So the move has been made. Potential shut down by Reddit has been avoided. Huzzah!
But people are still worrying about where new members are going to come from. And things are still being organized in the same terrible way as /r/ssc when they were trying to quarantine the culture war from the rest of the sub. And sprinkles around you have a few small threads for other weekly topics or talking about the new site.
A dedicated site deserves a nu start. Rather than purposely making quality writing harder to find, it should be highlighted. (I know the quality contributions roundup exists, but it certainly isn't exhaustive.) Seriously, have you ever gone back and tried to read an old weekly culture war thread with its thousands, potentially tens of thousands of comments? It is an unnecessary slog if you are looking for something and don't have a link. And sometimes you 'continue reading' and go back only to find that you've lost your place. It just makes you say, "I blue myself."
I do have some suggestions on some of the changes I'd like to see more that there is a dedicated website. First, I'd like to see a webpage highlighting quality contributions and other content from the forum. Something that I can easily link a friend to rather than a nested comment in response to some insane person ranting "There's a man inside me!" Or whatever.
Secondly, I think some editorial prompts for content for the sure would be good. Adversarial collaborations and whatever else. Just easier ways to find good writing from the site.
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Notes -
I didn't want to make a separate thread for this, so I'll leave it as a comment: I think we have a serious issue with diversity of opinion. This was already pretty bad on Reddit, but there seems to have been a step change for the worse in the few days this new site has been up. I'm not against people sharing reactionary or anti-woke points of view but when there's nothing to counterbalance them it feels less like a forum for debate and more like the world's highest effort Daily Mail comments section. I foresee this being an increasing issue, since now the Motte is moored in the digital equivalent of international waters, there is a far lower chance that progressive voices will chance upon the community by accident. Moreover, lack of diverse perspectives induces a harmful feedback cycle, since if someone sees at least some representation of their viewpoints they are more likely to pitch in, while if they just see a load of right-wingers competing to be the most critical of 'wokeism', in all likelihood, they will leave as quickly as they entered.
I accept that I'm not the first to raise this point (I believe this was a motivating factor for the removal of the bare-links repository) but since this isn't a problem that looks likely to solve itself I feel obliged to raise it again in the hope that we can work towards a solution.
It's a problem, agreed. I suspect liberal-leaning posters felt less need to move off of reddit, while people who want to talk about things that would get them banned on reddit obviously were more interested in doing so. So the filtering process unfortunately is having the effect you are observing.
The best we can do is try to attract people genuinely interested in discussing, not booing their outgroup and talking about how horrible the wokes are being this week.
Hence, our insistence that we are not rdrama, or the next KiwiFarms.
Let me indulge in a bit of repetition here: the right leaning things that will get you kicked off reddit won't get you in trouble with rightwing circles. The left leaning ideas that you aren't allowed to say on reddit you're also not really allowed to say anywhere lefty, so you're dealing with a lot of self-censorship.
I can’t imagine that you’re talking about anything except direct calls to action, in which case: no shit you’re not allowed to say that. That’s frowned upon everywhere, right-wing circles included.
Except it's not frowned on in right wing circles. Right wing circles meme about 2a and different sorts of boxes (ballot, ammo, etc) and 'what would happen if they tried to ban guns' constantly. Then they share tips for where you can get a CC licence. Lefty circles just smugly assume that righties are all talk, or cower in fear when it's clear that they aren't.
There are equivalents to the sort of shady content you note in the more-radicalised SJ circles (i.e. small boards, not the giant social media platforms). I haven't seen obvious "shoot this specific guy please" stuff, but that's a level beyond anything you've mentioned.
I think your last sentence is only partially correct, but my impression from the rules list (I'm new here) is that I shouldn't really go into it outside the CW thread.
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