There's a pretty big set of changes coming down the pipe. These shouldn't have much impact on users - it's all internal bookkeeping - but there's a lot of it, and if there's bugs, it might cause issues. Let me know if anything weird happens! Weird, in this case, is probably "comments you can see that you think you shouldn't be able to", or "comments you can't see that you think you should be able to", or anything else strange that goes on. As an example, at one point in development reply notifications stopped working. So keep your eyes out for that. I'm probably pushing this in a day or two, I just wanted to warn people first.
EDIT: PUSH COMPLETE, let me know if anything goes wrong
Are you a software developer? Do you want to help? We can pretty much always use people who want to get their hands dirty with our ridiculous list of stuff to work on. The codebase is in Python, and while I'm not gonna claim it's the cleanest thing ever, it's also not the worst and we are absolutely up for refactoring and improvements. Hop over to our discord server and join in. (This is also a good place to report issues, especially if part of the issue is "I can't make comments anymore.")
Are you somewhat experienced in Python but have never worked on a big codebase? Come help anyway! We'll point you at some easy stuff.
Are you not experienced in Python whatsoever? We can always use testers, to be honest, and if you want to learn Python, go do a tutorial, once you know the basics, come join us and work on stuff.
(if you're experienced in, like, any other language, you'll have no trouble)
Alt Accounts: Let's talk about 'em. We are consistently having trouble with people making alt accounts to avoid bans, which is against the rules, or making alt accounts to respond to their own stuff, which isn't technically against the rules, and so forth. I'm considering a general note in the rules that alt accounts are strongly discouraged, but if you feel the need for an alt, contact us; we're probably okay with it if there's a good reason. (Example: We've had a few people ask to make effortposts that aren't associated with their main account for various reasons. We're fine with this.) If you want to avoid talking to us about it, it probably isn't a good reason.
Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is not set in stone.
Single-Issue Posting: Similarly, we're having trouble with people who want to post about one specific topic. "But wait, Zorba, why is that a problem" well, check out the Foundation:
The purpose of this community is to be a working discussion ground for people who may hold dramatically different beliefs. It is to be a place for people to examine the beliefs of others as well as their own beliefs; it is to be a place where strange or abnormal opinions and ideas can be generated and discussed fairly, with consideration and insight instead of kneejerk responses.
If someone's posting about one subject, repeatedly, over and over, then it isn't really a discussion that's being had, it's prosletyzing. I acknowledge there's some value lost in removing this kind of behavior, but I think there's a lot of value lost in having it; letting the community be dominated by this behavior seems to lead to Bad Outcomes.
Feedback wanted, though! Let me know what you think - this is also not set in stone.
Private Profiles: When we picked up the codebase, it included functionality for private profiles, which prevents users from seeing your profile. I probably would have removed this if I'd had a lot more development time, but I didn't. So it exists.
I'm thinking of removing it anyway, though. I'm not sure if it provides significant benefit; I think there's a good argument that anything posted on the site is, in some sense, fair game to be looked over.
On the other hand . . . removing it certainly does encourage ad hominem arguments, doesn't it? Ad hominems are kind of useless and crappy and poison discourse. We don't want people to be arguing about the other person's previously-stated beliefs all the time, we want people to be responding to recent comments, in general.
But on the gripping hand . . .
. . . well, I just went to get a list of the ten most prolific users with hidden profiles. One of them has a few quality contributions! (Thanks!) Two of them are neutral. And seven of them have repeated antagonism, with many of those getting banned or permabanned.
If there's a tool mostly used by people who are fucking with the community, maybe that's a good argument for removing the tool.
On the, uh, other gripping hand, keep in mind that private profiles don't even work against the admins. We can see right through them (accompanied by a note that says "this profile is private"). So this feature change isn't for the sake of us, it's for the sake of you. Is that worth it? I dunno.
Feedback wanted! Again!
The Volunteer System is actually working and doing useful stuff at this point. It doesn't yet have write access, so to speak, all it's doing is providing info to the mods. But it's providing useful info. Fun fact: some of our absolute most reliable and trustworthy volunteers don't comment. In some cases "much", in some cases "at all". Keep it up, lurkers! This is useful! I seriously encourage everyone to click that banner once a day and spend a few minutes at it. Or even just bookmark the page and mash the bookmark once in a while - I've personally got it on my bookmark bar.
The big refactor mentioned at the top is actually for the sake of improving the volunteer system, this is part of what will let it turn into write access and let us solve stuff like filtered-comments-in-limbo, while taking a lot of load off the mods' backs and maybe even making our moderation more consistent. As a sort of ironic counterpart to this, it also means that the bar might show up less often.
