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naraburns  nihil supernum  7hr ago (text post)   538 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for June 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

@FtttG:

@RenOS:

@100ProofTollBooth:

Contributions for the week of June 1, 2026

@Brainwavez:

@Shakes:

@seething_spendcel:

@quiet_NaN:

@Corvos:

Contributions for the week of June 8, 2026

@Shakes:

@teleoplexy:

@FiveHourMarathon:

Contributions for the week of June 15, 2026

@dr_analog:

@felis-parenthesis:

@IdiocyInAction:

@magicalkittycat:

Contributions for the week of June 22, 2026

@sodiummuffin:

@faceh:

@hanikrummihundursvin:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@FCfromSSC:

@Markass:

@ThisIsSin:

@HereAndGone2:

Contributions for the week of June 29, 2026

@Gillitrut:

@ControlsFreak:

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Amusing to me that magicalkittycat got mass downvoted without substantial rebuttal to his post for expressing what I thought were very reasonable points, but also got an AAQC on the very same post. Not sure what so many people found so objectionable with the original post.

I mean, it has a net -4 rating, which is hardly mass downvoting. And the core chunk of the comment was pretty transparently a massive strawman about loser men and their supposed unreasonably high standards based on nothing really concrete. I think the lack of substantial rebuttal has mostly to do with magicalkittycat's history of showing the same style of arguing as GuessWho (darwin2500 from Reddit), which makes almost any meaningful argument with him impossible. I've long since accepted that there's little-to-none value to be gained from any conversation with him and learned to just downvote comments from him that I find problematic and just move on.

I mean, it has a net -4 rating, which is hardly mass downvoting.

Relative to other AAQC, anything below 5 is surprising.

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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!

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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."

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