid permabans or extremely long bans to the extent possible, and lean on frequent use of, e.g., one week bans. (And I assume the mods agree, hence why temp bans seem more common.)

It seems fine to me. I like the combination of sometimes outside the Overton Window ideas and politeness.

I don't really comment anymore because I dislike the over moderation.

Is everyone satisfied with the moderation here?

Virtually nobody is satisfied with the moderation here, but for a plethora of different reasons. Which probably means it's as close to optimal as we can get.

For what it's worth, I have a lot of respect for all the new people who decided to be mods.

I don’t think it’s possible to create an Internet community where everyone engages charitably but people are also free to call each other or their outgroup stupid, evil, or faggots.

To the extent such a community does exist, it’s living on borrowed time as one group leaves due to asymmetry in hostility (if your community is 80% Packers fans and 20% Bears fans, then Bears fans are going to see a lot more hostility than Packer’s fans).

TheMotte itself began its existence due to a one-time infusion of quokkas. who had the miraculous ability to tolerate their outgroup. I support an increase in moderator effort to preserve this, since it is ultimately why TheMotte works at all.

If you find a place with weaker civility norms and better quality discussion I’m happy to be proven wrong. As it is, the only places I’ve seen higher quality discussions (about politics) are places with stricter civility norms, and at this point I think that’s just an unfortunate reality that stems from human nature.

I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.

I don’t think it’s possible to create an Internet community where everyone engages charitably but people are also free to call each other or their outgroup stupid, evil, or faggots.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

To the extent such a community does exist, it’s living on borrowed time as one group leaves due to asymmetry in hostility (if your community is 80% Packers fans and 20% Bears fans, then Bears fans are going to see a lot more hostility than Packer’s fans).

If you think it was bad before, wait until the packers fans get mod powers. The minority is always going to be perceived as more hostile. ‘Bears are the best’ – ‘what are you, trolling? You knew an inflammatory statement like that would generate a lot of drama’. On the motte, you’re obviously going to get a lot more reports for an equivalent sneer if you’re woke rather than anti-woke.

I’d say what distinguished the forum originally was more a commitment to free speech than to civility, though it had both of course.

In my mod days we experimented with keeping to a particular Overton window, above and beyond what was required to continue existing on reddit, in order to keep posters broadly comfortable. Drawing the line was frustrating and arbitrary and I hated doing it. Stuff like, don't insist on conspicuously misgendering trans posters, and don't lay 100% of the blame for any given issue on Mexicans/Jews/whatever. In any given specific situation we could have reasonably ruled in either direction, but if we'd radically committed to either free speech or civility the moderation would have become exploitable and the forum would have blown up.

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

If somebody at your job, church, or hobby shouted out people's attractiveness ratings, do you agree that would make the community a worse place, regardless of whether they believe it?

If you think it was bad before, wait until the packers fans get mod powers.

I trust our mods not to do that, so I don't think the generic "stop mod overreach" arguments really work on TheMotte.

If somebody at your job, church, or hobby shouted out people's attractiveness ratings, do you agree that would make the community a worse place, regardless of whether they believe it?

First off, not really. Is he like shouting during the sermon? Then okay, that's disruptive. But if someone was just radically honest, I wouldn't ostracize him. Some people might learn something.

Secondly, our little club is far more committed to the pursuit of truth than they are.

"Radically honest", I'm sure you would agree, isn't synonymous with correct, well-reasoned, or self-aware. The term doesn't necessarily mean anything much beyond "unconcerned with civility." And of course sure, sometimes arguably civility can be dispensed with--but always at a cost.

The real issue, from my perspective, is that resorting to snark, sarcasm, sideswipes, and similar is that these immediately make one's interlocutor defensive, and we none of us are robotic without a very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned. Which turns arguments into shit slinging. I realize that the perspective exists to "show respect only if it's earned" and even "my enemy is just wrong, his or her mind will never be changed, and therefore why observe decorum?" And finally those who pride themselves on "speaking their mind at all times" like some bloviating uncle too jaded by life to give a damn. All of these types have numerous outlets elsewhere to have internet fights without gloves or rules, but fortunately (in my view) this isn't one of them. (I'm not suggesting that you are one such type.)

And of course sure, sometimes arguably civility can be dispensed with--but always at a cost.

