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Notes -
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.
This inevitably devolves into the norms catering to the biggest crybaby, which in practice again means the norms of the community are implicitly leftist.
You don't seem to disagree with me, you just think it's good and necessary. I firmly disagree, but that's a value judgment we all have to make for ourselves.
edit: also I'd recognize you and Hylnka both as fellow Reds, but you are an extreme minority. I maintain this place is overwhelmingly Blue, for the reason that blue norms are friendlier to leftists, and it's a leftist space.
If it meant that, the results would be all the Red Tribers getting banned and this place turning into a generic Blue forum. What is actually happening is that this place slowly bleeds to death as blues find it net-inhospitable and leave. The norms are designed to make that process as slow as possible, with the forlorn hope that it will be slower than the intake of new quality contributors.
I want what this place offers. I value being able to have conversations like this one. I value the opportunity to sharpen my mind against the best the other side has to offer. I want to learn as much as I possibly can, and I can't do that effectively on CWR or the Schism.
Sure, it's down to values at the end. I think we have a fairly large difference of opinion on what those values actually are and what they imply, though. Again, CWR seems as though it provides exactly what you want, yet you are posting here and not there. Why would this be the case, if this place did not provide something CWR lacks?
Indeed. If it meant that, we'd see things like rule changes to make proggy blues more comfortable; maybe we'd even see topic bans to slow the reds down; we'd see notorious blue-aligned posters get away with nearly anything, consistently (it'd be quite a.. Darwinian environment); we'd see bans consistently hitting one side of the political divide harder than the other. We'd see moves to enshrine blue values like pathological civility and gullibility into the very DNA of the forum.
In other words, we'd be where we are.
CWR's main issue is that it's on Reddit. I loathe Reddit. If they migrated to their own site, I'd be there.
Can I just interject here that there was a temporary moratorium, once, on one single topic because it was just eating up all bandwidth, and that it happened several years ago and yet here you are still bitching about it like banning topics is a thing we do?
I mean, most of your objections are transparently false, but this is the most eye-rolling one of all.
You can do whatever you want, but unless you're putting the red hat on I don't care what you have to say. You're all the same people and the same staff with the same attitudes that were problems years ago, time isn't some magic panacea that'll make me forget what you've done.
That's cool, you can keep whining about things that happened years ago. I'm just correcting your inaccuracies. As for not caring what I have to say, obviously you do.
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