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What the actual fuck
My original comment has been edited to add explanation
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It's obviously a low effort post that doesn't meet the standards for what we're looking for in a top level post.
I agree that mods could do a better job of elaborating on that though, in cases where they do feel the need to intervene.
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@cjet79's reason was good enough (it's perfectly obvious this was a trollish shit-stirrer asking questions in bad faith), but in addition, @bigtittygothgf is a ban evader, so the ban has been made permanent.
I can only speak for myself, but maybe votes will show that others concur.
I appreciate that the comment fell egregiously short of our standards, both codified in rules and informal but clear in the culture of the place (very low effort and low volume together with provocative phrasing, mainly), and personally don't like having that user around, due to history of what seems to me to be bad faith (and almost invariably low-effort) comments.
I believe that the crux of the problem is one of attitude, that mods do not justify their decisions. You don't need to litigate every call but it'd be less jarring if you cited the specific grievance, like «Too low-effort for a top level, bad track record, 1 day ban» instead of the imperious «not what we are looking for». Rapidly escalating to permaban on a unverifiable accusation of ban evasion (despite the semi-consistent policy, one you have explicitly professed too, of tolerating ban evaders unless they jump on their previous hobby horses) was also a bit much to me.
You don't have to imitate Hlynka either.
My original comment has been edited to add explanation
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Usually I do. But sometimes we don't have a lot of time to write a long explanation of a fairly straightforward decision, we're just doing some jannying, and when we come back to people angrily demanding why we modded someone expressing tribal CW bait that made them clap, we are not going to satisfy them with any explanation and usually aren't inclined to try.
I also am not going to step in and speak for @cjet79.
You are just going to have to accept our judgment on ban evaders, because for reasons that should be obvious, we aren't going to tell you everything that informs our decisions in that regard.
I am not sure where you got that idea. We are not tracking people who were banned on the old sub. If you get banned here and come back with an alt, you're definitely getting banned again.
Your pattern-matching is broken.
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IMO we need something like the BLR back so people can drop interesting things without the expectation they write a whole essay about it to clarify their basic reaction of "I think this is bad.", "I think this is ridiculous.", "I think this is a good thing.", etc. or get the banhammer for booing the outgroup or whatever. I get the ideally that goal of this community is to solicit the essays but I would rather have a place that highlights 70% of recently interesting things with only 75% of them having extended commentary on them versus a place that highlights only 30% of recently interesting things with 95% of them having extended commentary on them, especially since multiple people in the comments will often pick up the extended commentary duty.
Personally, I'd rather hear about interesting new information concerning interracial rape rates (and, yes, not just because I'm racist against blacks, as I'd want to hear about it if it were in the opposite direction too) even if I'm not going to get the fair and balanced perspective on top about how it can be interpreted in some manner that is neutral for the raping demographic, larping as some future historian totally disconnected from present issues. Sure, I wouldn't want every post to be "Science CONFIRMS that BLACKS = RAPE" or it would just turn into heterodox /r/science or /r/politics but I think there needs to be some more intelligent way to balance this out (like multiple different feeds accomplishes).
And yes moderation communication here is also often terrible. But all productive suggestions in that area have been ignored from day one so oh well.
Though it's not nearly as bad as it was at times on Reddit, some mods here are definitely starting to get a bit too active and trigger-happy again (with modding this post probably not necessarily being the worst or even a bad example of it, but still). It seems to me when this place migrated from Reddit, they were very hands-off in its initial phase (which seems to me to be an implicit admission that the capricious and heavily-involved moderation they engaged in at times on Reddit would have strangled the baby in the cradle, which you might think would also make them rethink it in general but maybe not) and things were better than ever. Now they seem to be starting to believe that they have enough of a captive audience that they can begin to return to their old ways though. It's disappointing.
I get that not every post here is great but for the most part some random red-named post popping in occasionally going "No bad little boy don't do that!" (which is only a mildly satirically exaggerated version of how the mods here often chastise people) or throwing out random bans is about as effective as TSA security at the airport. It may occasionally find a knife, but it also misses a lot of knives, throws out a lot of non-knives or things that are maybe knife-shaped but probably not actually that dangerous, and in general annoys people and causes more contention than its benefits can justify. (Of course, this is describing the active behavior. The implicit background threat of moderation is certainly necessary, but that can be achieved while rarely if ever using it.)
Something like the BLR, but maybe 'must give two-sentence summary' + 'mods can, and are expected to, delete bad posts if they have a vibe that they're bad posts even if they technically comply with the rules'?
Sure with the second part applied very rarely if at all. If you're going to have a lower-effort queue, let it be lower-effort.