I see it the other way. Civility is often helpful, perhaps even necessary, but as a filter on the truth, civility has a cost. Ideally, we should all be capable of hearing the hurtful antagonistic truth, and just keep cooperating, or here, discussing. Of course, in the real world, without the filter, people will fight or walk away. Civility is therefore just a compromise to our weakness and egotism, like you say “our very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned“.

You can have too much civility, blocking out the truth and leaving only platitudes. Our club’s informal norms are cordial enough, its members stoic enough, that imo we don’t need a strongly enforced filter.

Civility is often helpful, perhaps even necessary, but as a filter on the truth, civility has a cost. Ideally, we should all be capable of hearing the hurtful antagonistic truth, and just keep cooperating, or here, discussing. Of course, in the real world, without the filter, people will fight or walk away. Civility is therefore just a compromise to our weakness and egotism, like you say “our very human tendency to bridle when we perceive we are insulted or demeaned“.

Yup. No argument.

Our club’s informal norms are cordial enough, its members stoic enough, that imo we don’t need a strongly enforced filter.

This is where I disagree.

You're right, in a sense. Our club is cordial enough. It's cordial enough almost by definition; it's cordial enough because the ones who weren't cordial enough already left.

Relaxing the filter pushes that boundary a bit further. It would cause more people to leave.

The club would still be cordial enough, defined in terms of the remaining members of the club, because it cannot be anything else; a group will always consist of the people who are members of the group. But merely consisting of the people who are the members of the group isn't enough. One must weigh the value of the people who are no longer in the group against the cost of keeping those members.

Here's the Foundation, which is, as always, the touchstone to use when discussing rule changes:

The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.

All of the community's rules must be justified by this foundation.

Rules against anything is a sacrifice. I'm not going to argue otherwise. In an ideal world, we could somehow allow all forms of discussion to occur without driving anyone away. But in practice, that ideal isn't achievable. Any amount of permission we give will drive people away; any amount of restriction we impose will halt conversation. Rules against anything is a sacrifice, but at the same time, a lack of rules against something is also a sacrifice.

I personally think we've achieved a reasonable balance, but I also thought, for some time, that perhaps we'd gone a bit too far in the direction of lack-of-rules. Some of our new mods agree and are willing to put more time into shoving the general conversational climate in the direction that they think is appropriate.

This is a sacrifice. I am genuinely sad for the conversations this kills, that we will never see because the strata of the forum itself no longer supports them.

But I'm happy for the people and opinions we may bring back.

If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to make a good argument that less moderation better suits the needs of the Foundation. I think you'll have a hard time doing this, because you'll need to convince me, and convincing me is hard, ironically because I don't have any firm evidence, I just have gut feeling and instinct. This means you need to either provide a form of evidence that I'm not convinced can exist, or you'll need to overcome that instinct.

But that's your goal, and merely pointing to the conversations lost isn't going to do it.

I'm already aware of those, insofar as someone can be aware of something that never existed.

My model on how civility rules fit with the foundation : imagine we still had the full spectrum of ideologies here, in a normal distribution. Because of the ideological distance, the most vicious fights would be between extremes, say left-anarchists vs nazis. They’d be hardest hit by the tightening of civility rules, and it would narrow the ideological spectrum.

I think this fits with the nearest example, the two long bans under discussion here, burdensomecount’s and mine, which started as a spat between us. While most of the sub has sympathy for christianity, or at least ‘believes in belief’, and finds /r/atheism cringe, I’m still a virulent antitheist, while burdensomecount is an earnest believer in a different religion (also different race, which was more of a factor in his ban). So the odd ones cancel each other out. I’m not saying it’s impossible for an individual to stay impeccably civil despite a considerable ideological distance with the median, but it’s less likely, so on the scale of ideas, that’s how it goes.

I suppose you think greater civility would help recapture some of the center and left commentariat, but in practice, civility mostly protects the sub’s majority. A representative example is darwin’s ban, which I always opposed as a too strict interpretation of civility rules.

My instincts (and as you say, that discussion may be pointless) favour the man who gets banned for offending over the one who leaves when offended.

But whatever happens, even though my ban would obviously be a grievous loss, I'm sure this place will remain pretty great. If there was an election for motte dictator, you’d get my vote, and I’m not just saying that, dear leader.

More comments

They believe it though. The illusion of censorship is that hiding something makes it disappear, like a hand in front of a baby.

It is impossible to prevent people from writing an uncharitable post against their ideological opponents by forbidding them from calling them faggots (or insert any other snarl word). But I do believe it introduces significant friction and reduces the amount of such posts.

