As far as I know, it's been a while since our last meta thread, so let's have a space for the administration of praise and the airing of grievances. Hopefully we can keep the conversation distant enough from first order culture war issues to justify this being a separate thread from the main CW thread.
I've been here on and off over the years since about 2016. To my mind, the two most exciting times to be a part of this community were the period around the first Trump election, and then again in 2022 around the time of the site migration. I don't think it's a coincidence that these time periods coincided with major new social and political issues entering the public consciousness (or at least, entering the consciousness of this community): in 2016, the culture war as we know it was still very fresh and nascent, with battle lines still being drawn and positions still being clarified, and in 2022, DALL-E and ChatGPT introduced machine learning to those of us who had not been feverishly following the LessWrong comments section since the 00s.
Unsurprisingly, discussion is good when there's something new and shiny to discuss. But eventually, you start to run out of things to talk about. People have been complaining about this problem with regards to the "classic" culture war issues for at least a good 3 or 4 years now. In the time period from 2014-2018, there was still a sense that it was all brand new: people were being forced to think about questions and perspectives that they had never thought about before, they were still figuring out how to make sense of their own positions and the positions of others. But now it's all well-trodden ground. You can only rehash the same foundational questions about race and free speech so many times before people on both sides start to think "yes, I've seen it all before, I know how this ends".
Even with AI, despite it still being a very rapidly evolving field, I've been feeling less motivated to participate in AI discussions lately, largely because it feels like such a straightforwardly empirical question. The classic culture war questions are the sorts of evergreen philosophical questions that you could, in principle, go back and forth on endlessly. You can walk away and come back in 10 years and the same questions will still be sitting there. But with AI, it ultimately all boils down to "well we'll just have to wait and see" in the end. Either there will be a singularity and/or the extinction of humanity, or there will not be. Sitting here and talking about it won't change much. We kinda just have to wait to see what happens.
Perhaps these forces have played a role in causing the forum to become less theoretical and abstract over time, leading to the rise of what I like to call "nuts and bolts" type posts: local politics at the city/state level, the minutiae of urban and suburban life, court cases and legal briefings. I don't remember these types of posts being so common in the early years of the forum (probably because, again, the culture war was brand new and people wanted to discuss the hottest culture war questions). I'm glad that at least some people are invested in doing the actual necessary work that makes the world function. But these types of posts generally bore me to tears, so I skip over them. I'm sure many people skip over the dumb shit I like to post about too, so, I understand that it goes both ways and there are no hard feelings. At least I'm still trying to be the change I want to see and I try to balance out the discussion with more philosophical posts.
Something I do lament is the evaporative cooling of interesting characters over time, not only due to bans but also due to natural attrition. At this point in the community's lifespan, it's unlikely that we're going to get another Hlynka, or another TracingWoodgrains. One starts to get the impression that the window for new foundational community narratives has passed.
All complaining aside, I still derive an incredible amount of value from this forum, as evidenced by my return to daily participation, and I would hate to ever see it go. It doesn't remind me of the Old Internet, but it does remind me of the Middle Internet: that time period from roughly 2012-2018 when there was a flourishing of strange ideas and it genuinely seemed like many bold new things were possible. (Maybe it reminds some other people of Usenet, I don't know; that was before my time.) I sincerely hope that this forum can remain roughly stable in its current state for as long as possible.
Anyway, what do you think? What do you think about how TheMotte has evolved over the years, what do you like about it now, what do you want to see changed, etc.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
FWIW I'm not accusing you of being the mod who chased darwin away since, yes, he isn't banned. I'm saying the accepted behaviors of the site in general did that. Although yes, you are the user I was talking about when I claimed that some mods like to engage in general hostility towards other users. My brightline is for direct attacks like name calling, insults, etc. which you've never crossed when you've discussed things with me, but your responses are still dripping with contempt with the "(yawn)" and the "Jesus". I have a feeling that if darwin did that to other users then he absolutely would have been told to knock it off by the mods.
We have leftists getting banned for stuff like this. When pressed on what was actually bad about the post, the mod gave an unconvincing answer about misuse of quotation marks. In comparison we have rightists posting stuff like this or this or this and getting a free pass. If anything it's more than a free pass because one of those examples was an AAQC and another was from a moderator (acting as a normal user, but should still be held to a somewhat higher standard).
I sorta buy the argument that leftists generally don't want to debate things with those they perceive as enemies, but darwin and a few others were an obvious exception to that.
If I were to propose changes they would be
Not really. It's true we discourage sarcasm and snippiness, but if you've been paying attention as closely as you claim to, you also know we generally have a pretty high tolerance for it and only mod when it does cross over into obvious antagonism or an attempt to derail threads into "Nuh uhs."