It depends on the content, though. If the second part was rarely applied, we'd just get the same old BLR, which I mostly found annoying and the mods decided to nuke.
I specifically remember /u/greyuniwave, now suspended, posting a ton of shit in the BLR, usually about covid or conspiracy stuff. Quite a few of his posts were heavily upvoted despite me calling them shit, so my opinion is a minority - but BLR posts often were, and despite that the mods considered it low quality enough generally to be removed, so eh.
Picking a specific BLR thread ... the content just seems uninspiring? Half is awful, whether it's grayuniwave's 10 posts or others (this did get warned, but 45 points?)
But even most of the 'good posts' read like the second page of the NYT. "Matthew Yglesias Responds to Ross Douthat on CRT, the 1619 Project and Public School Curricula."? "On May 24, 2021 the United States State Department imposed a “Level 4: Do not travel” advisory on Japan, the highest level used to advise US travelers against traveling—in effect, a quarantine."? "French lesbians and single women to get IVF rights"? Who cares? (clearly, readers did).
Compare this to an ACX monthly linkspost, or the better parts of HN or /r/ssc, or our toplevel posts, which are just more interesting.
The toplevel effortpost restriction seems to serve as a content restriction preventing the worst of 'random news item that could be replaced with gpt-3 output' or 'JUST IN: corporate racist democrats hate christians.', even when the posters/readers still find the former interesting, and absent explicit content discrimination to balance out the lack of implicit discrimination, the BLR would just suck again.
A BLR without mods removing lots of stuff would still be fine, and I'd still speedskim it, but reluctantly.
If it's shit then you can always just not look at the BLR. Or you could have a mod-curated feed and an uncensored one.
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False. We just don't take up the suggestions that people who want to wage unrestrained culture war would like us to implement.
It's fascinating that this is how you model our thinking. Though I'm not sure I believe you sincerely believe this.
We don't ban randomly, and banning bad actors is quite effective.
I should have saved you guys openly saying that the light hand was there to encourage engagement until you thought you had enough of an audience to keep the place going. How else are people supposed to read that other than adding the obvious "then we can crack down and shape the contributors however we want"?
Alas, dissolving the people and electing another is not a realistic option here
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That you immediately imply that any possible suggestion that might have not been taken seriously enough by the mods here would only come from "people who want to wage unrestrained culture war" (the type of veiled insult pretty much all mods here almost always throw out in response to any suggestion that they may not be as open to suggestions as they claim, which I guess you don't seem to realize kind of proves the point), as if there is no possibility that the mods here could have ever dismissed a valid suggestion (I guess you're perfect oracles of what's a good suggestion or not, no mistakes ever?), is a great example of the terrible mod communication I was talking about. Thanks for proving my point with your arrogant and dismissive tone.
Anyway though I'm not going down this rabbit hole since I've seen where it leads: frustration and zero results for those who try to take the whole "moderation here is driven by user sentiment" stuff seriously (as you've proven by starting off the conversation with nothing but passive aggressive sneering).
I do sincerely believe it. The difference in moderation immediately going from Reddit to the new site was obvious. Maybe it's not something you implemented consciously but it sure happened.
Just keep in mind that with this new site you still need us more than we need you. An independent enterprise is always on shakier ground.
No. I was talking about you and your suggestions. Some people have made valid suggestions, some of which have, in fact, been implemented, some of which were acknowledged as good suggestions but were not implemented for various pragmatic reasons.
Nobody needs anything here. This isn't a business, and we're not your employees. We do want to attract and keep members because we all believe in the purpose of the Motte, but that doesn't mean that every individual member gets what they want or that all demands are legitimate.
My suggestions (the primary one anyway being) to bring back a moderate variation of something originally implemented by you (that is, the mods)? So you were wanting to wage unrestrained culture war?
You know, if you're not just full of shit as usual and cavalierly breaking your own rules, then please, as your own rules state, provide proof (we'll ignore the proactive part since that ship has sailed already) in proportion to your very inflammatory claim that my suggestions are primarily directed towards desiring the waging of unrestrained (a heavy adjective explicitly indicating absolutely zero restraint whatsoever, keep in mind, which would be a weakman as is also against your own rules if, even if you can nitpick my suggestions, you can hardly find grounds to claim that I'm advocating for any sort of free-for-all, for turning this place into Kiwi Farms with less restrictions, which I'm obviously not) culture war.
Go on: quote me. Except you can't, because again I said nothing like that nor even in its vein, even if you can make a credible claim that my suggestions might increase culture warring here a bit or even to some degree (but that's a trade-off implicit in all moderation matters of this kind; this version of The Motte has more culture warring than a hypothetical one with even stricter rules would and yet I doubt you would take that hypothetical version's moderators accusing you of wanting to allow "unrestrained culture war" seriously, same as me being willing to tweak this axis is completely legitimate and not automatically advocating for unrestrained anything).
