Y'all must be trying to kill me. The sheer volume of quality contribution reports, combined with the outrageous volume of text you maniacs generate every week, made this an astonishing month to be sorting through the hopper. By far the busiest month for AAQCs since I took over the task. This made winnowing them down especially challenging, and some very good posts simply didn't make the cut simply because the competition was so fierce.
Good job, everyone.
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:
Quality Contributions in Culture Peace
@problem_redditor:
Contributions for the week of September 26, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
@problem_redditor:
@Ben___Garrison:
Contributions for the week of October 3, 2022
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 10, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 17, 2022
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 24, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
@cae_jones:
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Notes -
@urquan:
My apologies for never responding to your comments on politicized moderation. I think you’re absolutely correct about the conflation of slur-spamming and genuine right-wing posts. Most places aren’t the Motte, and I am keenly aware that our moderation is particularly unusual.
I was trying to argue apologetics for how this conflation comes about. It is popular on this board [citation needed] to assert leftists coordinate such takeovers. That’s obviously a thing that actually happens, I.e. the RPGnet example. The OP was specifically theorizing that leftist activism is memetically fit because it encourages takeovers.
That seemed less likely, to me, than a more organic approach. I think the initial impulse for hobbyist communities sliding left is usually “sane” moderation: banning obvious slurs. Insofar as the right wing is more likely to value free speech, this is more likely to cause evaporative cooling on the right. The runaway slide starts with a couple guys saying “xyz was a dick, but he didn’t deserve a ban...” and then leaving.
Now, lots of the responses gave examples of left-coded slurs. If these are being ignored from the start, then either they’re not as severe, or the moderation starts out captured—which would be evidence for the takeover theory. I’m not sure how common this is, or how commensurate those examples are to race-baiting or fedposting. I remember a guy on [small video game discord] deciding to monopolize the funny pictures channel for “America will never be tried for war crimes!1!!!” He got muted, not banned, and I’m not confident if it was leftist bias or just...less threatening.
Unrelated, but I encountered that multimc drama around the same time as you. I was picking a launcher to try out Valhelsia 5, which only released in mid-October. (It’s quite good, though.) The Val install guide hadn’t caught up to the news, so clicking through was a complete surprise. It was like looking out on the Mad Max wasteland, except with discarded commits.
I have to wonder if they ever decided where to fork.
Is “colonizer” a slur? It targets a specific culture, and regardless of any attempts at reclamation, is usually pretty damn derogatory. Users regularly using this word are strong signs that a certain group isn’t wanted. It’s obviously usable as a slur.
Now, is it as offensive as the usual suspects? I don’t think so. Whether rational or not, the average, politically-neutral American has a stronger response to “n-----“. That’s partly historical context and partly suspicion of trolls, who rally towards the most visible source of offense.
I think the same goes for most of the left-aligned slurs. They fit the criteria but lack the same emotional valence or history, even to a hypothetical neutral observer. All the “strongest” slurs are more taboo on the left than the right.
Fair enough. I certainly can’t endorse a particular acceptable/unacceptable split, nor can I claim that the proverbial normie is making a reasoned decision.
My contention boils down to a lack of strategy. I think certain slurs would end up right-coded even if no one involved was acting strategically. This is due to the existing coalitions and their stated differences on factors like personal responsibility, free speech, and the concept of taking offense.
The idea that leftist generate/treadmill more low-grade slurs is interesting. It strikes me as intuitively correct, and I’d read it as downstream of those same coalitions. A norm that taking offense is valid would be expected to do so?
Maybe my wording wasn’t clear.
Given that leftists tend to consider “taking offense” a valid response, not to be strictly scrutinized, I’d expect more offense to be taken. That seems like it might generate new reasons on its own.
The converse is that right-wingers are more likely to disparage such reactions, self-limiting the number they actually generate.
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