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
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of September 30, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of October 7, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
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Notes -
Re Dean’s highlighted comment for
Just for the record, @Dean was never able to provide any evidence that Hamas uses pre-teen child soldiers. In fact he refused to even supply a link. You can read the follow up exchange here where he writes —
— after someone noted that he refused to post a source. He actually made me go looking for his own unevidenced allegation, yet I could find zero evidence from any organization that Hamas utilized pre-teen child soldiers in the past decade. The closest was:
So I’m still waiting on Hamas’ “sordid history of child soldiers”. I’m surprised you can get a quality contribution for an empirical claim that you flatly refuse to supply evidence for.
You are welcome to respond to AAQCs, here or elsewhere, but grumping about someone else's award because their comment doesn't reinforce your preferred narrative is obnoxious at best.
This is a mod-hatted warning, and we generally don't dip into substance on that, but Google gave me this (PDF warning) pretty readily, and it was far from the only thing Google gave me on Hamas child soldiers. I have no particular opinion on the reliability of the sources etc. and I'm not going to get into it with you, but your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly.
You are uncharitably characterizing my comment here. What I have asserted is that Dean refused to provide a source for his claim, the very claim that is quoted in the quality contribution, when pressed on the claim and asked to provide a source (both of which I linked). There’s a rule that someone should “proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be”. The claim or implication that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers is partisan, and he didn’t even provide it when asked. Yet this earned him a quality contribution, which is surprising to me. (All of this you write off as “grumping because it doesn’t reinforce my preferred narrative”. Brother, I am writing on themotte in critique of Israel in the war, I am well aware that I won’t be finding much agreement. I have never cared about agreement here, but I do care if the standards for quality are reduced to rubble.)
You need to understand the context of the original thread in order to understand this qualification. The NYT specifies pre-teen children being shot in their reporting, so we were never concerned with teen soldiers. Teen soldiers were never part of the conversation. Our only interest is pre-teen child soldiers because the children who were shot were all in that age cohort. This is obvious in the original back and forth which is quoted in the beginning of Dean’s reply
That is the beginning of Dean’s comment. Now, it’s possible Dean simply misunderstood here, but 15-and-younger isn’t preteen. That would be 12 and under. The conflict may see 16yo plant IEDS, which is an example and not a limit case. In other words, because it may be that a 16yo plants IEDS, we look only total preteen dead. And it may even be that a 15yo plants an IED, or 14yo. Etc.
Dean goes on to make clear he really believes that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers in his original reply:
Dean implies two claims here: Hamas is employing those under the age of 10 to lob grenades; and Hamas is employing pre-teens as young as 6 in militarily-useful tasks. This is how it is read, surely, because Dean says the article doesn’t go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers. Now, the only reason to go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers is if there is some reason to believe they are currently in their employ, or recently in their employ. (Certainly, “Hamas used a child soldier once in 1988” would be an insane way to explain away why doctors in Gaza see dead preteen children daily). That is because we are talking about current dead preteen children, not any from decades ago.
— — —
Replying to the rest of your comment:
Again, we are focusing on preteen soldiers, the original subject matter. The only real evidence from this pdf is in the 2021 UN address where it is quoted
And if you read the 2021 report (pdf) it identifies only one “child” (that is, under 18 with no specification of preteen) being “recruited”. This appears to be in reference to their summer camps and not a military use (?), so in other words training, but I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t specify. This does not provide evidence of preteen soldiers, indeed the age isn’t mentioned, neither is the role of the recruit mentioned.
Lmao of course. Well look, Dean provided an empirical claim, for which he received a quality contribution, which does not appear to be evidenced, which he flatly refused to provide evidence of. So, okay, don’t get into sources with me, but is this really the standard you want on themotte? You yourself googled it, and there’s no reference in it to preteen soldier in recent employ by Hamas, at least from my reading. So… yeah.
Hilarious. The heart of Dean’s claim is that there is reason to believe Hamas is employing preteen soldiers. It actually matters if the evidence is from this decade or two decades ago. Is there any evidence from this decade? Or even since 2005?
The PDF I provided explicitly mentions children under 15, and elsewhere distinguishes between "children" and "adolescents," both of which Hamas has recruited in its history, in some cases quite recently. But one of the reasons for me to not get into the substance with you is that you have shown no inclination to actually accept evidence when it is provided to you. I anticipated you would do that, and now you have done it, so there is evidently no reason to continue to attempt to meet your demands. You apparently will not accept any evidence even when it is provided to you (as an aside, you do not seem similarly inclined to demand precise evidence when Hamas makes dubious claims--interesting!).
I think that, at best, you have actually failed to understand what Dean's post was really about. What you identify as its "heart" seems non-central on my reading. I suspect that you are doing something worse, though: I suspect that you are demanding rigor in isolation, in order to excuse your own uncharitable engagement.
