This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Thanks for the suggestions, none seem unreasonable. In case it helps you understand anything you don't already understand, here are some of the thoughts I had while reading them.
I did not actually set out to "untangle" anything. The mod queue is chronological, and the posts at the top are the newest, while older posts spill onto other pages. So when I go into the mod queue, I see the newest complaints first. Sometimes I go down to the bottom and work my way up, but most of the time I do not do that, instead moderating from the top down, because that is the most natural way to navigate the queue. Design flaw? Maybe!
We do actually do this when there is internal discussion going on. But most of the time, mod response is slow because there's just no one watching the queue. The only really plausible solution to this would be professional moderators. Sadly, every single one of us has other things to do.
We actually not only encourage community policing, but sometimes make positive mod notes on the accounts of users who do it properly. But "vigilante justice" is not the proper way to do it. There are ways to suggest that others are abusing the rules without breaking the rules yourself. It does seem like most people would rather do it the "mob justice" way than the "patient patrician" way! But in general I think the foundation calls for the latter and forbids the former.
This makes more sense to me if I'm trying to "untangle" things, but in most cases that's some combination of difficult, annoying, and pointless. The more effort we have to put into moderation, sadly, the less happy we are to do it! It's much more straightforward to moderate on a case-by-case basis, and when people start into "but he said--" we can just drop "your bad behavior is not excused by the bad behavior of others."
This is also why serial boundary testers are such a heavy drain on the community. You tell someone to "fuck off," we ban you. Easy peasy! But if you carefully write a rule-abiding post where the subtext is "fuck off," probably we won't ban you, at least not the first time. The problem is that when we do eventually decide that, yes, on balance, this poster is up to no good and the community needs a break from their shenanigans, we have to knit together a post linking to multiple semi-infractions and explaining that, no, generally we're not going to ban this level of fisticuffs, but the user has become egregiously obnoxious and therefore...
Well, hopefully you get the idea. You're right: the mod team could probably do better. Hopefully no one is surprised to hear that! But the level of effort it would take to deliver on these suggestions is, I suggest, extremely unlikely to manifest, at least in most cases. It's not a question of approach, it's a question of resources--specifically, time and attention.
This is the part where you accept a bunch of NEET/retired moderators and then they ruin the site.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link