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Just saw news of Dianne Feinstein's death. So does this mean an election to fill her vacant seat? How soon? Likely candidates? Replaced by a more progressive (more woke) or a more liberal (not woke) Democrat? Thoughts and opinions on this?
Low effort top level post. This is against the rules. I strongly doubt that you don't know this. 1 day ban.
This seems excessive. I agree that the post could use more original analysis than she offered, but this is a breaking-news sort of situation that could have important implications, and I think it’s reasonable to want to spark a quick discussion of the major questions sparked by this development.
We are for discussion. Start the discussion if you are a top level post.
We are not for breaking news.
If all you have is questions and no real discussion to add consider:
Normally this kind of thing is only a warning or not brought up at all by the other mods. But what's the point of a rule if it is never enforced? Bad luck of the draw getting me as the reviewer of the post. I am not a fan of infinite warnings.
Fair enough, point #2 strikes me as particularly compelling.
The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"
There is no rule against posts that aren't effort posts. Most effort posts are bad. I'm worried were incentivizing people to write a lot of uninteresting wordy posts just so that they can start a discussion on something interesting. I don't see the harm in asking what other people think about something. What I think we do want is something to stop people from posting just anything. There should be something to explain why something is worthy of discussion. I don't see why it has to be something that requires a lot of effort.
Can you come up with another proxy that keeps intelligent people who do write interesting things coming back to the site, and stops the Motte from turning into the rest of the internet?
The effort is a bar you have to clear to participate here.
We have lots of other rules that have sort of accomplished this goal despite not having requiring all top-level posts to be effortposts.
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There is no harm in asking people questions. Which is why we have a small questions Sunday thread. It doesn't have to be used exclusively on Sunday, it can be used all week.
That is explicitly for dumb questions though.
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deleting old posts for privacy
Rude as hell. Have you ever actually worked on an effort-post and contributed a seriously valuable top level comment here? It takes a lot of work to do it well.
You come in here, lurk and benefit off of people that put in time and effort to provide you intellectual stimulation and entertainment, then mock them for doing so. Not a good look.
deleting old posts for privacy
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Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.
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That isn’t really a response to the criticism. Pure ad hominem. I even understand your position but shouldn’t you hold yourself to a higher standard
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I was surprised by this.
The low-effort rule, as described in the sidebar, seems to be targeting “three-word shitposts.” This does not feel like a shitpost to me. It has a fact (which I had not yet seen) and two legitimate questions—what happens next, and is it likely to shift the Senate one way or another? More importantly, it steers relatively clear of cheap shots.
deleting old posts for privacy
I disagree. If you’re making a top level post, at least some effort should be required. Merely posting “Thing happened, so what happens next” under a link to CNN.com is really good as a top level post. Make a point, any point. Talk about how old Congress is. Talk about the political process of choosing her replacement, and the likely candidates. Talk about the implications for some piece of legislation. But drive-by posting is exactly what’s against the rules here. I’m not even asking for length — just that you put more though into it than just hitting the new post button and spamming.
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Back on reddit, there used to be a 'bare-link repository' where you could post just links with minimal commentary. It was filled with low-quality and too culture-warry posts and the mods decided to drop it. I agree it should return, with heavier moderation of some sort.
I fought for its removal the first time and I'll fight it again if I have to. There's no good reason to have it here and it's actively poisonous to people to engage with the culture war in that manner.
The good reason to have it is maybe people will only post interesting links, like this or the kind of links in this. Or even just links saying 'DALL-E 3 was released' or a 'YIMBY roundup for Sep 2023'. I agree they, mostly, posted uninteresting links in the past, which is why I argue that the poisonous links should simply be banned based on their content. But it's a shame that we miss out on some interesting links and interesting discussion just because many of the posters 'can't behave'.
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Seeing as how I seem to have kicked all this off, albeit unintentionally, this is why I miss the bare links repository. I wasn't sure where to post this, I didn't think the Sunday small questions was correct (I have now been instructed on that) and I honestly didn't have twenty yards of opinion about this. I saw the news that Senator Feinstein had died, I remembered debate about her and Nancy Pelosi and other old politicians and how they should retire in good time so that their successors could be selected and ready to take over (see the furore over Ruth Bader Ginsberg not retiring, which left Trump select a conservative replacement for her), and I wondered what was going to happen next - special election or appointment of a candidate by the governor or what? And if so, who was the likely pick - someone liberal but not progressive, in her footsteps, or someone more to the left?
Now had I known that cjet was going to moderate strictly on word count, I'd have included all the above. But I didn't, so I asked the question I genuinely wanted to know the answer to, briefly, because I was not expecting an entire row to blow up about it. I asked it on here because you lot are informed about American politics and generally have good, interesting views even if A is taking one side and B is taking another.
Somebody invent a time machine so I can go back and stop myself asking anything more innocuous than "very seasonable for the time of year, ain't it?"
There's a good reason this thread is usually dead when it's first posted for several hours before (often enough) one of our single issue posters comes up with a wall-o-text to start things off.
I get banned for being a single-issue poster and riding a hobbyhorse (see Amadan), I get banned for not being a single-issue poster (cjet79 here because I didn't do an essay on Californian politics), I get recommended for quality contributions - I have no idea what will be approved and what won't 😁
Is this "Make shit up the mods never said" day?
As far as I know (and from looking at your mod log), I have never banned you since we left reddit. I've only warned you a couple of times, and not for "single-issue posting." I remember you acting all concerned that our crackdown on single-issue posting would get you in trouble, and Zorba responded at length to you explaining why you should not be concerned about that.
Yes you do.
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deleting old posts for privacy
My main gripe with the BLR was that a bunch of the posts were 'grayuniwave: new COVID report shows masks and paxlovid cause myocarditis' or 'WOKE college OPPRESSES innocent REPUBLICANS' and 'Joe Biden is promoting wokeness on steroids'. The third one is real. And some of the links that weren't like that weren't inspiring either. The good posts were, almost entirely, by the people you'd expect them to be from (the mods, dase, etc), or the links themselves were authors I already liked independently. (obviously the upvote counts didn't agree with me here)
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/q1jdta/meta_on_short_posts_and_good_posts/
If I were the BDFL I'd just have a BLR and give various volunteers a mod power to specifically delete BLR posts they thought were 'bad' (and would code that feature). But that's quite against the stated (if not the actual) ethos of neutrality and tone not content.
deleting old posts for privacy
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There are higher standards for top level posts. This would have been fine at any other level.
Effort on posts tends to taper off from the top level. All the responses I saw when I posted were also low effort. The top level tends to set an example.
Top level posts that are equivalent to "here is a thing, discuss." Are low effort in my books. Start by discussing a thing, not by just asking some questions.
We have a small question Sunday for these types of posts.
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