It also makes such posts cattier, which is a disincentive in and of itself.

Definitely agree that moderation seems mildly excessive these days, but I think it was mildly too little before the new mods. Burdensome count at least got what was coming to him and kulak legitimately needed a slap on the wrist.

I expect that with the new mods it’ll settle into a Goldilocks given enough time.

Your opinions on moderation, are, of course, entirely your own prerogative. The Motte seems to form a very small, in absolute proportion, but enormous, relative, in the overlapping circles of the Venn diagram representing "freedom to express controversial opinions" and "relatively high quality discourse", throw in "politely", if you care to be stricter.

You want to get away with saying just about anything? Well, there's 4chan. Maybe Twitter. You want articulate and earnest users making long-form content? Plenty of options, none with a particularly wide Overton Window.

Before I became a mod, or even had any reason to assume they were going to add new ones, I certainly felt the poor bastards were overworked and underpaid (well, they're still the latter). I have access to site usage metrics, and they're largely flat since we left Reddit, which is surprising enough. Is the user base shrinking? Not that I can see by eyeballing a graph over months or years, though I am as concerned as anyone by the loss of the old pipeline from Scott endorsing us or simply through the contagion of being an active subreddit. But I foresaw apocalypse before the migration, and that very much hasn't happened.

At any rate, it would be a bit awkward if adding more mods didn't result in more moderation decisions, or minor changes in how it's done. What would the point be then, at least for the former.

Our old charitable custom was to treat strangers as if they were worthy of good faith. Increasingly the mods treat those whose good faith has already been established (such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers.

Oh boy, or maybe "if only you knew how bad things really are"(if we didn't take action)

I assure you that much of the suspicion of new users is because of the tendency of certain undesirables to play whack-a-mole, and that, if someone posts something only mildly objectionable, we usually let them right through.

I find Kulak and BC entertaining, they even have a point at times, I am studiously mute on certain others, but Kulak didn't get banned (last time I checked), merely warned not to be unnecessarily combative, and BC is an out-and-proud fan of drama who got away with a lot before a time out.

What you can get away is with is pretty proportional to your standing in the community, believe me I'm sure I've gotten away with things I feel compelled to mildly mod these days, if only because I hold myself to higher standards.

So are there good alternatives to the motte out there?

Not that I'm aware of. The SSC subreddit is neutered. The Schism, an offshoot of us more tuned for progressives (and I believe) more restrictions on speech is barely in action, the Culture War Roundup subreddit, well it was dying a while back, and I half suspect is gone. /r/Drama? For very loose definitions of "good alternative", I suppose, though I'm glad it exists. It's slim pickings out there.

At any rate, it would be a bit awkward if adding more mods didn't result in more moderation decisions

Hence my wondering why that multiplication of entities was necessary. If the previous state was decent, it’s now overpoliced. I’ve always preferred even less moderation, and I complained occasionnally, especially when those getting moderated were arguing against me at the time.

I find Kulak and BC entertaining, they even have a point at times, I am studiously mute on certain others, but Kulak didn't get banned (last time I checked), merely warned

But warnings go on the record, then when you ban them you implacably cite the warnings in some grand narrative of misbehaviour.

BC is an out-and-proud fan of drama who got away with a lot before a time out.

His opinions are merely a mirror of extreme pro-white viewpoints that are popular here. There is no realistic way to present his honest opinions in here without coming across as hostile, ‘baiting’, ‘trolling’, etc. Not that I endorse his opinions in the slightest: they are probably the furthest away from my own than anyone’s here (my last ban was for a blasphemous response to him).

/r/Drama?

I think you mean rdrama.net

There’s gotta be more. Are all the forums dead, do people just comment on substacks, or youtube?

Hence my wondering why that multiplication of entities was necessary.

So, here, lemme quickly explain.

We've (okay, "I") have a general policy of not demodding mods merely for inaction. I'm happy for them to come back, I'm also happy to have them giving feedback in the Mod chat channel. All of that is useful!

The downside is that this means we have a list of mods and a significant number of those mods don't really do anything. They're still valued people who I'm happy to respect, we just don't get a lot of work done, and the work needs to be done.

