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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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  • Cautious yes to expansion of themotte.org. We need to bring in high-quality people to keep the site alive, without opening the floodgates to MOPs.
  • Yes to careful creation of subcommunities. Perhaps by using recurring threads on the main motte as test-runs and recruitment for communities? I don't mind the lobste.rs invite-tree approach to bringing users on-board, but it would have to be done in a way that doesn't cause a political monoculture like they have over there.
    • Strong Yes to community constitutions and renameable subcommunities.
    • Strong Yes to having a way to get rid of hostile mod takeover, as well as "dormant mod wakes up and turfs everyone out".
    • Concern: I think that some communities will attract a disproportionate number of people not aligned with the site's ethos, and I'm not sure how to manage that.
    • Yes to "you can have private communities with your own rules and they're your responsibility; but public communities need a constitution compatible with the site constitution".
    • Concern: does having the site Foundation affect public communities move you away from the s230 protections, because you're exercising some kind of editorial control?
  • Cautious yes to alternative ways of presenting discussions. One big discussion subtree tree can squash everything else out of a thread, but the Culture War Threads have been unusually successful for how crude the mechanism is.
  • Yes to alternate votes, maybe like modern LessWrong does?