The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I love this site.
I don't contribute even remotely the same level of thoughtful and well-considered effortposts that many do, I disagree with shit tons of bad takes (that are almost always well-argued) and in some cases I just nod with awe at not only the intellect (by which I mean an ability to read, remember, and consolidate massive amounts of text, both discrete and historical) on display here at times. Fuck the haters.
Thanks to all for making my online experience richer, regardless of the timbre of your political sensitivities and whether they skew differently from my own.
Also happy birthday to that one Mottizen (you know who you are)!
This site is one of the few forums that doesn't make me constantly go "Why the fuck is everyone a bunch of retards who are violently opposed to even trying to get facts correct or using their brain?"... Like sure, there are idiots also here but not to the massively overwhelming extent that is the norm pretty much everywhere else. And I'm not even talking about anything politically related.
It's so bizarre. Many Golden Age web forums had a lifecycle involving the creation of an off-topic board, then the politics (containment thread/containment subforum/topic ban) to try and keep things from getting out of hand, then the drama built and built until it dominated the whole thing or it collapsed.
But here we've had the reverse. We were the containment thread, which was then jettisoned into its own /r/, then escaped onto its own site, which has made room for more good "off-topic" discussion to grow.
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Yeah, same. The Motte is very comfy.
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Dude, you contribute enough that I remember your name. That puts you in a pretty select group, I barely remember 10 posters from here and I went to HS with one of them and regularly text another. I really enjoy your travelogues and I'm happy you're part of this place.
Kind of you to say, thanks.
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I'm just a lurker, but I'm very happy this place exists. It provides a model for how I should behave in other communities as well.
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Hey I was thinking of posting something similar. I really like this place and I’m glad it seems to be flourishing and getting good new folks.
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Huh you preempted my post, I was coming here to essentially say the same thing:
On the rare occasions I wade back into reddit these days, I'm reminded how much lower quality the discourse there is in general. Arguing to win is the default, instead of arguing to understand. People will happily and uncharitably pounce on any minor mistake or misunderstanding they can in order to get a rhetorical edge. I've gotten old enough at this point that I just don't care anymore, as soon as I get the impression that someone is arguing to win I just nope out and let them have it.
There were no "golden days" of reddit either (aside from when TheMotte was there lol), I've been on reddit essentially since the very beginning and although it's had its ups and downs it's never reached the heights of TheMotte.
So yeah, this place is amazing, and I hope you guys keep doing what you do.
Reddit is really not a good place to have reasoned arguments with people who are interested in actual engagement. I tried getting back onto there under an alt account talking mainly about non-political topics, and made a fairly long post where detractors (including a small number of self-proclaimed credentialed professionals) came in and decided to soapbox at length while refusing to address any of the statistical data posted. The overwhelming sense I got was "I don't have time for this crap".
Just reminds me how much better this forum is as a place for discussion. Not perfect in the slightest, but stepping foot back onto Reddit is like debating with a bunch of bad actors who really just want to soapbox about how right they are, and who love engaging in selective myopia as soon as something doesn't confirm their viewpoint. It's not the kind of forum I'm interested in anymore.
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It's not just reddit. Photography forums, musician forums and pretty much anything else that isn't either super strictly moderated or deals with super technical topics so that most users are far to the right of the bell curve.
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I love it too. It's probably the only online forum I participate in at this point; I've been spoiled rotten to the point I can barely enjoy any of the rest.
Though I wish I had more energy to effort-post. I used to make big posts full of citations and dense argumentation more before and get into spirited disagreements and butt heads with users but I feel like my contributions have been rather lacking as of late. Life gets in the way I guess.
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I'm kind of the same. I don't effort post, but I enjoy being here and the people here.
I like that even the ones I disagree with are at least speaking my language.
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