Before inviting new mods we were basically down to two mods who were commonly active and another two who were occasionally active, but one of the commonly-active mods was mostly active in doing the quality-contribution reports (which is valuable!) and so practically one mod was doing most of the moderation work. They were doing a good job but I'm always really leery of a bus-number-of-one situation:

  • If they vanish, suddenly we have no working moderators
  • If they start turning toxic, I have a big problem because I don't want to ban them because we would have no working moderators
  • It's really conducive to value drift, which we might not even notice because it's just one person doing that work

In addition, it's a lot of stress on someone's back, which of course increases the chance that they decide they're done and they want to move on. Worse, they know they're a column, so maybe they end up feeling obliged to keep doing this when they don't want to, which pushes us right back into "start turning toxic" and "value drift" territory. It's a bad scene all around.

My main goal here was to take that bus-number-of-one and turn it up to two or three mods, entirely just to solve the problems with having a single mod.

When I've added mods before, my general experience is that for every two mods you invite, one accepts, and for every two mods who accepts, one contributes. If I want one active mod I gotta invite four mods.

So I invited four mods and they all accepted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm honestly quite happy about this - maybe this means we'll have a healthy mod population until I can finally get some of the next set up updates to the Volunteer system done. But it still wasn't quite intended.

The tl;dr:

  • We have fewer active mods than it looks like
  • Having too few mods has a bunch of unfortunate consequences
  • I went to add more mods and got more new mods than I expected

There’s gotta be more.

Let me know what you find.

I can't really complain about the current moderation, since in my solipsism I have decided I was responsible for all of it (I am joking (about the solipsism)). But I think this is pretty normal when you get new mods. The job's got a bit of a learning curve, you can't expect everyone to nail it right out of the gate. Power is intoxicating and everyone wants to learn what new functions they have access to. Give them a chance man, I'm a good judge of character (this is also why I don't want you to leave.)

Thanks, man. I don’t want to be the guy who uses his theatrical exit to make a grandstanding argument, but I gots to be a little. Besides, if they keep to the same trajectory, I’m getting long-term banned anyway, and I feel I owe you guys at least a heads-up before I leave. I don’t want to, I had a great time here. We can have quick friendly sparring because I know most commenters’ disposition & allegiance, and would have to relearn all of that somewhere else, even if I could find similar quality.

His opinions are merely a mirror of extreme pro-white viewpoints that are popular here

I'm pretty sure if you swapped the races in that comment but kept the words the same it'd still be considered rulebreaking.

There is no realistic way to present his honest opinions in here without coming across as hostile, ‘baiting’, ‘trolling’, etc

Nah, not at all. What about: "In the tradition of Nietszche, I hold that the moral value of humans comes primarily from their will to and ability to exercise power. Just as Europeans came into greatness as they conquered the known world several centuries ago and brought their civilization's seed and bounty to all, a new class of Great Men is emerging - this time selected not based on skin color or ancestry - correlated with merit via genes, but imperfectly - but directly via social stratification based on intellegence and competence. Racial nationalists long for the aesthetics of the old order, but fail to perceive this material logic of the new one."

And "As a high IQ person, yes, I've observed that intelligence is correlated with race. And yet, the people I work with, spend my time with, just happen to chat with on the internet -- the people I judge to be worth interacting with - are members of a variety of races. I just see no evidence that an Indian, Jew, or Chinese person lacks any essential qualities that White Men have. And, indeed, Indians, Asians, and Jews have ascended to every height of post-European society seemingly by merit alone. Given that, BAP's complaints about the new multiracial elite seem tinged with ressentiment - just like white overrepresentation is 'structural racism' and the bailey is 'intentionally exists to exploit black people', jewish/indian overrepresentation exists to ... intentionally hurt white people."

(I to a significant extent agree with both of those, although they weren't written as my view, have various problems, and they're more half truths due to missing a lot of context (and no the full context doesn't 'sound better'))

I agree that insults are to a large extent just direct statements of things that directly make people look bad, and people shouldn't react negatively to them. But it's very easy for anyone here to reword their statement to communicate the same idea without getting moderated.

Hence my wondering why that multiplication of entities was necessary. If the previous state was decent, it’s now overpoliced. I’ve always preferred even less moderation, and I complained occasionnally, especially when those getting moderated were arguing against me at the time.

Maybe "decent" for you. I can only imagine it was far more stressful for the mods at the time. Jannies do it for free.

The only major difference, after the influx of new mods, is that what might have been noticed and acted on maybe 2 or 3 days late gets deal with in a few hours. That might seem like overpolicing to you, but it also represents far prompter turnaround times.