At some point I want to set up better incentives for long-time volunteers, but that takes a lot of code effort. Asking people to volunteer more often doesn't, so that's what I'm doing.
(Feedback wanted on this also.)
I want your feedback on things, as if that wasn't clear. These threads basically behave like a big metadiscussion thread, so . . . what's your thoughts on this whole adventure? How's it going? Want some tweaks? Found a bug? Let me know! I don't promise to agree but I promise to listen.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I’ll register my disagreement with the crackdown on single-issue posters. Frankly, I just don’t see why people have a problem with it; it definitely does not feel like the Culture War thread is bogged down by too much discussion of one particular topic, and if there’s a thread I’m not interested in I can just hide it and move on.
It seems to me that it’s the particular topic that certain accused “single-topic posters” have chosen that is getting people’s hackles up. If there was a user who only wanted to post about, say, AI safety, or some other issue that doesn’t carry significant emotional valence for other users here, I think that people would readily see the value of just tolerating that poster and hiding his threads if they don’t care about the issue in question.
I suspect that the mods have one particular user in mind - one whose supposed “single-issue focus” is the JQ - with this policy. Maybe I’m being uncharitable and there are other prominent users who rub people the wrong way by flogging specific hobby-horses, but the fact that I can’t think of any illustrates, in my opinion, that this is not in fact a widespread problem that needs addressing.
I would have thought there are at least two prominent anti-semites here? Three if you count Foreverlurker?
The specific issue does make a difference. There are enough of these posts that a casual scroll through the CW round-up on any given day is likely to run into at least one of them, and the regular presence of narratives about how the perfidious Jews are plotting to destroy Western civilisation is something that's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, or contribute to the perception that the Motte is a 'Nazi forum' or somesuch. Heck, the top post in the roundup thread right now is one directly engaging with anti-semitic conspiracy content, and it isn't even by any of the 2/3 regular anti-semites we have.
I can very much understand people not wanting this garbage on their doorstep. If nothing else, it makes it much, much harder to recommend anything here to outsiders.
"Oh, the Motte, that's the site with the Nazis" - that's not a reaction one particularly wants to deal with, is it?
That’s precisely the mindset I’m accusing the mods of having; I think that they see this particular issue as radioactive in a way that other issues aren’t, and are keen to prevent this community from becoming the “den of witches” which, ironically, Scott Alexander wanted to avoid his forum from becoming, sparking the creation/exodus of this forum in the first place.
I’m not hiding the fact that I have a special interest in wanting this community to remain an open forum for witches to participate as members in good standing; white identitarian ideas aren’t quite as radioactive as antisemitism, but they’re not far behind. (And certainly the two memeplexes are often intimately linked.) I don’t want the mods to start cracking down on topics that are likely to scare away normies, because I would fear that my own ideas would quickly find their way into the chopping block.
If that means that this is a forum which will remain repellent to outsiders, that is a price that I am willing to pay, but of course I would say that. Again, I’m not hiding the skin that I have in the game. I think that to some extent the mods probably are, and I’m trying to draw that out.
You're not entirely wrong, and you're not entirely right.
Speaking for myself (no other mods), I do want Holocaust deniers and white supremacists to be allowed to speak here. I don't want to ban you or @SecureSignals even though I find your views noxious. (Unironically, I really do appreciate both of you for your useful articulations of these positions.) However, no, I don't want this place to become Scott Alexander's den of witches either. He accurately identified the problem, and never identified a solution, and neither have we, but (you) witches are the only ones who don't see a problem with becoming a den of witches. Yes, I understand, from your point of view, you are the good guys and that you are seen as bad guys is the entire problem which you want to change. Unfortunately for you, you're fighting the world, and we are of the world.
If we ever get to the point where this place is overrun by white supremacists and Holocaust deniers and most of my mod time is spent fielding reports about Da Joos Da Joos Da Joos, I will concede victory to the witches and you can celebrate my departure.
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Well, to be blunt, I think the Motte is indeed at the Seven Zillion Witches stage of subculture evolution, and unfortunately once you reach that point you fall off the side of the cliff and eventually only get witches.
There's some sort of balance that has to be found. You don't want to be so committed to what's 'normal' or popular that any or all dissenting opinions are frozen out. At the same time, if you're radically open, you become a den of witches. Both Normieland and Witchville are bad places to have conversations. I understand and agree with not wanting to become Normieland, but at the same time the Motte is getting much too far into Witchville territory for my liking.
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