So, as usual, you could have communicated like an adult (you know, being charitable like your rules state) and said "I disagree with your suggestions because X, Y, and Z." but instead you had to immediately resort to the most arrogant and dismissive weakmen/strawmen possible. (It's like how Barry Goldwater's politics couldn't simply be criticized on their merits; he had to be declared insane and accused of trying to destroy the whole world. This is how you and the rest of the mods so frequently communicate with any critics.) And this is why you persistently end up looking like a petty fool and again just prove my criticisms correct (and also why they weren't made more politely/hesitantly in the first place, if you're going to try to pull a "No u!" on any of the above).
Seriously, if you mailed your Senator or something that you wanted the penalty for a particular crime reduced or a particular law repealed and he accused you in response of wanting complete unrestrained anarchy, would you not think he's a bit unhinged or at least hypersensitive? Have some awareness. (And yes for the record I am well aware that my professed political leanings make me come off as "unhinged" as well to many, but perhaps that makes it even more worthwhile that, other than you, nobody here, including those opposed to everything I stand for, has accused me of trying to "wage unrestrained culture war". I'm not trying to be an authority figure here either.)
If you think I'm speaking only for myself, then you aren't listening. Maybe not everyone agrees with every exact specific I propose, but the sentiment is reasonably widespread.
Or better yet, let me imitate one of your redname posts, as maybe that will make you understand:
Don't do this. Way too "Boo outgroup"-y and uncharitable. Demodded for one day due to prior history pending user discussion.
You want lighter modding in general? We'll take it under advisement.
Note that for all your belligerence and being one of the most frequently reported posters, you have been very lightly modded yourself.
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No? This place as a site definitely has a smaller network effect dominance than it did as a subreddit. And if it went down I have no doubt it would be replaced by something else nearly immediately, probably advertised via CWR and the SSC subreddit/forums (or maybe a new site for CWR itself).
The fact that the defenders of this place's mods can only ever argue by spewing bad faith bullshit like this speaks volumes.
The main suggestions I've seen about the moderation here in this subthread are that mod communications should be more professional, more detailed about their particular issues with any given post, and more standardized/less subjective. Absolutely none of this has anything to do with people demanding they be exempt from "the most minimal level of self control imaginable" or wanting to "wage unrestrained culture war" or whatever other insane strawmen you people constantly toss out because some have the audacity to think that occasionally popping in to type "This is not we're looking for here. Don't do this again." isn't actually God-tier moderation. (I'm not even saying terrible. It's not nearly as bad as it's been in the past or I wouldn't even be here. I just also think it's hardly the ideal sage wisdom of the rationalist masters either, despite the mods here seeming to be incredibly offended by any suggestion otherwise.)
Ironically enough if this site's rules were enforced consistently and comprehensively, the mod team and their defenders would be some of the most cited, warned, and banned for how they insist on behaving in response to even the mildest criticisms. I don't think I've ever once seen a single moderator here go "You have a point." or "You know what, you're right, and we'll work on that." in response to anything a user has ever suggested (unless maybe occasionally if it's stated in the mildest, most non-committal fashion while tickling the mods' balls the entire time) as opposed to immediately jumping into "Obviously you want the rules to change so you can wage the culture war and create anarchy in our perfect garden of neutrality!" shit.
I guess we users here must just be the dumbest motherfuckers on the planet then, since none of our suggestions are ever any good and we are all just trying to tear down the grand edifice of discursive order so we can go ape, except somehow there'd also be no site without our posts. We probably are dumb for putting up with it but that's how social dynamics go: the first "solution" tends to stick and becomes a Schelling point despite its many flaws and then you have dozens of cultists who feel like they have to defend it against all criticism no matter how trivial and no matter how bizarre and nonsensical their unhinged reactions to those criticisms are because it's the Schelling point. (And, yes, I know I'm free to leave. I in fact gladly will if things go back to how they were on Reddit. I'm bringing it up in the first place in the hopes that it doesn't.)
