ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
Hah, I like how Uhura doesn't even take offense there.
These all feel like really good examples of doing it right, honestly. Yes, if you're pulling a character in from ancient times, they're going to have some confusion about a black woman serving on board the bridge, of course they are! But that doesn't need to be the thing the episode is about, and in fact probably shouldn't be. Allegory, not sledgehammer.
. . . also that's a pretty funny line in response to Sulu.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Aside from "a lot of money", which I'm pretty sure everyone could use, honestly the biggest thing we need is just an influx of users. I don't know if you're feeling up for tying these communities together again, but we could really use a spot on your sidebar.
Regardless of whether you're up for that yourself, I'd also appreciate any recommendations on blogs that would be interested. This is something I'm looking for in general, but in addition I'm specifically hoping for some rationalist-left-wing blogs (add "adjacent" in there as many times as necessary); I know this is a tough thing to find but I'm kinda worried about the whole evaporative-cooling witch thing.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
From the topic text:
Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
- Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
Please don't post things like this.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
They've actually become less stealthy about it. In some cases, including this one, it just gets replaced by the text "[ Removed by Reddit ]".
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I guess I assumed at least one mod had seen a 6-day old, second level comment and the 10th highest comment of the week. If I was wrong, mea culpa.
I can't speak for the other mods, but when I'm reading over comments I'm often not thinking about them with mod-brain, if that makes sense. There's been times I've browsed recent comments, gone to look at the mod queue, and said "oh shit, yeah, that comment I literally read a minute ago was awful, wasn't it".
Reports absolutely help, and reporting it for the right thing is also important, but if it's ambiguous, don't stress too much about it - choose a report reason that's defensible and you're in the right ballpark.
(Every once in a while someone reports a twenty-paragraph megapost for "low effort" and I tend to just sort of approve those after a quick skim to make sure it's not the word "cheese" repeated a thousand times, so if someone is being antagonistic in a megapost, and you report it for "low effort", that might be a wasted report; don't do that. "Not reporting megaposts as low-effort" is basically the bar of report-quality that I ask :V)
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
For what it's worth, there are some things that can only be posted in the Culture War thread, but we've never restricted anything from being posted in the Culture War thread. Partly because it seems like a lot of trouble for not much gain and partly because it's kinda funny.
So yeah, this is fine here.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
In short: why?
Because if I can prove it can't be done, then I can use that to explain why people don't do it. Because if I can prove it can be done, then I can do it and gently show people how to politics better.
Because to me, "the existence of trans people" isn't propaganda any more than putting angels or nazis or bikers or forest rangers in a game is propaganda. Having things in a game does not imply support for those things, nor does it imply disapproval of those things. Having a larger palette makes for more options, which lets me make better games. And the more ways I can use parts of that palette, the better off I am.
Because it's a challenge.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
I actually think that's clever and I like that. And then of course nobody really brings it up, it's just "hey, yeah, go for it."
(One of the things that was in my notes for that post that didn't make it in was my then-4-year-old daughter deciding she wanted to play Monster Hunter World, and in character creation, decided to make a middle-aged black man, which I admit I thought was kind of funny. But I also don't think it meant anything, she just thought he looked cool, which, in fairness, he did. So, hey, go for it kid, have fun.)
Sounds like a pretty bad approach honestly :V
Right now recruiting is not the biggest issue I see. Honestly, this thread itself is kind of a bigger problem; note that it's already been mod-warned, but it's entirely "wow, such normie, very woke, what a problem". The thing I'm most concerned about right now is . . .
. . . okay right now it's dealing with the employment tangle I'm dealing with. But after that, the thing I'm most concerned about is tweaking moderation and figuring out a better way to gently-but-firmly shove the tone around, and that's what the volunteer-janitor stuff is for.
Once I've handled that, I plan to go back to recruiting efforts. However, right now the traffic honestly isn't bad - it's lower than it used to be but nowhere near lower enough that I think it's an immediate existential threat.
And I think, if I were going to recruit people, "people who got removed from a community for not reading the room" is not the group I'd be targeting. Especially people in that situation who would push the balance of this community further away from diverse-opinions.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
I've actually got a code review pending for it right now, but it's one of those annoyingly fiddly changes :/
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
It's a fair subject to discuss as long as you're doing it while following the rules. "Rar the Jews are just running a conspiracy" is likely to get booted, for example, and you will definitely have to bring up serious evidence if you're trying to make concrete claims. Anything like that gets put under the strongest scrutiny; it's not offlimits, it's just sensitive.
I'm not located in Europe and our servers aren't either. I guess at some point we could remove that content from European users only, if we had to :V
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
I've tried that before and what inevitably happens is I just end up ignoring the success notices.
In this case, however, I'm using healthchecks.io to handle this; it'll start pinging me on its own if it doesn't get regular notifications of success. So unless that service goes down, we're good.
To be ever safer, the script that sends the success notification should pull some independent confirmation the backup actually occurred, like the output of ls -l on the directory the database dumps are going to, and should include this in the notification text. Without this, a 'success' email only technically means that a particular point in a script was reached, not that a backup happened.
