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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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We are for discussion. Start the discussion if you are a top level post.

We are not for breaking news.

If all you have is questions and no real discussion to add consider:

  1. Maybe the thing is not worth discussing, or doesn't generate any good discussion. If it couldn't generate good discussion for the person bring up, it's less likely to do so for strangers.
  2. Someone else might have a real discussion starting point. By jumping on the topic too quickly you've forced them to rush out their opinion in order to join the discussion while it lasts.
  3. The top level post tends to set an example for the posts that follow. Set a good example.

Normally this kind of thing is only a warning or not brought up at all by the other mods. But what's the point of a rule if it is never enforced? Bad luck of the draw getting me as the reviewer of the post. I am not a fan of infinite warnings.

Fair enough, point #2 strikes me as particularly compelling.

The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"

lol, I mean sorry, but picturing someone despondent because their internet post didn't make it out of the oven fast enough is just embarrassing.

If you have a long effort post to make, why not just make it as a reply to a less narrow top level post like the one above? Shorter posts like this generally have a much broader scope and therefore you can have a lot more replies and jump off into a larger variety of topics. If someone writes a 10 page essay about that time Feinstein almost got killed by left wing terrorists in response to her passing then people that might want to discuss some more topical aspects of the event are forced to post an entirely new top level comment. Which is obnoxious considering this place is already a chore to navigate and horribly disorganized. Especially for anyone trying to find older discussions.

Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.

That isn’t really a response to the criticism. Pure ad hominem. I even understand your position but shouldn’t you hold yourself to a higher standard

They started it off with a criticism where they basically call the purpose of themotte "embarrassing"?

I mean this without ad hominem, and without reference to the remzem: if you are not here to discuss the culture war then you don't belong here.

The second criticism is that larger essays tend to have a narrowed scope. I don't think this is even true. Plenty of top level long posts have a large scope. If it was true, their complaint is then that the discussion is overly narrowed, so if you want to post on a separate aspect of the event you need to go create your own high effort top level post. This sounds like a feature of the rules and not a bug. Our rules are meant to facilitate higher effort discussions. Complaining because a rule does exactly that is always going to be met with a "good, glad its working".

The third criticism is that searchability is poor on the website. I'm human, not a robot. I do try and hold myself to a higher standard, but the user has quite literally missed the whole purpose of the community, and insulted it while deep into that misunderstanding. So yeah at this point I was annoyed at the user, and didn't address it. If someone who was a respected member of the community had asked me I would have probably addressed it thus:

  1. We do try and preserve some good discussions via the quality contributions reports.
  2. Its not entirely clear to me how searchability would improve the quality of discussions. I'm open to hearing that explained.
  3. Some users don't want searchability. They don't like the thought that their words on this website could be collected and sifted through in order to unmask their real-life identity.
  4. Searchability would also probably need to be built in from the start. I suppose we could run posts through an AI and have it auto-categorize them. But the typical way to do it on the internet is to have the users categorize their own stuff. That is the only way you get past a simple text search, but you can already text search on this website, so I assume that isn't what they wanted.

The fourth criticism is that navigation is a chore. No details on why, so its hard to know what aspect of it is a chore. The fifth criticism is that nothing is organized. I'd probably have the same responses to that criticism as I would to the searchability complaint.

In general the goal of this community is discussion. We try to have rules and features that serve that purpose.

  1. The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.

  2. With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.

The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.

They are still shitting on quality posters. I'd rather keep the quality posters happy rather than this user.

With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.

And the top level post provided no insight either. Shared a link story, asked some basic questions, and basically said "discuss". Had it done so, or attempted to do so I might not have banned.

I don't think my minimum level standard for a top level post is very high. People seem to come out of the woodwork every time this comes up acting like I'm asking them to write a novel. I'm not. Just start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. If it looks like you tried and fell short I'll probably only provide a warning. The original poster did not try at all. And there is a group of users that constantly want to resurrect the bare links thread, so they post what they think is just past the line on acceptable. Sometimes I am going to drop bans for this. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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