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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3910 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 26, 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.

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Two questions about The Motte;

  • Is the site growing or stagnant?
  • If it is stagnant or decaying in popularity, do we have any tool or method to attract new people?

Communities like this have the problem of attracting fresh meat.

Stagnant is fine; decaying is bad. The Motte is decaying. My suggestion was to stop banning good quality longtime posters just because the Nazi contingent starts diligently reporting their every plausibly inflammatory statement, but the mods seem to disagree.

Which longtime posters were banned recently? I don't even know, there used to be a weekly thread about who got banned in the last week.

All I can think of was Hiynka and he's a far-out third (fourth?) positionist calling 80% of the political spectrum progressives.

he's a far-out third (fourth?) positionist calling 80% of the political spectrum progressives.

Not a bannable offense. In fact, plausibly true, given some conceptual understanding of those words and the concepts underlying many people's positions. Kinda funny that this is what comes top-of-mind when thinking about why he was banned. Really bolsters jkf's claim.

Not a bannable offense.

Indeed not, but deciding that rules are beneath you and that Charity requires too much effort, and then acting on that belief, is. My understanding is that Hlynka was neither surprised by nor in disagreement with his ban.

Hlynka was neither surprised by nor in disagreement with his ban.

That doesn't mean that it was good for the state of the community.

It's not clear how not banning him would be good for the community either. I'm not sure "good for the community" is on the table.

I miss him badly, and it's absurd to me that he's gone and I'm a mod. I originally wrote the above when I was expecting to be banned myself in relatively short order, and conversations with Hlynka fundamentally changed my perspective for the better.

It's usually pretty clear which users are heading for a ban, and I've been trying for a while now to find ways to engage with them constructively to try to stop that from happening, on the theory that the right conversation might be able to turn things around for them the way it did for me. Sometimes it sorta-kinda works. Sometimes it doesn't; I'm still frustrated that I never got to finish my arguments with fuckduck9000. In any case, the universal constant is that no one is happy with the results.

It's usually pretty clear which users are heading for a ban

Indeed -- and if nobody on the mod team is prepared to consider the reason that long-time users are ending up in this downward spiral, it will pick up steam until the place is of no interest to anyone.

I think it's a separate issue at work, but on the other side of the aisle it might be worth considering that the new scene seems to have driven off darwin -- so attracting new posters of diverse viewpoints is probably a non-starter without some serious changes made.

So what do you think we should have done about Hylnka? Honest question, because we warned (and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned ....) him, going back to the old subreddit, giving him far more chances after multiple bans than almost anyone else in the history of the Motte has ever been given. And we took a lot of flack for that (because as much as you may like and miss him, and like @FCfromSSC, I really liked him and really, really wanted him to stop doing things requiring us to ban him also), he was equally hated by many, and a lot of people thought (with some justification) that he was getting away with way too much that no one else would get away with. So should we have just let him keep going forever after telling him, explicitly, multiple times, "If you keep doing this, we are going to have to ban you, we don't want to do that, stop doing this pretty please?"

Yes, banning Hylnka was (IMO) a loss for the community. I also don't see what other choice we had.

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.

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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.


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