ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I'm not sure we've ever actually had to enforce this, but the official policy with Motte pronouns is:
- You are always allowed to use the person in question's preferred pronoun.
- You are always allowed to use "they", regardless of whether the person accepts that or not.
- You are always allowed to twist yourself in knots to avoid pronouns even if it looks really silly.
- If you're doing something historical, you can also use the person in question's officially preferred pronouns at that time in the story, but don't cleverly split hairs on this one; if you write a story about the Wachowskis, and start out by referring to them as "he", but then switch to "they" when they transition, the Eye of Sauron may look down upon thee.
The good news about these policies is that everyone finds them slightly uncomfortable, which is probably about as good as we can get.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Listen, you want to fuck goats? That's your thing, but don't try and get around objections with "Why are people so mean to me about goat-fucking, it must be because they're all too stupid to think outside of conventional notions".
Cool down a bit, please, this is much more antagonistic than I'd like.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
The ethics of euthanasia are an interesting topic
Then write something about that, not just "look how bad these people are".
and discussing a general topic through a recent example is a very common thing here
Then start a discussion, instead of just dropping "look how bad these people are".
This particular rule isn't new, it's existed before this branch of the forum has.
https://www.themotte.org/post/757/israel-gaza-megathread-iv/158907?context=8#context
Three most recent posts in the Gaza megathread:
Someone writing about an event
A specific set of four questions to people
A specific single question to people
If anyone's just posting "boy look at how bad these people are" then report them, please.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Those are definitely the worst parts, but the rest of it ain't great either - it appears the entire point of this post is to complain about someone doing a thing you don't like. What's the point? Why are you posting it? If it's "these people are doing a bad thing", then it's not a good post; if there's some other reason, go into that.
ZorbaTHut
2yr 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
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
One of the things I've always kinda tangled with, without a good answer, is how much moderators should be part of the community. I think there's good arguments in both directions; they should because it sucks if it feels like moderators aren't really part of things, and they shouldn't because it's hard to treat "debate with a mod" the same way as "debate with a non-mod", there's always the fear the mod is going to take something personally and ban you.
(We have a sort-of informal rule that mods shouldn't moderate responses to their own comments unless they're really horrible, but there's plenty of places that have stronger rules that are completely ignored regularly, so I don't blame people for being worried about this.)
Not having a moderator badge is sort-of intentional in that I think I'd rather lean towards "moderators are just community members".
It's also sort of coincidental because they didn't have badges when we forked the software and it's easier to not add them than to add them.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I have honestly been thinking about doing that, but I haven't figured out how I want to do so. It's a fine line between "ineffective" and "annoying".
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
We're not asking you to not post about it. We're asking you to also post about other stuff.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Honestly, unless you're been hanging out in the dev channel lately, it probably isn't :V Though I'm curious what you're thinking of!
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Honestly, if you don't notice it quickly, something's gone wrong. But so far I don't have much feedback :V
Anyone want to help me test a thing? Just reply here!
I will not be telling you what you're testing; part of the test is to see whether you notice it quickly or not. Please don't tell people until the test is done (but there's nothing secret about it, feel free to talk about it afterwards.)
(no it is not terribly exciting)
(note: testing still open, need multiple people :V)
(edit: everyone through netstack has been added, hoping to get a bit more feedback before I shut this part down for a while)
Alright, probably not adding anyone more after this, and I'll be turning it off when I wake up anyway. Thanks everyone! More news soon.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
When people are willing to downvote and report just for disagreeing with or disliking someone, they're going to be every bit as happy to throw people under the bus when their turn to Quincy (I now know what to call it!) comes up.
Sure. And the system sees their votes, says "ah, these don't match moderator decisions", and throws 'em in the bin.
I think you've missed that entire section of the explanation.
It's happening right in this very thread.
You had a cool idea! But that is all it ever was, and I don't think it's working out well for the site.
Volunteer decisions are currently not exposed publicly in any way. You can't know how people are voting through it. And the volunteer system is barely even being used right now; it shows up as mod suggestions on reported posts, but that's it.
(Which is still useful! And the next step is rigging it up to make automated decisions.)
I think you're conflating vote results with the volunteer system; the two are completely unrelated.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Honestly, I love those. They've got a lot more personality than the twenty-third generic Classical Art Museum.
ZorbaTHut
2yr 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
You're kinda misunderstanding it.
First, note that "how long have you been posting" is also a factor - everyone has gone through the post filter.
Second, we're pretty lax on the filter. It's mostly just "is this person spamming".
Third, this place is far more upvote-happy than downvote-happy. If you do manage to somehow drop into the Downvoted Realm, quite frankly you're probably on the edge of getting banned anyway.
Fourth, your participation is always based on how the moderators feel. Sorry.
We do have an actual shadowban system; it gets used rarely, mostly in cases of repeated ban evasion or literal spambots. In this case your participation is not based on how the moderators feel because the moderators don't even see it.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Bug: when collapsing a comment chain, the page moves down
Is this when you're near the bottom of the page, or does it include when you're in the middle or near the top?
Accessibility issue/personal complaint: animated gifs for user badges are crazy fucking distracting.
I've honestly thought of just turning animation off but haven't had the time to do that. There's probably an easy way to do it.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Yeah, you're not wrong.
I think the entire Quality Contribution display thing is slated for some kind of a revamp, though I haven't started on that yet.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Dangit, I thought we fixed that one. Bug re-opened.
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
Should now be fixed! Thank you for the report, it would've taken me quite a while to discover it on my own :)
ZorbaTHut
2yr ago
I've wanted to have a Display Edit History option, with the ability for someone to hide a specific revision if they want, but it still shows up as a revision, just without the full text visible (except to the mods). This is probably a better solution than trying to gamify things :V
But it's a dev time issue, mostly.
Mod intervention!
It's totally fine to express disagreement with the general concept of trans. It is less fine to make statements that flat-out imply trans is a thing. Not everyone agrees they're "male", and I think this falls under the whole building consensus rule.
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