site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3318 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 5, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Whatever man -- that's the reason, and she's not wrong. "Turn up the heat" is an interesting approach to dealing with evaporative cooling -- if there were a (metaphorical) retort somewhere capturing all of the quality people who've had enough around here, it's getting to the point where that would be a better place to hang out.

On the one hand, I think you raise valid concerns that are worth considering. On the other hand, people have been saying "pretty soon you'll have banned all the interesting posters" since like, 2020. And I think this place is still doing pretty ok.

Looking at the list of people who have been permabanned on the new site, the only posters on there who I consider to be serious losses are Hlynka, fuckduck, and we can add FarNearEverywhere on a technicality until she decides to come back. So that's not a huge list. Most of the accounts that get permabanned are literal trolls or spam accounts.

With all due respect, "I do what I want" is not a viable approach to building a quality space. FNE was given a warning, not a ban straight off (presumably because she is a good poster and it wasn't a serious infraction), and that's all that it needed to ever be. It was because she chose to escalate things that she got banned temporarily, and it was perfectly reasonable.

With all due respect, "I do what I want" is not a viable approach to building a quality space.

You are focussing on this part because the initial warning was indefensible -- the content was polite, just that the other poster didn't like it. She should absolutely continue 'doing what she wants' -- the mods are not gods.

But it is a private space owned by Zorba. This isn't a democracy. If you don't behave the way the owner likes, then you can either knuckle under, leave or continue to disobey until they kick you out permanently.

You don't get to do what you want in someone elses house. That is basic etiquette, whether you agree with their rules or not.

Yes, and Zorba's team is making mistakes right now, resulting in #2 & 3 occurring with a concerning number of interesting posters.

Eh, we've lost of interesting posters over the years, but obeying the rules is mostly easy. Given the purpose of this place it has to select for people who can decouple , and not post angry. If you tell the mods you aren't going to obey them whether you think you are right or not, that needs to stop. No matter how interesting a poster you are. I like FNE but she pushed and pushed and pushed and struggled with not responding to people saying her ideas/pov was not correct, as if they were saying she was a moron. And using nuclear levels of sarcasm doing it.

It has to be interesting posters who are willing to voluntarily toe the line. Honestly i still feel like moderation is not harsh enough. Habitual line steppers should be gone after 3 instances. They clearly aren't going to learn.

I'm focusing on this part because it's the part which matters. Reasonable people may disagree on whether the initial warning was right, and if FNE had chosen to politely argue that she wasn't in the wrong then all would be well. I think that the initial warning was a bit harsh, though I think "indefensible" is far too strong a claim. But the way you take up your cause with the mods matters a great deal, and nobody gets to just go "nah I'm not listening to you". That's not ok.

nobody gets to just go "nah I'm not listening to you". That's not ok.

But why though?

Neither "backtalking to a mod" nor "statement of intent to commit another rules violation in the future" are explicitly forbidden by the current rules. If one or both of those are not allowed, then the rules page should be amended to make that explicit.

Dude it's common sense. It doesn't need to be explicitly spelled out in the rules, any more than the rules explicitly enumerate every single word you aren't allowed to use to describe fellow posters.

No need to do that. It seems relatively obvious to block someone who openly announces in reply to warning that they will not change behaviour at all.

"Don't be egregiously obnoxious" covers both, I think.

No matter how careful we are, someone's going to come up with a way to be annoying, in a way that technically follows the rules. If we were to write a rule saying "don't do this thing", they would bend the rule to be as broad as possible, then complain that we're not enforcing it properly.

The goal of this community is not, however, slavish adherence to rules. It's discussion. And if this means we need to use our human judgement to make calls, then that's exactly what we will do.

There are people who think that every rule should be absolutely objective, to the point where our job could be done by a robot. I will point out that no legal system in history has ever worked this way and that if you think we can do better than the entire human race working on it for five thousand years, then I invite you to submit a proposal on how it will work.

I understand that that rule is supposed to be an elastic clause, and I agree on the practical necessity of having an elastic clause. But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.

In this case we have identified something that is an explicit rule and can be phrased relatively unambiguously - either "don't backtalk to a mod" or "don't state your intent to violate the rules", whatever formulation you prefer - so why not just add it as an explicit rule?

(I also simply disagree that either of FNE's posts in that thread were egregiously obnoxious, although I think her first post that got the initial warning was an unambiguous violation of the rules on courtesy and low-effort posting.)

But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.

I'd agree with that. But suppose we want to allow people to respond to warnings, even to push back on them and explain why they think they're in the right, but we don't want people to outright defy warnings.

"respond", "pushback", and "defy" are all subjective terms. If we nail down a definition for them, we can just recapitulate this conversation again, about whether or not people were "defiant", or merely "pushing back".

If a mod says "you are breaking the rules, stop it," and the reply is "You aren't the boss of me, I'm gonna keep doing it", I don't think most people are surprised if the response is "okay, we'll cut to the chase and just give you a ban then." That doesn't seem to require a lot of elasticity. We give warnings because we want people to modify their behavior without having to ban them. We give limited-duration bans because we want people to modify their behavior without perma-banning them. If someone straight-up tells us that they aren't modifying their behavior based on the current response, escalation seems like a reasonable alternative.

What is this place?

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.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats