This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
a country with a fundamentalist religious tradition experiences a mass movement around a figure
fear of immigrants and immigration
contempt for journalists and journalism
violence
but when the people said: this is fascism
there were always those who said, no it isn't!
if it were fascism, he would be glorifying war!
he's the anti-war candidate!
now
he's been elected to deploy the military domestically
and he indicates he will expand the borders using the military
this is fascism
... duh.
@FCfromSSC already warned you downthread, but you're still filling up the mod queue with reports on your posts, so consider this me underlining what FC said and highlighting a few more things.
Your username is suggestive and seems calculated to provoke, but that's fine - if someone was genuinely a member of the "antifa" movement or sympathetic to them, they would be as welcome to post here as anyone else (and it would be interesting to have their perspective). I don't know if you are sincere or trolling, but either way, you need to understand a couple of things: first, you're going to encounter a lot of hostility. We (mods) factor that in, so when you're being reported just for posting leftist opinions, we aren't generally swayed by that. However, you are following into an unfortunately familiar pattern that many hardcore lefties do when "arriving" here. (I put "arriving" in quotes because you created this account today, and you're clearly not new here, and I have a pretty good suspicion about who you are.) And that is being preemptively rude, condescending, and belligerent, with an attitude of "I am here to set you fascists straight."
Not only is that not going to be received well (or generate any decent discussion), it's against the rules requiring everyone to interact with charity and good faith. No matter how much you don't want to because you think of yourself as doing battle against the forces of
evilfascismwokeismJewsthe mods.This is all condescending, belligerent, and just reads as bad faith.
I see no reason to let you continue to participate with a newly rolled alt if you are going to do so in bad faith. So if you continue in this manner, I'm going to move to go straight to permaban rather than letting you progress through the usual tedious cycle of increasingly longer bans just so you can come back every few weeks to play again.
I wish that you would recognize the reason “leftists” come in hot “arriving” here is because, I believe, you allow a hilarious amount of boo-outgrouping from “the other side” on here without the same vigor. One of the “quality contributions” literally goes on about how leftists don’t care about raped children, and somewhere down that line someone declares proudly that prep is a drug for gay people to attend orgies. Exactly where is the charity and good faith in declaring such things? Would I really be received with such neutral attention if I said such things about other outgroups? I think the answer is no. Therefore, I hazard most leftists look at your “be charitable” rule and laugh at it because they think you seem to define “chartiable” as “don’t say bad things about conservatives at all but feel free to dunk leftists” and therefore disregard the etiquette since to them you are disregarding it as well.
I don't know what to tell you - we mod people for "boo outgrouping" every day. Yes, this is generally not a friendly environment for those on the left (and don't I know it, as someone nominally on the left), but the exact degree to which we calibrate how much we let people badmouth their ideological opponents is never going to satisfy everyone. Too much moderation and we're suppressing basically any degree of heat or emotion; not enough and the people being talked about feel like it's open season on them. We have had these arguments (and internal mod discussions) since the reddit days, and whenever someone proposes a "solution" that will achieve perfect balance, it turns out that solution maps precisely to "moderate exactly to the degree that would make this place conform to my preferred state."
Also, bluntly, I think you are wrong about causes. Leftists who come in hot are mostly not new posters but people arriving with a grudge because we exist and haven't changed the rules to their liking. Or someone who got linked here, takes a quick gander, is shocked and appalled at what we allow to be posted, and decides some corrective mocking is necessary.
I'm not sure exactly which post you are referring to, but I know another recent post that asserted that got modded.
That one was borderline, and got some pushback from a mod (albeit without modhat on). My own opinion is that the claim was not entirely offbase factually (my understanding is that the only reason prep is needed is because gay men don't wish to refrain from activities that spread AIDS), but reducing it down to "gay orgies" was rather inflammatory. Was it a particularly nice thing to say? No. Was it a defensible claim to make, even if it hurts feelings? With a bit more effort, yes.
