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I don’t think it has to be very big. That subset gets to be very loud.
It only takes one “KKKILL_ALL_*******” or fedposter to make a lot of people nope out. Not dealing with that, going to hang out somewhere with fewer witches, etc.
Meanwhile, Twitter and Reddit and the like end up cultivating that image of non-witchiness as they attempt to catch the fleeing users. That means alienating the free speech absolutists, but not the garden-variety authoritarians.
I think "free speech absolutists" are noticeably different from "right-wing posters," even if they feel some common ground these days.
That’s where the evaporative cooling comes in. Trimming off the few most vocal is liable to shift the norms and to discourage others.
So long as the few most vocal are either principled libertarians or lost channers, moderation is going to have a pseudo-leftwards bias.
Here on Motte we’ve seen similar effects. Certain high-profile commenters get banned for being inflammatory, and then a few others announce dissatisfaction, followed by flouncing or suicide-by-mod. I want to say the reasoning is usually “Mod X is a partisan hack.” @HlynkaCG, I’m struggling to remember names, have you got anything?
Where inflammatory is best understood as "in violation of implicitly leftist values".
For this community, that’s a bit complicated, given the more classically-liberal principles involved.
This community descends from a cult of personality based around a neurotic progressive who disliked a bit of the left's excesses (as they threatened him personally and he's highly neurotic), but outside of those personal threats was enthusiastically on board with the entire far-left culture.
So much so he deliberately invested the whole of his private and personal life into those far-left environments!
Of course the values this community enshrines are implicitly leftist. They're less left than they could maximally be, but nevertheless still enshrine leftist ideas.
Perhaps you ought to clarify what you mean by "leftist" and "rightist" then.
I'm using standard definitions of left and right here.
The rules here have always been designed to promote the kind of discussions the modteam wants. We should, then, rightly conclude that the rules, the justifications for the rules, and the endurance of the rules serve to support the vision of this community('s leadership).
Why has this community always prioritized tone policing over anything else?
Why has this community had an HBD moratorium?
Why has this community schismed and broke apart multiple times over 'witches', which are only ever right-wingers? The immediate prior incarnation had two entirely separate schisms over it: most of the right-wingers left because the mods were silencing them (or got banned, same thing), and the left-wingers left because a mod was angry they didn't get enough of them -- and then he stayed as a mod! Incredible.
Why does this community have essentially no one we'd acknowledge as bona fide Red Tribe?
The values of this community have always been the values of Scott Alexander last decade. Scott Alexander is unambiguously a leftist. Furthermore, he is even a progressive, in openly progressive-coded relationships, supporting openly progressive groups and organizations, in an openly progressive neighborhood in an openly progressive city in an openly progressive state.
What Scott considers "good, healthy discussion" is discussion not too upsetting to his progressive sensibilities. What this community considers good, healthy discussion is what Scott (before he went full greengrocer) did. It's "sane progressivism", but it's progressivism all the same.
You should understand at least a little. For all your frequent talks on honor cultures, I'd expect you to recognize that a mandate to "be kind" even when kindness is not deserved (for instance, someone is trolling in bad faith, but skirting by a banning) is anathema. It's also a prog staple.
I know you recognize it, because you frequently cop time-outs and naughty no-no's over it.
Because "multi-polar internet politics forum" is like one of those exotic nitro-saturated compounds that really, really don't want to exist. It takes considerable effort to keep it from blowing itself apart, or even to slow the fatal reaction down. Tone policing moderates runaway exothermic reactions to a level that is theoretically survivable. It still doesn't quite well enough in practice, but it works well enough that considerable value can be extracted before the probably-inevitable collapse.
Because specific users were flooding the threads with non-stop arguments about HBD, with a great deal of repetition and very little useful result. I'm not convinced the Moratorium was actually a good way to handle things, but I see little evidence that there was a better way. People do the best they can.
I think the problem you're pointing to is real, and I have an effort-post I've been trying to finish for years on the subject. Again, this forum is aiming to be something that does not want to exist, and that fact has regrettable and unavoidable consequences. Where I don't agree is the claim that there's anything approaching a better way. It's this or nothing, and it's questionable how long even this can be maintained.
As regulars? I put forward both myself and HlynkaCG, at absolute minimum. If neither of us satisfies this requirement in your view, I think you need to provide a more detailed definition of Red Tribe.
The values this community started with were those of Scott Alexander from last decade. The values of Scott and this community have both drifted considerably since then, and pointed criticism of Scott and his arguments has not been rare.
What this community aims for is conversations across the tribal divide. That can't happen if one tribe or the other simply leaves. That reality necessarily shapes the way this place works, and not always for the better. Still, the fact remains that conversation is the point, and other approaches work a whole lot worse. I'm posting here and not on CWR because there is pretty much no conversation on CWR. I'm posting here and not on The Schism because I have no confidence I'll be allowed to prosecute a conversation worth having on The Schism, whereas those conversations are still possible here.
It's not ideal, but useful information can still be extracted from it, particularly when the masks come off.
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