His opinions are merely a mirror of extreme pro-white viewpoints that are popular here. There is no realistic way to present his honest opinions in here without coming across as hostile, ‘baiting’, ‘trolling’, etc. Not that I endorse his opinions in the slightest: they are probably the furthest away from my own than anyone’s here (my last ban was for a blasphemous response to him).

You do see he's been around here for years right? If every accusation of him being a troll or hostile was taken up, he'd have been gone in a week.

As for whether it is possible to represent his arguments, in a less inflammatory manner? I think so. And apparently he himself is an existence proof, given that he's been making them in one form or another for ages, and only once (I can't be bothered to look up the exact count right now) or a couple times got punished when he crossed the generous lines. The same is also true for those who make the inverse argument.

So he himself argued the same case before, in a more acceptable manner. And he also happens to have AAQCs, which aren't a popularity contest.

I think you mean rdrama.net

I know what the website is, but apologies for being unclear.

But warnings go on the record, then when you ban them you implacably cite the warnings in some grand narrative of misbehaviour.

What exactly do you think a warning is for? A cry for help into the ether? Of course it is backed by the implicit threat that the mods will take action, if not now, then in the future. That's the entire point!

If someone has been warned in the past and doesn't get their act together, then that is not a free pass to be precisely as bad again and expect to just keep getting warned indefinitely. You either get your act together and meet at least minimum standards, become so net positive that the mods sigh and let you off (including turning bans into warnings, or shorter bans)*, or you get booted.

I really am confused why someone who see this as a sticking point. How many people think it's worse for a cop to fire warning shots before mowing down an onrushing criminal, as opposed to just shooting them in the head? A warning gives an opportunity to change course, not every chiding by a mod warrants a note or constitutes a formal warning.

*Before I became a mod, I am very certain that certain comments by me would have gotten a fresh user warned or even banned. The one ban here I have on record, a very short one, might well have gotten much, much worse for a user without a reputation.

I don't want them shot in the head. Mods are janitors, mall cops, their use of lethal force should be strongly restricted.

Mods are judge, jury and executioner, and the legislative branch. They are the ones who set up and run the space, therefore they get to decide everything. If Zorba wants to shut the site down entirely that is his prerogative. We don't have any rights in a space, we didn't create and don't help run. We don't even pay taxes!

In other words this is not our house, it is Zorbas and as per the Castle doctrine, he is quite entitled to "shoot" anyone he doesn't want here. Think of yourself as a guest, and consider the host has an absolute right to throw you out, if you do not behave the way they want you too.

The fact Zorba handles that generally with a light touch (as do his deputies) is irrelevant. That is the cold hard truth of the matter.

You're obviously correct, but FWIW I think it's best to be gentle hosts, since Zorba and the mods are also (I presume) very interested in attracting rather than repelling new blood.

Oh absolutely I agree. Being too harsh is likely to be detrimental to the health of the space. I was mainly arguing against the "mods are just janitors" point. They are clearly much more than that, and I think not recognizing that is a flaw.

I take great pains to, including commending new posters who are doing things right.

And in a more general manner, we have AAQCs, and once in a blue moon, you might get drafted to help elect the new mods or become one yourself.

We would, of course, prefer that every comer is maximally civil, curious and earnest from the start, but to the extent incentives matter, we try to be carrot as well as stick.

And it does seem to work. We're still here, a functioning community.

Look, let's be clear here: comparing a permaban to being shot in the head is just silly. This is a small niche forum, restricting your ability to post here is not killing you or even infringing your precious "freedom of speech" to an appreciable degree. We do care about freedom of speech which is why permabans are not applied casually. But there are rules here, you can like them or not, choose to follow them or not, you can even argue endlessly with us about how they should be enforced and whether they should be changed. Nonetheless, the rules exist and we enforce them with careful (if imperfect) consideration, and the people who get permabanned are people who, in every single case, made a deliberate choice to say "fuck your rules." And even then, as you have observed yourself, it's pretty easy to come back as an alt as long as you don't make yourself too obvious. So please stop with the histrionics about how mod punishments are like a cop shooting someone over a traffic ticket.

And even then, as you have observed yourself, it's pretty easy to come back as an alt as long as you don't make yourself too obvious.

This solution filters out good faith participants who will just leave as directed, while the worst stay. But if you tell me it’s unofficially tolerated, then I have to agree that a long ban is no big deal for freedom of speech purposes, but then, what is even the point of handing it out.

But if you tell me it’s unofficially tolerated

It's not, it's just that we don't have a 100% accurate way to detect alts, and we tend to err on the side of allowing false negatives vs banning false positives.