Yes, I will own that sometimes I am sarcastic and jaded. Mostly I keep it in check, but sometimes my exasperation shows. I cannot honestly say I feel much guilt over this, because I do not censure people for things I would not censure myself. Could I be more dispassionate and a model of toneless civility? Yes. I am sorry not to be able to conform to your customer service expectations. The expectation that mods are never allowed to so much as yawn at a tiresome critic is not a reasonable expectation.
Your claims about why leftists are being banned and rightists are not: well, I flatly disagree, I think you are wrong, I think you are arguing that the sky is green and gravity is sideways, and I think nothing I say is going to disabuse you of this because we had almost this exact same exchange a year ago and nothing has changed. Yes, I am being a bit sarcastic and jaded with my "sky is green and gravity is sideways" crack because I am exasperated.
But as per your suggestions:
First of all, I reject your implicit assumption that the mod team is all rightists and we are biased against leftists. You are simply - pardon my exasperation - not just wrong, but fucking wrong. Maybe none of us qualify as "leftists" nowadays, but we are definitely not all rightists. Honestly, I think only one of us identifies as rightist and one another identifies as moderately conservative. Like, that's it, man. So how "leftist" do you think your proposed sensitivity consultant mod needs to be to restore fairness to moderation?
We could do that. Back on reddit, we'd occasionally have periods we tongue-in-cheek called "reigns of terror" where for a week or two, tone moderation became much stricter and bans were handed out more easily. Usually this was when we sensed the temperature going up and an increase in antagonism and low-effort sneering making conversations less pleasant. There was, unsurprisingly, a mixed reaction to this, with some considering it a needed corrective, but most thinking it was just mods going off on a power trip (and of course, always, always, we were persecuting viewpoints we didn't like). We haven't done it since coming here because the community is smaller and we really don't want to hand out bans like candy. But honestly, I just mostly disregard your opinion of the tone here since you're clearly only seeing meanness in one direction and you only care about meanness in one direction. I will say that most of your proposed rules from NeutralPolitics are more or less the rules of the Motte. You are not wrong that we don't enforce them that strictly, and perhaps not as strictly as we used to. So it is worth discussing amongst ourselves. Maybe it is time for a "reign of terror" or at least a "reign of increased strictness."
But here is the problem: none of that would make you happy. Because you are the kind of person who will never believe that we are being fair, no matter how we adjust the dials. So, there is that.
Laughs in still waiting for one, just one concrete example of such a thing. I even just re-read the whole original thread. It's almost comical how milquetoast nearly the whole thing is.
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If this behavior was genuinely rare from you then that would be one thing, because yeah, we all have bad days. But for you like over 50% of your posts have unnecessary condescension and sarcasm to varying degrees. I looked at the most recent page of your replies to people, and there are plenty of examples like a rather goofy "NUh-uuuuuHHHHHHHH!" retort a day or two ago.
I can say that I sincerely try to come with an open mind and am available to be persuaded, but I doubt that would change your view of me on this topic. From my perspective you haven't really engaged with my main points and instead just kinda handwave it and claim I'm being obstinate. IIRC that's what you did last time too though my memory of it is a bit hazy.
This is not my assumption. I absolutely presume the mod team has enough centrists to not make it a totally conservative echo chamber. From what I can tell you're a small-L liberal like me and I think we actually see eye-to-eye on most political topics. But the problem with liberals and conservatives is that they largely see eye-to-eye on CW topics, or at least they see much more eye-to-eye than between centrists and leftists. The difference between liberals and conservatives comes down to smaller things like how great Trump is, how nihilistic we should be, how extreme the reactions to left should be, etc. On a scale encompassing all possible political topics there's a lot of difference between centrist liberals and conservatives, but when it comes to CW stuff that gap is much smaller. And this is a CW forum so.....
For there to be balance, you'd want someone who'd naturally agree with most of the leftist viewpoints when it came to CW topics. I'm not saying make darwin a mod if he ever comes back, but a person or two with his political sensibilities would be good for balancing the mod team.
Again with this.
You should know that most people aren't available to be persuaded on most things. When you post a normal response to a typical CW take that you disagree with, do you expect them to say "oh you've completely changed my opinion"? Probably not, unless it's something like a simple clarification on basic facts of what happened surrounding some current event. Most peoples' conclusions are already baked in from the start, that's just how human psychology works. You could deploy the "you won't change what you belief" point on almost any topic and you'd likely be correct. In fact, I could turn this around on you and say you wouldn't believe there's bias no matter what evidence I brought.
When I can look at a left-leaning poster like Turok getting banned for a borderline post, and I can very easily produce several right-leaning posts going in the other direction and getting no mod action, and then you respond with little but accusations of being obstinate, it seems like you're not even trying.