Even when Hlynka was finally removed after being allowed to go on a rampage of terrible mod abuse for ages while being defended by the leadership here, I still don't think there was ever any particular "mea culpa" posted about that. Was there? I sure didn't see it. It sure didn't happen quickly if it ever happened. (I went probably a year, maybe more, without even looking at the sub, so I may have missed it, but I bet it just never happened.) It was just brushed under the rug like it never happened without any acknowledgement that the critics were right, any attempt to give them any sort of restitution or reevaluate past bans, etc. If anything serious were run like that, there'd be heads on pikes in a week. (And of course the mods, particularly Zorba, will insist this place isn't that serious but then also get mad at you if you don't take it seriously enough when posting. It's serious when a user's post is too "Boo outgroup"-y or whatever catchphrase of the day they want to use to ding someone, but when they let a crazed cowboy run wild on the userbase for over a year then it's just a cute experimental community and you shouldn't take it that seriously.)
Anyway, I've wasted this much time responding to your shitty ad hominem post which could have been entirely replaced by a loud, vulgar sucking noise (yes that's ad hominem too but no worse than what you and Amadan are both guilty of so if I get a bad boy warning for this I expect to see one for you and him too), so you can't accuse me of not pretending you could possibly give me value in a conversation. Enjoy.
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Everyone here should be capable of looking at that post and seeing the pattern of "drop steaming statistical turd, ask 'what do you think guys?' while offering no opinions of their own" and targeting the non-existent left membership.
Consensus building! Ban he!
In all seriousness, yeah. The post was probably bad faith, the user ought to be punished for it, and we can still have a decent discussion in the comments. That’s before any ban evasion which may not be obvious.
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The ruling was fair and righteous but the exection was performed with a dull axe.
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No, the reasoning wasn't good enough. If you want people to respond to moderation, you need to give specific feedback. "This is not what we're looking for." is not remotely specific.
Also, since it's perfectly obvious, can you tell us exactly how you were sure that this was a trollish shit-stirrer and not a terse poster asking a question in good faith? Since it's obvious, it should be no trouble, to both cjet79 or you, to say what exactly was obvious about it and how apparently-similar posts that aren't by trollish shit-stirrers are clearly so instead.
Look, you're the mods. You make judgement calls, and our continued presence on this site is evidence that we respect those judgement calls at least enough not to throw our hands up and storm off collectively. But please recognize when you are making those judgement calls and don't just fall back on heavy implications of "It's obvious, and if it's not obvious to you, then clearly you're also a trollish shit-stirrer and probably a ban-evader, so stop asking questions or you might be next." If multiple members of the community are not reacting the way you are to the post and, well, obviously do not find it obvious what is going on, then perhaps it is not actually obvious.
This has never been implied. You have been around plenty long enough, and lobbed enough brickbats at the mods yourself, to know better than accuse us of threatening to ban people for questioning or disagreeing with a mod decision.
Quite often a low-effort shit-stirring comment will nonetheless start a decent discussion. That doesn't validate the comment after the fact.
Doesn’t it “validate” it after the fact? It seemingly proves that the comment was useful from an instrumental perspective. I take your use of the word “decent” to suggest quality not quantity.
No.
Yes.
Can you explain? Basically, I imagine we want moderation to improve themotte (ie increase quality conversation and decrease non-quality conversation). If a statement increases quality conversations, why are we trying to remove?
I guess one could imagine where it directly increases quality conversation by X and indirectly decreases quality conversation by X+N but that seems like a rather big leap.
If someone posted "You are a Nazi, fuck off and die," and somehow that spawned a really interesting thread about Nazis and online discourse or whatever, would you argue that we should not mod the original comment?
If your answer is "Yes," well, too bad, that is not the "instrumental" approach we take.
If someone posts a bad comment, but the thread it spawns is good, it's still a bad comment. And then the next time someone else posts a similar bad comment and we mod it, that person will argue that our modding is inconsistent, and we'll have people arguing whether the ensuing discussion was "good" enough to justify the comment. I wouldn't put it past some of our bad actors to post all their CW-bait trolling comments when they think the mods are asleep, in the hopes that by the time we read the reports, it will have spawned "interesting" discussion and thus be proof against modding. So no, we're not inviting people to game the system with "If you post something inflammatory and culture warring but it starts a good discussion you can get away with it."
This is not new. This is how we have always modded. It has happened multiple times in the past that a comment that was borderline or just wasn't looked at very closely started a long, arguably good thread, with AAQCs even, and then a mod came in a day or two later and banned the OP.
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The top-level post was terrible, that's the exact kind of post that drives discussion and newcomers away from this place. It's not like it's insightful at all either.
Is it truly this difficult for you to collapse bad top level posts?
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Mate, we make an effort to ban people for that kind of behavior. If you choose to leave anyways you only contribute to the evaporative cooling effect; we're doing what we can to prevent it.
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If OP had a few paragraphs summarizing the article and comparing it to the views of the "left-leaning people", it probably wouldn't have been banned. Toplevel posts aren't supposed to be three sentences!
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