You have to take responsibility then, and endure my tedious metaphors, like I endure your knife on my throat. The fact is, with the centralisation and censorship on large platforms, there aren’t many available alternatives anymore, so a long ban does represent a significant infringement on a commenter's freedom of speech, more than it used to.

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I mean, sure, you might want that. And that's fine, but it's also never going to happen. Even 4chan is not Free Speech Maximalist, try posting CSAM and see where that gets you.

Given that Kulak didn't get anything but a warning, and a mild one, which is mostly ameliorated by the fact he acknowledged he was overreacting, BC is only gone for a month, and Hlynka is already back, it is not so much as anyone being "shot in the head" as the local Sheriff throwing some of the pub regulars in the drunk tank.

The people who are kicked off the site for good, and their alts banned relentlessly, have it coming.

There’s gotta be more. Are all the forums dead, do people just comment on substacks, or youtube?

If you enjoy getting around bans from the wider internet and don't love civility, there's Kiwi Farms. I do not go there, because I like both ease of use and politeness.

The CWR subreddit is barely active anymore- I think most of the non-shared regulars got permabanned from Reddit and the shared regulars don’t feel the need to post their as often.

Maybe datasecretslox?

Ah, I forget DSL exists, and I'm not even sure what it's like over there. All I can really say, after a quick look, is that the design of the site on mobile leaves much to be desired.

Though I think they have harsher moderation standards, but that's from vague memory.

I don’t think their moderation standards are very different from the ones here, though moderation actions there are treated with a bit less deference than here. Every time one of the regulars gets modded, it sets off a firestorm of protest, including frequently from the moderatee’s ideological opponents.

DSL's pretty okay.

Getting modded does seem to always result in a ban, but there's still a long ladder of them, and what actually gets modded seems a bit less strict.

I'm the opposite, until recently I thought there was a big drop in the amount of moderating, to the detriment of the space. Hopefully the additional mods, mean we can keep a tightly moderated space. The whole point of theMotte is that civility needs to be modded for, in order that people with very different opinions can interact. TheMotte allows you to say almost anything...as long as you do it with an eye to framing it civilly for even your opponents. Good faith is helpful, but you still have to maintain your civility. That means not using terms that are likely to be inflammatory to your outgroup, unless those terms are vital to your post.

That requires a significant amount of moderating I think.

Many moons ago, on old reddit, when the ultra-progressive subs like SRS started banning certain words like ‘retarded’, everyone laughed at the futile attempt to stop the euphemistic threadmill. Now, even here, new words are regularly put on the index.

When new words become reliable markers of a low-value post, they ought to get regarded as such.

That’s an entirely different matter. I’m talking about censorship/power, you’re talking about status/information/truth. One could even say that through censorship, we lose the valuable information in the use of banned words (that the speaker is possibly low-status, etc).

There are no banned words here. You're still welcome to give an example of calling people a slur that isn't antagonistic and waging the culture war.

If you call someone stupid, you will be modded. That doesn't mean "stupid" is a banned word.

You're still welcome to give an example of calling people a slur that isn't antagonistic and waging the culture war.

Let me venture an attempt, using just the words HlynkaCG used.

"Fagots (sic) exist."

"Trannys exist."

"Elf Brahmins exist."

These seem to be "calling people a slur". Is it "antagonistic and waging the culture war"? Am I already modded? I must say, if even these examples count as bad, I cannot imagine any possible way they could be used that wouldn't be considered "antagonistic and waging the culture war". Perhaps they could be mentioned, but again, I believe this would be enshrining exactly the use/mention distinction into the rules of the forum and simply banning all uses as being inherently "antagonistic and waging the culture war". You're right that the result isn't that they would be "banned words" at the same level of utter stupidity that led to that business professor getting fired for teaching his students a common Chinese word that sounds a lot like an English slur, but I think it'll be pretty hard to maintain that there is any possible way that someone could use them without being banned.

I say this as someone who has no interest in actually using such words1, and I don't think you'll find any sort of inkling toward wanting to use them in any of my comments; I'm not that kind of person, myself. But I sure do prize clarity, especially when it comes to rules that result in folks like HlynkaCG being banned... and right now, we ain't got it.

1 - The only exception being 'retarded', because I think it's, uh, dumb that it's gotten the hate it's gotten. It's a clear example of an impossible euphemism treadmill that will never stop eating every word that even comes close to it, even when they're perfectly fine words on their own. I will forever continue to talk about internal combustion engine timing as being advanced or retarded, and if someone is late to the party, I will almost certainly joke that, "It's okay, they're just retarded. They'll be here soon."

