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naraburns  nihil supernum  7hr ago (text post)   446 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for April 2026

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.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@naraburns:

@TitaniumButterfly:

@orthoxerox:

@charlesf:

@solowingpixy:

@OliveTapenade:

Contributions for the week of March 30, 2026

@Amadan:

@thejdizzler:

Contributions for the week of April 6, 2026

@birb_cromble:

@Rov_Scam:

@RandomRanger:

@BigObjectPermanenceShill:

@EverythingIsFine:

@OliveTapenade:

@ControlsFreak:

@IdiocyInAction:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@SpringFish:

@Shakes:

Contributions for the week of April 13, 2026

@cjet79:

@faceh:

@RandomRanger:

Contributions for the week of April 20, 2026

@self_made_human:

@Rov_Scam:

@Bombadil:

@Amadan:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@urquan:

Contributions for the week of April 27, 2026

@RandomRanger:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

@AmrikeeAkbar:

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@OliveTapenade:

Aww I wish I'd seen this when it was originally posted. I'm an atheist. Terry Pratchett is my favorite author. The only books I've ever managed to read twice. Your thought that he has such anger at the world feels so totally alien to me. It wasn't anger it was hope. And it wasn't an empty hope. The world of terry pratchett does in fact get better!

Ankh-morpork is a rotten, polluted, cesspit of a city. Its main defense against invaders is to allow them in and corrupt them so completely that they stop being invaders. The river can be walked on, when its not on fire. The magic university suffers accidents constantly that leave the surrounding areas of the city steeped in weird magical effects. But over the course of many novels it gets noticeably better to live in the city. Crime becomes more restricted to the darkest and worst places of the city. Races of all kind can go there and leave their old world prejudices behind. Material wealth is skyrocketing. New mail systems like the telegraph (clacks) are sweeping the city, trains are being developed to shorten the travel distances, and culture is booming enough for new music styles to be born.

The aggressive conquering religion of the Omnians is softened from something like Islam to something more like modern christianity.

Death learns to care about life in the form of his apprentice.

A wizard and his travelling luggage get to visit Australia and other interesting cities.

A war for a silly island is averted.

etc etc.

The stories of discworld are undeniably hopeful. Its in some of his other stories where he shares authorship that I realized hoe much the hope of his stories shines through. If you've ever read "The Long Earth" series, co-authored with sci-fi author Stephen Baxter you'll see what I mean. Terry Pratchett had failing health and eventually died before the full series completion. The story gets darker and more depressing as each book passes. What starts as kind of a hopeful series about new lands and places to explore, ends with self-sacrifice to thwart a species that appears to be a paperclip maximizer type threat. I thought this was maybe Stephen Baxter just being depressed about losing his co-author. But I read one of his other books, and no that is just how Baxter is.

Some good ones here. Thanks for compiling these, as always.

Yay, another QC. Not exactly a QC, in my opinion, but I'll take it.

For some reason I always find them kind of indicting. Like, I knew it was gonna get put up as an example, so probably I had some kind of responsibility to try harder.

But there's a balance. A three-quarters-assed post which actually gets posted is better than a whole-assed post that never does.

Ultimately one never knows what will have value to others and one of the cool things about our system here is that we let the readers decide what mattered to them, plus a sensible layer of admin oversight.

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