Well, of course I too think I am open-minded and available to be persuaded, and that you are not, and there we are. But to break this down to the fundamental point of disagreement, I dispute that in order to mod "fairly," one has to share political opinions with the person being modded, and therefore leftists can only fairly be modded by (or in consultation with) other leftists. May I remind you that Darwin got argued with a lot, but was actually rarely modded here?
This may be true, but then why the fuck are we here?
No, nobody gets persuaded in one thread to change their worldview, or even their opinion on one topic. But I do think my opinions on a number of things have changed over time, partly because of my participation here. In some aspects, I have become more liberal; in other cases, much less so.
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+1 for moderating more on tone again. I'm genuinely struggling to understand why the mods have abandoned that idea so completely, unless it is either inability to shoot their own tribal soldiers in the back, or unwillingness to stand up to a community majority that gets pissy when you do so with theirs. I guess maybe the seeds of this were there since the beginning, considering how the staff had to be dragged kicking and screaming into banning one TrannyPornO (who some, unbelievably, still reminisce about wistfully) even though any forum that wants to be welcoming to leftists should obviously have shown him the door based on his username alone before he made a single post.
(I guess the proposition is complicated to implement also because you see the detrimental effects of popular posters getting punished immediately, while the positive effects of better tone take a long time to manifest as new people trickle in.)
Do you or @TheAntipopulist perceive any irony whatsoever when you realize you are defending Darwin and insisting he was treated unfairly, but complaining that we put up with TrannyPorn too long?
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TPO was often obstinate and annoying but, again, he was an interesting writer and original thinker who has clearly had a lot of success on other social media since his departure from this board.
probably the only user who would have written about Mechsploitation
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I don't think either of those should be prima facie justification to not apply the rules to someone. We do not know the opportunity cost in interesting writing and original thinking lost by people who did not want to share a forum with him, but to just blankly assume that it can't have been so high as to justify losing him amounts to a complete lack of faith in the community's principles. There also was the untried option of trying to buckbreak him rather than just going for the kill, like by forcibly renaming him. Take a lesson from mid-2000s /b/, which managed to shape its culture by unrestrained use of wordfilters alone and still keep a reputation for "light-touch" moderation.
I had no problem with forcibly renaming the account.
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My guess would be a combination of the following:
Modding people for "boo outgroup" comments is certainly not bad per se, but it's weird that that rule has stuck around and is still expansively interpreted while simultaneously the rules for interacting with other users are so lax. It's led to the baffling situation where calling the Republican response to the 2020 results "election denial" gets you dinged, but someone using the word as a personal attack directly accusing another poster as "being in denial" provokes no response.
I'm not any more of a fan of him than you are, but it is an old rule of internet communities that singling out moderators to attack is the most surefire way to get more of whatever the moderator you singled out stands for. All you will get is wagon circling, because staff vs. the rabble is the most natural tribal division for a volunteer project. (See Wikipedia for the most famous example.)
The only productive way to effect change is to lay low until there is an opportunity to influence the selection of new staff, and then try to tip the scale towards people you find more agreeable.
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Huh? It's been a while, but I don't remember him misbehaving...
Oh... This is ridiculous man. If a hair trigger of this sensitivity was applied to left wingers, they'd be banned on sight.
What's a concrete example of that? I at least certainly can't think of any symmetrical slights (if I had to come up with a way, I'd suggest making your username "FetusSlushie" or "WhiteTears" or something).
I don't remember instances of leftists flinging childish slurs at the holy cows of rightists here at all; and if they did, I would likewise be in favour of the banhammer. What do you think tone policing is about? Why is it so hard for right-wingers to restrain themselves and not use slurs?
Anyone using the word "chud", references to "sky daddy", or Darwin using "blood libel" on anyone being trans-skeptical.
"Tranny" is not a slur. I'm all for civility, but you'll never satisfy people who keep inventing things to be offended at.
I think banning "sky daddy" is fair, but I looked at the search results and I can see only one instance that is on the use side of the use-mention distinction (magicalkittycat from 5 months ago). The others - it seems like 75% of uses of "chud" at this point are by self-identified chuds (like the Asmongold fandom) though personally I would have also liked to see that one buried, and "blood libel" is in a different class as it evokes disagreement with its substance rather than its style. (Contrast "sky daddy": Christians would not disagree that God is a father figure, nor that He is at least metaphorically situated in the sky. The offense is caused by the baby talk formulation, implying that believers are stupid and emotionally immature)
Who is "inventing things to be offended at"? The term obviously was invented by people who are against "trannies" with the intent to offend, and to pretend otherwise is a level of gaslighting that would get you an A+ on your * Studies course paper if you deployed it for the other team.
