site banner

Quality Contributions Report for September 2022

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:


Contributions for the week of August 29, 2022

/u/zZInfoTeddyZz:

Identity Politics:

/u/SSCReader:

/u/HlynkaCG:

/u/Navalgazer420XX:

Contributions for the week of September 5, 2022

@FiveHourMarathon:

@grendel-khan:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

Identity Politics:

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of September 12, 2022

@JTarrou:

@DinoInNameOnly:

In the Land of Mordor Where the Shadows Lie:

@LacklustreFriend:

@FarNearEverywhere:

@PossibleAstronaut:

Identity Politics:

@sodiummuffin:

@gattsuru:

@faceh:

@orthoxerox:

Contributions for the week of September 19, 2022

@doglatine:

@thomasThePaineEngine:

Identity Politics:

@incognitomaorach:

@EfficientSyllabus:

@Hoffmeister25:

Contributions for the week of September 26, 2022

@naraburns:

@EverythingIsFine:

Identity Politics:

@hustlegrinder:

@Tanista:

Quality Contributions in the Main Subreddit

/u/Phosphorous_Rex:

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Made me smile to see my first AAQC. Guess all my weird computer knowledge finally paid off :)

Hey, cool! I'm flattered; thanks, everyone. A few updates on this year's housing bills, as a thank-you.

  • AB 2097 (Parking reform) was signed by the Governor, and will take effect at the beginning of 2023. Governor's statement here.

    • I attended some developer conferences, and was surprised that financiers will now be requiring parking, though at a considerably lower ratio than cities have been. (0.75-1.2 stalls per unit for market-rate developers; 0.5-0.75 for subsidized; contrast with 2.5-4.5 for cities' requirements.)
  • AB 2011 (Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act), SB 6 (Middle Class Housing Act), SB 886 (CEQA exemption for student housing) were all signed on Housing Bill Day; around forty bills in total. Every California YIMBY priority bill that made it through policy committees was signed by the Governor.

    • SB 922 (CEQA exemptions for non-car transportation), on the subject of CEQA reform, extended and expanded CEQA exemptions for pedestrian, bike, and transit infrastructure.

Here's Alfred Twu's annual infographic. It's definitely the biggest year so far for the YIMBYs in California.

Do you know why investors are requiring parking? Are they assuming it's required to have some in order to be successful? Is it to avoid future backlash if street parking becomes an issue? Did any of them say they won't require parking at all?

Hey, I'm really sorry to have not replied here; I've been off themotte for a while.

From what I can tell, investors require parking because they believe that it's required to make the units sellable, so, yes to your first guess. It's an amenity like any other. And while all said they'd require parking in the area in question, many of them said that they wouldn't put in parking if the area was better-served by bike or transit infrastructure.

Thanks for following up and for your posts on housing!

Damn it, I need to write the follow-up that was going to come "tomorrow".

I never noticed that post by Phosphorous_Rex since I abandoned Reddit entirely as soon as we had moved here. What a shame! I wish I could have struck up a conversation on the topic.

I'm here too of course, and I'd be happy to chat about it anytime.

What, just talk to strangers on the internet? Too spicy for me; I require the formality of it being a public discussion. I wish I were joking; I really don't know how to do that.

Would you consider just crossposting the whole thing onto this new Motte?

Well, I had meant to post your desired topic of discussion in the CWR or on its own.

I tried to crosspost it here, but we have a 20K character limit and the post clocks in around 36K. Sorry! Maybe later I can make a summary and post it again.

Can't you just post it as a two-parter with part 2 in a comment?

It is possible! Here's the new post.

Really impressed by @Hoffmeister25’s entries.

I’d go further, even, with the concept of the Asshole Filter and argue that it is the dominant mechanism of the culture war. On this board it’s very popular to assert class interest, incompatible culture, or other conflict-theory reasons why the teams can’t get along. How often is this comparing two extremists? The mistake theorists, too, tend to fall prey to this filter. If the most visibly “mistaken”, or the most obviously conflicting, are the lunatic fringe—well, it’s nice to feel superior.

This is worth distinguishing from the garden-variety outrage dynamics mentioned in the CW thread prompt. It’s not just that an unkind or uncharitable take will get picked up and signal-boosted by the enemy. Even the process of doing so is going to stack up bias.

Somehow I only manage to generate AAQCs by writing off-the-cuff comments during my office hours. I guess "just write" is the best advice you can get.

Hypothesis: “Quality” means some combination of competent prose and emotional resonance, and you’re more likely to satisfy the latter when winging it?

I really liked this one. :)

I think the worst part of WFH is that working in an office gave me the muse to let my mind go on crazy tangents.

(Well, crazy tangents that were interesting to other people, I should say.)

For the LacklustreFriend link for September 12... This is the posted link:

https://www.themotte.org/comment/4770?context=3&sort=best#context

It renders the destination page, but at the top of the page, with no highlighting of the specific AAQC post. This is what the relevant AAQC post's "Context" link links to:

https://www.themotte.org/post/56/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/4770?context=8#context

The link takes me to a page where the relevant post is in the window and highlighted in blue. All of the AAQC links here seem to use the first format.

Yeah, sorry. The links were auto-generated by Paperclip Perfector, and this was our first run on the new site. I will see what I can do about this post maybe later this week, but hopefully in the future the links will be better.

EDIT: Okay, I think I have fixed them all, but if you spot any I've missed, let me know!