site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  8mo ago (text post)   5643 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for July 2024

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.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@gattsuru:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@John_Doe_Fletcher:

@Rov_Scam:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@OliveTapenade:

Contributions for the week of June 24, 2024

@Capital_Room:

Contributions for the week of July 1, 2024

@Felagund:

@The_Nybbler:

@Throwaway05:

@faceh:

Contributions for the week of July 8, 2024

@TracingWoodgrains:

@Folamh3:

@rayon:

@gattsuru:

@satirizedoor:

@FCfromSSC:

@Belisarius:

Contributions for the week of July 15, 2024

@gattsuru:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@NexusGlow:

@FCfromSSC:

@screye:

@naraburns:

Contributions for the week of July 22, 2024

@WestphalianPeace:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@cjet79:

@problem_redditor:

Contributions for the week of July 29, 2024

@100ProofTollBooth:

@Dean:

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I saw Trace's post at the time, but I didn't have the time or energy to go through the whole thing at the time. I did today though. The poo-flinging here was a bit unexpected though. I don't really keep up with the interpersonal drama in that much detail. For anyone else curious:

Trace's post on the blog of the podcast he works for detailing the Libs Of TikTok Hoax he carried out

A Motte discussion of it at the time.

Whole thing seems kind of meh to me, to be honest. Yeah it's not a good look for Trace or the BaR Podcast to carry out hoaxes like that. But LOTT didn't really suffer any harm from it. Trace has done some great work otherwise, but I'm not under any illusions that he's a partisan for my side of the culture war, so I'm not like morally offended that that time, he did something mildly bad to my side. It's kind of a bad look for him to do that and, as far as I can tell, refuse to apologize or anything, but I don't feel the need to follow him around and bash him about it in every other thread. And I get that it's annoying to have that happen, but he didn't need to get so mad about it. I haven't seen him acknowledging anywhere that it was kind of a jerk move. If he wants to take his ball and go home because of that and other such things, well sorry to see a mostly good poster go, but okay I guess.

But LOTT didn't really suffer any harm from it.

It's very difficult to measure how much someone is harmed by things of this sort. It was clearly used by TracingWoodgrains to discredit LoTT. I think I should not need to do some kind of media reputation analysis to calculate how much LoTT was discredited so I can say that LoTT was "harmed".

Was Scott harmed by Cade Metz? If yes, could you prove it?

LOTT wouldn't have been harmed if they did some basic fact checking to check if the story was real. The hoax wasn't that elaborate. And good journalistic practice really would be to not publish anything that hasn't been reasonably confirmed, not just not publish anything that has holes in it

LOTT wouldn't have been harmed if they did some basic fact checking to check if the story was real

As I said contemporaneously, I don't think this is realistic. At best, Trace's strength was that LoTT could not find third-party evidence supporting it (uh, modolo Trace's cohoaxer doing so), but neither would evidence disproving it be found, and no small amount of circumstantial support likely existed for p-hacking reasons.

There's an argument that people should only publish if multiple unrelated sources for a claim can be identified (again, ignoring Corvus in Trace's hoax), but that's not a convention we hold anyone else toward.

There's an argument that people should only publish if multiple unrelated sources for a claim can be identified (again, ignoring Corvus in Trace's hoax), but that's not a convention we hold anyone else toward.

One source that's trusted is fine. One source who's just some random email isn't. If CNN published a controversial story, and their only source was one person who emailed in with vague details, I absolutely would consider that that was a major deriliction of journalistic duty.

That's a nice standard to draw in the sand, but we demonstrably don't hold it against CNN as a society, nor have the ability to hold it as individuals. CNN specifically is quite willing to pass around claims from one rando statement with vague details and none of the information necessary to corroborate it. Nor is unique to that high-profile example (eg, Roy Moore's mall ban) -- or to CNN (eg PigGate).

And CNN deserves criticism for those sorts of stories, and that's exactly why many people don't trust it anymore. The fact that society doesn't hold it against CNN means that society is making a mistake and is being too lax on CNN, not that society should be more lax on LOTT.

How about a compromise: we just say the moral of Tracing's hoax is that LoTT is no worse than CNN.

I personally wouldn't rely particularly hard on either LOTT or CNN for my news. I don't know enough about either to judge which is worse.

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.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats