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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   7038 thread views

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Mods, can you please not shadowban my comments.

All new users get their comments filtered for a bit to cut down on trolling.

Is a filter currently the best way to prevent trolling? After noticing my comment was not appearing, I was discouraged to write any more. Could a keyword- or post-length-based filter work better? But that would probably take too much time to implement, making it not worth it...

We have in general noticed that it's pretty effective. The nice part about a manual filter is that you can't bypass it forever by just learning the trick; every troll that gets banned has to get through the filter again. Forcing people to spend lots of time not-shitposting just to finally shitpost tends to weed out a lot of problems.

It's not perfect, but it's better than the alternatives.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

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