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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Notes -
Has the motte astralcodexten'd itself? What's your impression of the off site CW threads so far? I myself check in less frequently than before, and when I do, it seems more... boring?
Why--because the forum will die? That's a possibility, however (1) the number of CW thread weekly posts hasn't noticeably dropped since the move and (2) Zorba was pretty explicit that "keep our commitment to open discourse and die" was a preferred outcome to "capitulate to limiting discourse on especially difficult topics and live." Plenty of people predicted we'd die after splitting of from the SSC sub, too. We frequently had users point out ways in which they regarded the sub as "dying." But several years later, well... maybe we're still dying? Very slowly?
While there was certainly some of that, the co-founder of TheSchism explicitly owned up to drawing the Eye of Sauron to the sub in the first place, because he uncharitably interpreted some conflict theory posting as "calls to violence." And there were other things that AEO didn't like, for example (((parenthesis))). You may be right that radical trans advocates seeking to shut down open discourse were the main problem, but the list of problems was not short, either.
Eh. Striking the balance between Eternal September and Eternal Silence is tricky, ongoing, and probably not indefinitely maintainable regardless. I will continue to post our AAQCs in the subreddit until someone stops us, probably. The barrier to participation is a little higher, now, maybe, but in some ways that can be as much a feature as a bug.
Where do new users ever come from? Why did people go to the SSC sub in the first place? Why did they follow Zorba over to the Motte sub--but perhaps more importantly, why did they follow Zorba over to the Motte sub, instead of going to the CWR sub, or later to the Schism sub? Why have so many people actually come over here onto Zorba's server?
We have a community, and we have an ethos (the "foundation"). On reddit, it was easier to keep the community churning, but hard to preserve the ethos--and getting harder every month. Here, it may very well be harder to keep the community churning! But the ethos will remain intact. Neither the current SSC sub nor the ACX comments section handle culture war discussions as well as we do (it seems to me). I don't think any of your concerns are wrong in any obvious way. I just feel like you are overlooking (ignoring?) the very public justification Zorba has been giving all along: better the community die on its own terms than live with a compromised foundation. I hope the community does not die for quite some time--if ever! But if we'd stayed on reddit, death would have been at least as inevitable--it just would have been a death of our ethos rather than a dissolution of our userbase.
The process of 'have reddit account, find new sub, comment on it' is so much easier and so much more natural than that of 'find new site, make new account on new site, comment there'. There's a reason all these centralized platforms take off.
Well, yes, but do you see from what I wrote why that is entirely beside the point?
Without, I think, entirely meaning to, @ZorbaTHut once upon a time took the weight of the SSC sub's "Roundup" culture almost entirely on his back, and has been carving out refuges for it, to greater or lesser extent, ever since. Some things have fallen off, other things have been added on. But something Zorba has been repeatedly clear about from the beginning through today is that growth and life are not the primary objectives. Would we like to see fresh insights from new users on a regular basis? Yes. Are we willing to give up on the foundation to make that happen? No.
This is unusual for an organization, even an informal and largely ad hoc organization like the Motte. Virtually all organizations hold, as a stated or unstated assumption, that any of their principles may be abandoned in order to preserve the functioning and existence of the organization itself. This is a big idea in wartime jurisprudence, of course. But also consider Google's abandonment of "Don't Be Evil." Or watch the ACLU bail on free speech, or watch Methodists approve gay marriage, that's two consequential examples from a single month in 2021. Something I admire a lot about Zorba is his willingness to act on the idea that, no--we're not going to worry about survival, we're going to do what the foundation suggests, and if we die, we die! I'm far more conservative; I opposed the Motte's exile from SSC, I accepted an invitation to moderate without having much faith in the longevity of the sub, and I would not have initiated the move offsite without much stronger censure from the reddit admins.
But here we are, and we didn't die immediately, or even see a substantial dropoff in posting. That violates my nervous expectations, again. We may yet die! But if we die--we die. And while that's not the conclusion we're aiming for, it is a conclusion I think we are all able to accept.
Just wanted to say hear-hear to this sentiment. I'm not sure what the practical solution is to trying to maintain a stream of fresh blood, but I think this community exists to fill a real need; as long as that need exists, people will find their way here.
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