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It's getting unavoidable - the quality of news and novel information obtained from time here is crashing. I used to hear things here first - now I usually don't hear them here at all.
Recently I brought up Rich Men North of Richmond - only because no one else did - and pretty well everyone shit on it for one reason or another. 'Should've sang about this instead,' 'this song is better,' 'why'd he bring this up' etc. But it's the biggest song on the planet. You were all wrong and I was right to bring it to your attention. How can we raise the quality of posts back to be worthy of attention, so readers are informed about developments in the culture war?
It's getting unavoidable that we're having far more people complain and add low-effort negative comments than actually take time to flesh out top level posts that are high quality. As @Amadan and others have consistently said, if you don't like the status quo why don't you contribute yourself, or try to organize something else to change it?
High quality, intellectual writing doesn't just drop out of thin air because you complain about it. It comes from intelligent people who are driven to write, and who want to sharpen their minds in an environment that tests their opinions.
Frankly, I'm concerned that the "quality of news an novel information" has gone up here much more than I'd like. In terms of a vision for this site, I'm far more in the camp of having great writers like @ymeskhout and @DaseindustriesLtd write long effortposts about serious issues they've spent a lot of time thinking about, rather than helping people like you get their latest CW fix.
There are a million places on the internet you can go to keep up with the spectacle of the twenty four hour news cycle. There aren't as many places where you can find in-depth analyses of Straussian themes, or a discussion that weaves together modern internet drama with the age-old idea of sacrifice and meaning and suffering, or the how the relationship between the rich and the poor has changed dramatically in the modern era.
These sorts of well thought out, insightful and useful write-ups are rare and take time to formulate. Expecting brilliant insights on every latest piece of CW gossip is ridiculous. Sure it might drive more engagement, but it would also likely lead us in a race to the bottom.
Long effort posts are often just meandering posts filled with unnecessary asides. We shouldn’t encourage length but quality. Sometimes length and quality go hand and hand. Sometimes brevity and quality go together.
The problem is we have this idea that short equals low effort (and therefore perhaps subject to moderation) whereas long equals high effort. I’d rather we judge based on “is this thoughtful.”
I think people making this argument are way too dramatic. Yeah, some posters have this problem, but such is life, some people are better writers than others. But as someone who prefers to keep things brief, I haven't noticed you have to put in all that much work for a top level comment. I'm pretty sure 1-2 paragraphs is all you need.
Some posters use 7-8 paragraphs to communicate an idea that might take two sentences. It is annoying.
Yes, some people are too verbose and could use editors, but we aren't a publication and we aren't going to mod people because "You're a bad writer." Your claim that we require verbosity is false. If you think someone goes on at too much length, you can either offer constructive criticism or ignore it. If you think they are going on at too much length because they think they have to to pass scrutiny here, you will have to give me an example of someone doing this.
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