"Fagots (sic) exist."

"Trannys exist."

"Elf Brahmins exist."

These seem to be "calling people a slur". Is it "antagonistic and waging the culture war"?

Probably, but it would depend on the context. It's not like we make a judgment based on a single keyword. If your entire post is a rant about your outgroup, including "faggots exist," we're probably going to point out that dropping insulting terms just because you hate your outgroup is making it unnecessarily inflammatory. If you are responding to someone who said "Faggots don't exist" and said "Yes, faggots exist," we'd probably let it go (or maybe tell both of you to chill out). Of course that's a contrived example, just as your sentences above are contrived examples (why would you be asserting that "X exists" but using the most pejorative term for X?)

Am I already modded?

Obviously not, this is clearly a mention and not a use. Don't be disingenuous.

but I think it'll be pretty hard to maintain that there is any possible way that someone could use them without being banned.

We don't usually start by banning people, we start by telling people "Please speak like you want everyone to be included in the conversation." We have never had a policy of banning people outright because they used a bad word. We have always had a policy of telling people not to use slurs just to express how much they despise their outgroup. Don't be disingenuous.

I say this as someone who has no interest in actually using such words1, and I don't think you'll find any sort of inkling toward wanting to use them in any of my comments; I'm not that kind of person, myself. But I sure do prize clarity, especially when it comes to rules that result in folks like HlynkaCG being banned... and right now, we ain't got it.

Don't be disingenuous. Hlynka was banned not because he dropped a bunch of slurs in one post, but because he was using slurs to be excessively belligerent to another poster for no reason, and he has a long track record of doing this (not necessarily with slurs, but being unnecessarily belligerent), and we've told him repeatedly to dial it down and he won't. And you have been around long enough that you know this.

Seems reasonable that the line is not just the use/mention distinction (as you had previously said, leading to the current confusion). instead, it's just about some ethereal balance of positive/negative vibes that your comment gives concerning the group in question. Thus, why @FiveHourMarathon can point to his comment where he said, "The obnoxious slurs were right," but if you had essentially the same post focusing on geopolitics, but found a way to say, "Of course, the obnoxious slurs were wrong," that's probably a moddin'. Gotta get enough positive vibes to pump those numbers up, make sure it doesn't sound like you're just dumping on the outgroup.

Instead it's just about some ethereal balance of positive/negative vibes that concern the group in question

This is right and good.

If the rule is against being antagonistic, or boo-outgroup, that is inherently a vibe-based thing.

Use of slurs can be done without those pitfalls, but it's easy to use them badly, and it's unsurprising that people get modded for using them in antagonistic comments and not for using them more suitably (as he explained why it fit his comment).

We have always modded taking context and intent and the overall tone of posts into account. If you want to call that "some ethereal balance of positive/negative vibes," sure, whatever.

You know what dumping on the outgroup looks like, and you do not have a principled objection to the distinction between use and mention, or between @FiveHourMarathon's post and @Hlynka's.

https://www.themotte.org/comment/164812?context=3#context

Comment I made that got AAQCed for some reason. I use the word Faggots in the comment. Was not modded, no scolding was handed down.

One obvious difference, the joke about the motte is accurate, is that it's a single word in a wall of text. So writing more is going to help you avoid getting modded compared to drive by slurring, which is nearly always going to draw attention. Another is that it serves the argument being made, calling the anti war protestors faggots was a choice to capture the mindset of a patriotic American of the time.

So the rule is more like, if you use slurs the rest of your post better be Motte quality stuff. The comment will be held to a higher standard.

So is "I think {thing} is retarded" alright?

As long as {thing} is not another poster.

Wait, 'Trump is retarded' would be OK? That seems inconsistent with recent moderation around 'tranny'?

I'd treat "Trump is retarded" the same way I'd treat "Trump is an idiot." If you're making an effortful post with a real argument (the thesis of which is Trump's idiocy), I probably wouldn't mod it because you called him "retarded." If you're just dropping a "Trump is retarded" comment because you don't like Trump, I'd ding it for low effort, but I'd do the same for "Trump is an idiot."

That makes sense -- but what I mean is that this seems inconsistent with "Contrapoints is a tranny" being a problem -- even though "tranny" doesn't particularly imply anything bad about Contrapoints ! (unlike, say, "Contrapoints is retarded")

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Yup, and that is fine. Its the way of the world. We don't get to decide what people find offensive. And here we have to try to be as inoffensive as possible given the point we are trying to make. So we have to keep up. Thats one of the costs of trying to keep a space where even people who hate each others ideas can talk.

The ways of the world are mysterious, my friend. You’re somewhat progressive. Do you approve of what has become of reddit? They certainly ‘keep up’ with 'what people find offensive', but people who hate each other's ideas can't seem to talk there. I don’t want this model of discourse applied here, no matter how popular or historically inevitable it is.

Well the mods here moderate for tone not content. If you want to argue black people are inferior or trans people are mentally ill you can. You just have to try to write as if you want black/trans people to read and interact with you.

I am not progressive by the way. I'd consider myself a left leaning authoritarian neo-liberal if anything. I just directionally agree with progressives more than conservatives as it stands. But i've voted and worked for both left and right leaning political parties. So i can go back and forth.

Reddit should do what the owners of Reddit want it to do, that is the point of ownership. Just the way Musk has been able to change Twitter. They aren't public squares so allow or disallow whatever they like.

I'd consider myself a left leaning authoritarian neo-liberal if anything.

I don’t think it’s liberal of you to support the punching of innocents.

Aren’t authoritarianism and liberalism usually opposed to one another? Authoritarian neo-liberalism sounds like the ultimate booword every political party says they oppose. Or maybe it’s Pinochet.

Reddit should do what the owners of Reddit want it to do, that is the point of ownership.

Cop-out. You have no opinion on the choices they made, and the state of our old home? How would you, as the legitimate owner, moderate it?

You'll note I don't support the punching of innocents. I say "I am not saying it is morally correct".

I am making a point about human nature. Whether I think its good or bad is irrelevant it just is. But a lot of people struggle with that position. I am saying that is what I think must happen if progress is to be made.

I would certainly prefer it if people were more forgiving and nicer and that were not the case! But that is not the world we are in. Similarly, I truly believe one of the benefits of owning a platform is getting to decide who can use it, what can be said and how. How I would moderate it is irrelevant, what matters is how the people who do own it feel.

If I were to ever buy it, i would probably aim for something like theMotte but with even more strict civility rules. Then if I was trying to make money from advertising on it, I would also censor and ban anything that impacted my advertising revenue, no matter what it was. As I wouldn't be buying it for free speech reasons but merely to make money. I'm a pragmatist not an idealist.

Neoliberalism is Thatcherite economics. Laissez-faire economy, austerity measures. It has essentially nothing to do with civil liberties, and as such is not contradictory with authoritarianism. Pinochet is AFAIK indeed a good example of an authoritarian neoliberal.

I must confess I'm also confused by what a non-progressive leftist authoritarian neo-liberal is, though, because most political definitions of "left" imply some sort of progressivism or government control of the economy.

My experiences in the US Rust Belt and West Midlands in England, have led me to be more supportive of wealth redistribution when it comes to the areas harmed by neo-liberal policies. I think they are still better overall and out-perform pretty much all other options when it comes to wealth generation, but the "trickle down" effect needs a helping hand from the state when it comes ex-mining and manufacturing centers. Economic and political instability from these areas seems to be to be one of the biggest threats to long term democratic stability. Ergo I would support subsidized healthcare and jobs and education in those locations, more so than the average neo-liberal.

So higher taxation on companies that benefit from out-sourcing in order to compensate the citizens left with the short end of the stick. This puts me at odds with some of my more orthodox neo-liberal compatriots.

As just one example.

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Neo-liberal today means whatever Hillary Clinton says it means today as far as I can tell.

The term has lost any connection to Pinochet. Depending whatever decade you use authoritarian neoliberal I would be it or the enemy of it. In the modern 2020-2024 context I would associate the term with Clinton, Newman, Trudeau and COVID authoritarianism. In short the term almost has no meaning at this point.

That being said I do think modding has gotten high. And there is no functional differences between tone policing and content policing. People notice tone far less when it’s from a context they agree with but notice the smallest slight from their outgroup.

You forgot the race and class essentialism, but yes.

Any one who thinks authoritarianism and liberalism are somehow opposed/mutually exclusive doesn't really know liberals.

I'm a fan of the moderators. This is, at the end of the day, a social club.

I periodically go through the moderation log. I don't remember seeing a mod decision I thought was grossly unfair in the past few months.

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