Well, you are under no obligation to like Dean's post, or to accept his or my evidence of anything. You are under no obligation to like or agree with any of this. What you are under some minimal obligation to do, is not to engage in ways that degrade discourse here. The way you have chosen to grouse about this particular AAQC does not meet that threshold.
Moreover, about a year ago, I warned you that your engagement on the topic of Israel was verging into "single-issue poster" territory. It's clearly something you care about a lot, for reasons I cannot fathom. I am hesitant to impose a topic ban on you, but I am pretty protective of the AAQC process, and the discussion we're having right now is doing a lot to persuade me that I should simply ban you from discussing Israel anymore.
Yes. Dean is an excellent poster with an absolutely stellar history of making quality contributions to the Motte. He is probably in the top 5 userbase favorites. You, too, have made some good posts in the past, which is one of the reasons I haven't banned you yet. But if you're gonna rain on the AAQC parade any time your ox gets gored, I'll count it against you.
It’s a general article about all kinds of child soldiers in the history of Palestine, so naturally.
The article you cite has a paragraph on page 8 which mentions historic practices, linking to a publication from 2001 for the alleged recruitment of someone under 15. Then there’s reference to an Amnesty article from 2004. The amnesty article from 2004 does in fact mention an 11yo who regularly carried bags across the border and once carried a bag that had an explosive, but 2004 is in fact two decades ago. Do you believe that Amnesty has recently published findings about child soldier use by Hamas? Where can I read this?
This is a mediocre excuse. You have Amnesty, HRW, and the UN who have specific divisions involved in monitoring use of child soldiers in Palestine, and all over the world. Your paper just doesn’t seem to actually say that, except for an event two decades ago.
Just say “fine, there is no evidence of Hamas employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Dean lied.”
I am under an obligation to accept your and Dean’s evidence. That evidence has not appeared on this forum, but I’m definitely obliged to accept it. To think that 10yos are lobbing grenades at the IDF and everyone is in a conspiracy to hide it…
According to the NYT Opinion team, recently republished by those antisemites over at Haaretz, and reinforced by separate journalism at the Guardian, there’s compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers are shooting children in the head too much. This is generally considered to be a bad thing.
There’s no easy way for me to check but I think my last top-level post on Israel was about a year ago. Just make a special rule on TheMotte that posters aren’t allowed to criticize Israel too much.
There is no evidence of Hamas not employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Does that mean you are lying?
As far as I can see, Dean never specifically claimed that Hamas "definitely employed specifically preteen soldiers within the last X years," where X is whatever you want it to be. At most, Dean made general comments about the fact of Hamas employing child soldiers in the past (which they clearly have) being meaningful to Israel's military reaction (which is plausible, whether or not you would prefer they act differently). You are setting up your own goalposts (not unlike a statistician only writing about terrorism in America beginning January 2002) and then getting annoyed that Dean repeatedly declined to play your game. "Dean won't play on my terms" is not logically equivalent to "Dean lied," and to assert it that way is obnoxious and antagonistic.
That is not a trustworthy source, on my read. See? Two can play this stupid game. It's better if they don't, so that is why I'm telling you to knock it off. If you don't like the evidence provided to you, you can say, "well I'd prefer to see something clearer/stronger/whatever," but you cannot follow the comment to an AAQC roundup and start shitting on the process. It's obnoxious.
I'm not getting after you for criticizing Israel. I'm getting after you because you are grousing about someone else getting an AAQC, and you're doing it by breaking rules about charitable reading, responding to what people have actually written, etc. You're also attempting to rules-lawyer both that post and my moderation, which is obnoxious. That it also happens to be your hobby-horse topic is simply context. You even pulled the stupid language games trick here--"my last top-level post" throws in a completely unnecessary qualifier to determining whether you're a little too focused on something for the community's comfort. It attempts to set the goalposts in the place most beneficial to your preferred outcome. I'm not stupid; I can see what you're still doing, even after I've told you to knock it off.
I understand that it would not be a pleasant experience to put effort into making a top level post trashing Israel, only to have someone with a long history of excellent posts on military matters come along and utterly eviscerate your work--and furthermore, to do it to the overwhelming approval of the audience. So I'm actually gritting my teeth and being extra patient with you about this: stop it.
By my count, out of his last 100 comments, 23 were about Israel. I think that's a reasonable level of engagement with one topic.
I mean, if community comfort is the issue - not a single one of @coffee_enjoyer's posts has ever made me uncomfortable, and in fact I value his presence here highly.
His own AAQC record suggests that you are not the only one! Which is why I would like him to not decide to get himself banned by pulling this shit.
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