Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
META: Is it easier or harder to secure a Quality Contribution than it used to be?
I am a pathologically insecure person whose thirst for validation is omnipresent and unquenchable. It was for this reason that I shared the links to every Quality Contribution Roundup in the year to date with ChatGPT and asked it to build a leaderboard of Quality Contributions by user. Suffice it to say that it gave me the answer I was looking for.
Without showing the breakdown by user, here is a monthly breakdown of how many Quality Contributions there have been so far this year:
But I was curious, and asked it to do the same for all of last year's roundups:
As you can see, there has been a substantial drop in the volume of Quality Contributions year-on-year. The monthly average for 2025 was 38 AAQCs, which has fallen to 32 this year. 2025 saw five months with forty Quality Contributions or more, which hasn't happened even once so far this year. Similarly, last year's floor was 30 quality contributions in a month, while this year's is 25 (granted, that month was the only month with less than 30).
What could be the cause of this? A few possible explanations come to mind.
*Based on eyeballing the total comments for the CWRs for August 31, September 7, September 14, September 21 and September 28. Obviously these threads contain some comments posted before or after September, but I'm too lazy to go digging through them to identify which comments were posted in what period. It's a good enough proxy metric, nothing more.
Yeah, about that. Funny stories behind this, which I'll share since it would be shaping the data and it's not quite what some people suspect.
Back in 2025, there was a point that I realized I had a many-month streak going, albeit by accident. Out of curiosity / ego / an inebriated bet to myself, I wanted to see if I could make a year straight of AAQCs, just to see if I could. The 'so you want to get an AAQC' thread at the end of 2025 was the culmination/reflection of that deliberate effort. The early posts in 2026 were just trail of from that- the one in January about Maduro was literally typed in an airport waiting for a flight after a new years trip.
That obviously took a lot of time, and with some long-term predictable things on the horizon for 2026, I made a new years resolution to try and cut back. There were three parts- too much time spent chasing AAQCs, not enough time spent on some personal efforts, but also a resolution to try and cut down on the number of internet arguments I got into this year, especially culture-war related.
I mentioned earlier this year I was taking a sabbatical to play a game that had just come out (MENACE), which coincidentally happened before the whole Iran conflict. It did have impacts to me professionally, but my absence from the motte really was mostly spending my free time playing video games and writing about that on reddit instead of writing in the motte. By the time my pre-planned hiatus resolved, the Iran War discussion seemed toxic enough that I mostly didn't want to get involved.
Then in mid-2026 more personal predictable things happened, and I changed jobs. Which entailed all the typical prep, move, and new faculty familiarization. It also entailed unfortunate property damage, including a personal gaming computer I also used for Motte posting. Which was replaced with a better computer able to actually play more of my backlog, including games that recently got updates.
Now we're approaching US election season, which goes back to the new year resolutions, but it's also bringing back Iran angles for geopolitical reasons as well, which goes back to sitting out the Iran discussions in genneral.
I suspect I'll increase the posting again in 2027. It won't be the artificial highs of 2025, but it (probably) won't be the artificial lows of 2026. I have some personal priorities on the horizon, but I also have some ideas of a monthly effort post series of fun-for-me topics tying nerd media to real world competition.
That aside- for your main questions, I suspect the biggest reason for fewer AAQCs from 2026 is Iran / Trump / AI nexus sucking out most of the oxygen. Fewer people want to talk about much else, especially with the American election year involving all three, but Trump and AI are old topics at this point with fewer new insights, while Iran toxicity squanders the novelty option.
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