It depends on what you said. If you just come in calling everyone who voted for Trump a fascist, no. If you made an argument that Trump is a fascist, you'd probably be downvoted a lot, unfortunately, but you would not be modded if you were civil about it. What else is it you want to say that you think you wouldn't be allowed to say here? There is a difference between "The mods will let you say it" and "Many people will argue with you, perhaps not very nicely, and downvote you."
Then they are wrong and they don't actually look at our mod log.
This is incorrect. Every week I mod multiple people for "dunking on leftists" (and predictably get bitching and downvotes for it).
"User driven moderation" or whatever you call it was a bad idea and a very good way to overmoderate any users in the minority. The only thing that makes sense is rules-based moderation...
Perhaps. But here's my take: first of all, we mostly do use rules-based moderation, but it mostly doesn't satisfy the complainers (because they think we are applying the rules unequally). To the degree that "Moderation is very much driven by user sentiment, I think you are taking that too literally. It does not mean that we moderate according to who gets upvoted or downvoted, nor does it mean anyone who gets reported gets modded. It's right there in that section in that part of the rules:
Now, it is a known problem we've commented on before that someone who's really unpopular (or just posting unpopular opinions) gets reported a lot, and even though we are aware of this and try to factor it in, anyone who's both unpopular and getting reported a lot is probably having lots of arguments and thus sooner or later is probably going to say something uncivil and is more likely to be noticed doing it. Other than using our best judgment and talking amongst ourselves when we see this kind of thing happening, I do not know what a better alternative would be, because inherently we rely mostly on user reports to draw our attention to bad behavior. We don't get paid enough to be responsible for reading every single post and not letting anything slip our notice.
I'm not saying you're not trying, but honestly it's not just a minor problem. If the goal was really to engage with people you don't agree with, this website is a failure. I only come here when I want to know what a specific part of the right thinks.
A good starting point would be to drastically improve the quality of the so-called quality contributions. They should be held to the highest standard, so people can go there and see what's expected of them. What I got from doing that is that your message should be long, written in good english and be right wing. That will garantee you a place there with a 50% probability. Following the rules in their letter and spirit is obviously optionnal.
It's not just a minor problem, no, but I don't think it's solvable.
You're not completely wrong here (I personally don't like that AAQCs are mostly determined by who gets a lot of AAQC "applause" from other members, and a long-winded but superficially polite polemic about how My Enemies Are Scum or Those People Are An Existential Threat will always get tons), but the alternative requires the mods being much more personally and directly involved in deciding what we consider to be a quality post. Is that what you are asking for? And are you sure our selections would be more satisfactory?
A first step is to just do a posteriori control, you eliminate the post that don't follow the rules strictly. However my feeling is that not much quality contributions would remain.
And the user driven evaluation could be more rules-based, instead of voting on a scale bad/good you could ask whether it's charitable, whether you agree or oppose the content, whether it is nice.
I have other ideas if you are interested, like categories for quality contribution: best left/right wing contribution...
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, I am interested in what you consider to be quality posts.
Maybe you could have two different sections of quality contributions; ones that got a lot of AAQCs (and didn't break any rules and weren't too egregious, like how you choose them now), and a separate "Mod's Choice" section. In particular, there's a lot of awesome life advice I see in Wellness Wednesdays, and I remember being disappointed one didn't make it. But I've never been one to nominate them myself much, anyway.
More options
Context Copy link
YES. You guys are the mods! You set the tone of the entire site! You guys should have a personal standard of what is quality post and measure it against the popular post.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That is also why I come to this website, mostly to find out what the far-but-smart part of the right thinks. I have to say I would quite like it if smart parts of the left would come here and participate more often though – I feel that the essence of the moderation approach could potentially make for more interesting and productively adversarial debate if more ideologically diverse voices joined in. It's not always enjoyable to be a lone outspoken voice in this environment however, so I think something special may be required to get past that participation hurdle and get larger numbers of left contributors involved.
An idea would be to start an opposition day every week, a thread to specifically highlight topics or opinions that are not in the website consensus. There would still be an overwhelming crowd to harass you, but perhaps you would feel less alone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link