Well, you're not looking hard enough- I did it too, I just used the plural so it won't show up in a simple search. As a bonus, it was a reply to a meta thread.
I used it, I meant it specifically in the offensive way, and it was absolutely necessary for it to be in the offensive mode to do that to make the point. (There are a few expressions like this, actually.)
Also, my username is offensive in a religious sense, and is intended to be.
Same thing with "gay" and "trans" for that matter- if I can't say that, or call something that, then I lose the ability to explain certain things about sex/uality. I believe there's a reasonable chance I'm going to need to do that with "trannies" specifically because the fact it's offensive, and the fact it means what it means, is required.
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This is not even slightly obvious to me -- the very same word is (very commonly for like 50+ years) used to refer to a somewhat cumbersome to pronounce/type automotive component, and the general format is in extensive use in casual English. (see esp. Australia; "sunnies", "mozzies", "footie", "barbie" etc etc etc)
It doesn't at all diminish/insult transmissions! Why would it be an obvious slur against... trann-o's?
I mean, your case would be more compelling if you could show even one person who uses the term while neither personally disliking transsexuals or transsexualism, nor engaging in some sort of reclamation exercise.
This is like the troon discussion all over again. Not only is this line of reasoning proving too much ("baboon does not diminish/insult the primates! coon does not diminish/insult raccoons! Why would they be an obvious slur against (...)?"), if you actually believed it you would just find yourself constantly surprised by reality, specifically why certain classes of similar-looking words keep coined by groups of people for other groups they hate and why the target groups keep reacting negatively to those words being used to them. Yes, some leftists famously use a strategy where they pretend to not understand something that is common sense but not backed by an articulate theory that looks good in front of an audience. That doesn't mean you should lower yourself to their level; if you think that you should do that because some leftists somewhere got to, that's a textbook example of fighting the culture war here, as opposed to discussing it.
I would argue the other side on "troon" -- it's a neologism for one thing, and not at all an established diminutive in English. Not inherently insulting per se, but AFAIK as you say was coined by haters so two strikes at least.
"Tranny" is much older; even if you exclude transmissions from the conversation, it was common argot for "transvestite" for the longest time before the gender deal was much of a glimmer in anyone's eye.
The fact that the people who are making a big deal about being called how they want in terms of pronouns and/or general gender essence are also wanting to dictate the name of their condition is a pretty big push actually -- "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" is actually a pretty mild form of disagreement in such cases, and (as you say) it could be done in a much stronger way.
So I'll argue that using "tranny" is just a way of saying "i reject your hypothesis" -- aggressive, but only as insulting as you want to make it and far from contentless.
Even 'gay' is not (hopefully) a slur when you are talking about an actual gay person -- if there were a movement to require non-chuds to refer to gay people only as 'homosexual' (certainly no homo!) or something even more cumbersome, would you support it?
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Yes, because whenever the left tries to come up with an insult, the right just appropriates it, instead of banning people and acting offended.
Uh, no. There's no disagreement on substance. The whole point is to accuse the interlocutor of mal intent, instead od debating the substance.
No, actually, it wasn't. It was ages ago, but I clearly remember it being used as a diminutive. You know which word was invented by people who are against X to be used against X? That word is "chud", so if anything feels like gas lighting, it's the arbitrary switching of criteria for which word is supposed to be considered an insult.
By whom?
It is a diminutive, which contributes to its usability as a slur, just like "sky daddy" (your example!) is insulting in a way "sky dad" or "sky father" would not be.
Good for them, I guess (not that they have a choice most of the time), but that doesn't matter. The goal ostensibly was to have a diversity of opinions on this forum, not to settle scores or enact justice for the right wing. There is a perfectly usable neutral word ("transsexual") which is less offputting to a demographic we need more of, because it is barely represented on this political discussion forum even though it is politically dominant in most relevant countries. On the other hand, the only advantages of allowing "tranny" are saving 5 bytes of space per use and letting some right-wingers feel good (and I doubt they would even quit if they were denied this little pleasure).
Also, in case that was not clear the first time around, I'd be very happy with a policy that bans all uses (as opposed to mentions) of "tranny", "sky daddy" and "chud".
Good progressive liberals. It was a term of affection.
Well, if the only goal is to have more leftists, that's one thing, but let's not call that "policing on tone". It's the old "affirmiitve action for left-wingers" model that was tried here (as much as the mods might deny it), and didn't accomplish much.
Honestly, I wouldn't care much if the name "TrannyPorn0" was banned, and the user was forced to change it, but it's pretty clear people didn't want to ban the name, which no one complained about at the time. What people did complain about was his choice of topics, which he always addressed with complete civility. Even you didn't bring up any examples of him actually misbehaving, despite trying to portray him as some sort of horrible person who's posts would have been banned on tone alone.
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