Ideally, yeah. In this case it's worth noting that it's taking full drive images, so it's, uh, kind of hard to do an ls. I guess I could run it as root and do a whole loopback thing to mount the image but I don't think that's likely to be necessary.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
It's always funny just what cross-section of history people know. Like, to me, the Bhopal Disaster is just a thing that happened. I don't know when I learned about it, I can't remember a time I didn't know about it. I could probably give a vaguely accurate summary of it without even checking Wikipedia. I don't understand how anyone could not know about it.
Never heard of the Ogaden War, though.
And I know I've heard the name Gary Condit before, but I don't remember anything about Chandra Levy.
Meanwhile, I bet there's some historical moment that you have deep knowledge about and that I have literally never even heard of.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
What you have failed to adequately explain is why single-issue posting is inherently bad for this forum. Why can’t I just hide threads on topics I don’t find interesting or worth engaging with?
It's the Community Pool theory of community development. Every action kind of influences everyone to a small degree; if everyone's wading through a dozen posts of "the Jews did this" to get to the meat, it's going to drive away people who aren't interested in that, and simultaneously encourage people to jew-post. This both makes the problem worse and removes the mitigating factor.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I think it is very unlikely that we'll reach a point where a standalone mobile app is the best use of our development time. It would also make us far more vulnerable to Apple/Google censorship; even if we could get it for free, I'm not sure it would be worth it.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Alright, I'm serious about this: change your name. This is the third time I've asked, and this time I'm banning you until you do. Imitating existing users is uncool regardless of who it is, and given that you can just change your nickname, I don't see much reason for us to tolerate it.
Send a message to the admins once you've done so and we'll unban you.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
We do, sort of, and also not sort of.
So, first, we have a similar comment filtering system that we had before. In theory we had it disabled but it turns out there's a hilarious bug where there's no "disable" option, and instead people with negative scores are getting filtered, which I think is hilarious and do not plan to change. (We'll be enabling it soon anyway.)
This means that top-level posts need to be approved by us before they go public, as do comments from new users. Turns out these still contribute to the reply count and so that's part of what you're seeing.
Second, if deletes their post, it doesn't decrement the post counter. We should probably fix that. I accidentally replied to someone with a test account and then deleted it and now that post eternally has an extra comment mark. Such is life.
Third, we do actually have shadowbans as well - it came with the site - but we haven't used any yet.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
For what it's worth, I think the existence of vote buttons is important for people to feel like they're contributing; hell, if we had vote buttons and they did literally nothing they would still be a net benefit.
But yeah, I'm not super-happy with how they currently work.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I think the only thing I'd ask is to use some quote you consider appropriate out of the top of the sidebar:
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.
or the sidebar:
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.
but otherwise, use your own words.
Also, many thanks :)
(other people may have better ideas; you're welcome to ignore mine and use theirs :V)
My first suspicion is that in a world with cryonics, this means body modification is sufficiently good that people can transition fully and convincingly without too much trouble.
I've actually got a game idea that, for complicated reasons, plays really well with homosexual/bisexual relationships, plays really badly with 2020s trans sensibilities, but is completely compatible with super scifi medical technology.
So I'm planning to just not have "trans people" as such, and if anyone asks, I'll say "oh yeah, medical science is really good, if you want to change your body you just go to the doctor. Takes like an hour of filling out paperwork, then you show up for a shot every week for a few months. Totally normal, nobody cares."
I know some people are going to get bent out of shape anyway, but, hey, fuck 'em.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Personally, I'd say that you might be on the wrong community.
Ideological diversity is the entire point of this place, and that's not hyperbole, we have a Foundation that defines the point:
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.
If you feel so negatively about left-wing people that you're not able to discuss things with them then you're in the wrong place.
ZorbaTHut
1yr ago
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.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Yeah, I'm definitely interested in any ideas that people have to amp up ideological diversity. It's a hard problem.
Once the visual revamp is done I plan to start reaching out to other communities and see if we can get crosslinks going, and maybe that'll help. (Right now I'm sick, so that's getting delayed a bit.) But I'm not sure that'll do it, even if I can convince people to crosslink.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
The full server infrastructure right now is around $50/mo, which I'm just paying out of pocket. I do plan to set up a donation system at some point, but 24 hours ago I couldn't - Reddit doesn't allow it - and I suspect I'm going to have more important things on my plate for a while.
A related question, are there any concerns over site integrity that we as the rank-and-file can help with? I assume reporting bad actors and using the vote system responsibly are a good start.
Yep, definitely a good start :)
If you're a coder, or visual designer, joining the development server and contributing would be helpful. Otherwise, post stuff that's good. The site doesn't work without people, and people don't show up without content.
If you want to go the extra mile, try posting links to the site, ideally to specific relevant posts, in communities with a similar tone. We really do need a source of fresh blood and that's going to be our biggest long-term struggle, I think.
I dub this the official rdrama.net visit thread; importantly, the single rdrama.net visit thread, because y'all are kinda spamming the place with low-content stuff.
Post it here and keep it within community standards.
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