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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I am honestly confused by your accusations.

Allow a community of like minded people to congregate on /r/themotte

Yes, we have done this, where others have not. If others were doing this, we would probably not bother.

Encourage those people to leave

Leave what? Leave reddit? No, we only encouraged people to also be on themotte website. There is no requirement or encouragement to leave reddit. I still have an account there for subreddits I enjoy.

Lock the door behind them once they do

What door has been locked? We also permabanned people over on the subreddit.

Maybe you don't like hylnka, but a lot of people did. The whole pitch on moving everybody here was that we could avoid the overbearing influence of reddit admins, but now we just have...you guys. Hylnka was a dick, and banned me at least once on themotte...but as I have pointed out before: you guys (specifically you, cjet) over way overtending this garden.

No, I like Hlynka. If there is such a thing as "internet friends" I would consider him one. I was the most reluctant among the mods to ban him, and have stuck up for his behavior quite often in the back-channels. The fact that I am the one to ban him is more similar to a "George shoots Lennie" situation. Not comparing Hlynka to Lennie, but the social dynamic of the situation where the most ardent defender of the accused who gave them as many chances as possible has to be the one to carry out the execution.

And yes you have us. This was always the agreement. If you want the reddit admins and some other set of moderators, you know where reddit is. We have gotten significantly more lenient since moving off of reddit, because there is more of a worry of eroding our user base and having no replacement source. If you want no moderation there are places on the internet like that. This isn't such a place, never has been, and never will be given that zorba will probably just shut it down if it came to that.

Most of the discussion here just sounds like (and I suspect heavily is) chatbots talking back and forth to one another. Many have pointed out that a version of a captcha for chatbots is if they are willing to say naughty words or not. What you're basically doing with this ban is saying "you have to sound like a chatbot in order to post here". I think this is a bad idea.

People are allowed to say "naughty words" here. They aren't allowed to put words in other's mouths. Accuse people of beliefs they don't hold with little or no evidence/discussion. And throw out broad sweeping insults to others.

You can say cunt, but you can't call another user one without breaking our rules. If you are not a fan of "politeness" as one of the rules of discussion, I'd again suggest that most of the rest of the internet is still out there.

Here's a suggestion for how to improve themotte and course correct it: give us something like "showdead" on hacker news. Give me the option in my userprofile to have a non mod curated experience where I can see naughty posts and interact with them. People who want the more curated experience can untick this "show naughty" option, and never have to see it. I don’t think you will do this since it takes the power of being a mod away (although keeps the practical purpose), but it would be appreciated.

No. Zorba has been asked about this multiple times before. He has a post somewhere about trash in a river as a comparison. The general point is that our users actually do most of the filtering for us, and mods are here as a backup to make sure there is a clear bright line.

They aren't allowed to put words in other's mouths. Accuse people of beliefs they don't hold with little or no evidence/discussion.

People do this to me (I'm guessing) 70% of the times I post here.

I don't think it's malice, I think it's the inferential gap. When someone from outside your local hivemind cluster reads your post, they don't take away from it the same things you put in. So their response often assumes a lot of things about you that are not present in the post and are dead wrong.

I could report every time that happens to me, but it would be counter-productive. I think it's a symptom of people with different contexts finding an area where they both have something to learn, and should be explored rather than punished.

(which I don't always have the emotional energy for, but, you know. In theory.)

People getting things wrong in good faith is one thing.

Blatantly disregarding clarification is an order.

There’s still enough diversify of thought here that any given stance is going to risk an inferential gap with someone, and consistently striving to pass an ITT is the best we can do.

What door has been locked? We also permabanned people over on the subreddit.

Every post on /r/themotte is locked for comments and nobody can post anything new. That's the door that has been locked.

Wasn't it locked when the migration happened? The motive was to prevent the division of the community between the two platforms, and make sure it launches successfully, right?

Speaking for myself, if there were a bunch of jannies lording over people constantly with a long list of rules, I wouldn't participate.

The whole move here was because of the reddit admins making clear they wanted more bans, more policing, etc.