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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   27145 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Have the campus protests had any sort of effect on Israel? It seems like no.

For top level posts in the culture war roundup there needs to be more effort and content.

In general I suggest three things for a decent start at a top level post:

  1. Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."
  2. Interpretation and analysis. Add some of your own interpretation and analysis to these events. "The protests seem to have been treated a bit differently from other protests in recent memory, like the BLM. Police have been called up to break up some of the protests. Donors have threatened to remove funding from universities. Etc"
  3. Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

boo

Yeah, but that’s like…your opinion, man.

Technically this does have points 1, 2 and 3. I get why the mods aim to have an effort filter for top posts but this isn't spicy and seems to have stimulated discussion effectively enough.

There should be a #4 for effort if they don’t want to be technically wrong.

Notice how this spurred discussion from a simple post…why don’t we vote on bringing back the bare links repository?

why don’t we vote on bringing back the bare links repository?

Eh. Might be interesting but I'm not really keen on bringing back the daily rage. I get as much current news through here as I can handle. I'm mostly happy with the site and @cjet79's formulation as-is, I just wanted to provide a little calibration in favour of 'this specific warning was too strict'.

Context. What are you talking about. Helpful to have links or quotes, but not always necessary. "There have been a slew of campus protests about the Israel war lately. They were the worst at [this university] (link to news story)."

Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.

Opinion. "The protests seem pointless. Israel has not changed its policies at all."

Yeah, they did that - it's right there!

I don't think it's a good post, but it's a fine area of discussion, everyone is already familiar with the basics, and the bar to ride the ride shouldn't be that someone has to personally have a novel take. Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia or quoting the New York Times would not improve this post.

Adding a paragraph of blather about Columbia

I'm confused by this attitude. Why do you assume it would be blather?

You have to find value in some of the writing on this site, otherwise you wouldn't be here. If you don't like the top level posts, then you must find value in the replies. Replies that often feature multiple full paragraphs. But you don't dismiss those as blather.

What's wrong with the idea of taking one of those paragraphs, like the ones you see in the replies, and putting them in a top level post? Why is that such an onerous effort? Why do you assume that there could be no value in that?

Someone could write something interesting about Columbia, but I don't think it would add any value to just restate the same thing that all of us have probably read or heard a half dozen times. If they don't have anything original to say, but do want to hear what others think, I am against compelling top-level posters to try to do a creative writing exercise rewording a point they already heard.

I think if you check my post history, you'll see plenty of long-form posts and that all of my top-level posts are pretty long. I like putting in the effort because I think it's personally clarifying and occasionally even have things to say that are worth reading. I'm not real inclined to do a, "and what say you?" style of post if I don't think I have original thoughts. Nonetheless, I think that's too high of a standard to hold all top-level posts to.

We have Sunday threads if someone just wants to throw out a short question.

Otherwise what Primaprimaprima said is kinda true we don't want people who cant contribute three sentences to a discussion to be the ones that dictate what gets talked about.

Some people don't care what is talked about they just want something. But many posters care a great deal about the specific topic, and thus a low quality entry on a topic they don't care about is a double negative. It's crowding out topics they might care about, and it isn't interesting enough to expand what they might care about.

I can see the point. Thanks for elaborating, and as always, thanks for moderating.

If they don't have anything original to say, but do want to hear what others think

Frankly, I'd rather that we have rules that select against those types of posters. If someone can't even write one paragraph of non-trivial thought in response to a news story - not world-historically original thought, not thought worthy of prestigious publications, but just a simple "hey I've been thinking about the Israel campus protests and how they compare to BLM, I wonder if this will help Trump in November because he's more of the law and order candidate, could tip the scales in some battleground states" - then they're probably unlikely to post worthwhile replies in response to other people's posts, and we really don't need them here.

Come on man. There is no goddamned way that anyone posting here is unaware of the core of the story.

There are other good reasons to ask for context:

  1. To avoid talking about nothingburgers. Sometimes people have weird news feeds and they get small incidents show up on their feed.
  2. For future readers. We do keep a list of old quality posts. The reader of a post is not just the people here this week.
  3. For additional depth and discussion. For example, if they had linked Brown University they could have started a discussion about divestment.

Yeah, they did that - it's right there!

Yeah they sort of did, which is why I half parroted their words.

Some of you seem to very much live in the culture war. You are very aware of what is going on and the latest news. And you also seem to want to replicate that newsfeed here?

I'll admit I just don't get it. If I didn't read this website I'd probably be unaware of a large portion of the culture war. I am not certain I would have known about the campus protests if I had not read about it here on TheMotte. I specifically need the context. I basically live under a rock. I hangout with my family and my neighbors, and we talk about local stuff mostly.

At the same time I don't want a scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. That is what twitter and mainstream news outlets are for. I don't visit those websites because I don't want the scrolling doomlist of every item in the culture war. If there is something novel and interesting to be discussed about a particular item, sure, lets have that conversation.

What do you want here exactly? Do you want this to just be a twitter clone (but with indents!) where we write a few sentences to performatively crap on our outgroup? I don't see the point.

I'm generally on board with all of the above and covered a little more on my personal preferences here. Nonetheless, on this specific topic, I just really doubt that there are many people that have missed the occurrence of campus protests in the context of Israel-Gaza. Maybe I am living in a bubble on this one though, I can accept that I might just be wrong. It's definitely true that the encampments have high salience for me locally because I literally ran by one of these dopey things a bunch of times (well, until it came down last week). I just kind of doubt that there are many people that haven't heard about this and don't think it's necessary that the standard for a subtopic be that someone needs to write a couple paragraph intro.

Context is ultimately a suggestion, not required. I happen to think it's a good suggestion, and I also happen to think that people will dismiss the need for it more than they should.

You having personal experience with one of these camps is interesting context! I don't go near a college campus on a regular basis.

Mods here are the final barrier between turning this community into the clone of rightist Twitter(you can also see long posts there sometimes) and they need to go even further. There should be a reasonable requirement for minimum number of words in the top level posts.

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