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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   Edited 7mo ago   5422 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for September 2023

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@Fruck:

@ymeskhout:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@cjet79:

@Londondare:

@self_made_human:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@raggedy_anthem:

Contributions for the week of August 28, 2023

@jimm:

@RandomRanger:

Contributions for the week of September 4, 2023

@ToaKraka:

@coffee_enjoyer:

@TracingWoodgrains:

@jeroboam:

@SSCReader:

All Moderators Are Bastards

@ymeskhout:

@Amadan:

@cjet79:

The Aliens Have Landed Gentry

@RobertLiguori:

@raggedy_anthem:

@hydroacetylene:

@ebrso:

Contributions for the week of September 11, 2023

@zeke5123:

@roystgnr:

@cjet79:

@screye:

Will the Real America Please Stand Up?

@satirizedoor:

@WhiningCoil:

@MathWizard:

Contributions for the week of September 18, 2023

@CanIHaveASong:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@Lizzardspawn:

@Soriek:

The Best Offence is a Good Defense

@Pulpachair:

@WhiningCoil:

@ymeskhout:

Who's Cheating Whom?

@MadMonzer:

@FCfromSSC:

@Meriadoc:

Contributions for the week of September 25, 2023

@JulianRota:

@kurwakatyn:

@functor:

@gattsuru:

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I was really hoping that my first aaqc would be for my post about my dad teaching me how to use toothpaste (as thermal paste.) I know it's not a particularly mottey post, but at the time I wrote it I was worried I would lose him and reminiscing with him (or at him I guess, he was in a coma) and it was nice to have a record. And while I don't particularly care about aaqcs (although I certainly appreciate the sentiment behind them and am grateful to anyone who voted for me) I think he would have liked to know one of our outings made people smile. Which reminds me - @self_made_human and @inappropriatecontent - you both said kind things about that post and I was too occupied and then too distracted to reply, but I really appreciated them and wanted to reply, but couldn't find the words at the time (or rather the sentiment behind them). Here are those words and the sentiment now though - thanks guys, I really appreciate it!

That was a great post! And it did get nominated as an AAQC, but unfortunately a lot of good posts don't make it to the roundup purely on the basis of "trying to keep the report to a reasonable length." We get around 200 comments nominated each month and honestly most of them could plausibly be AAQCs, depending on the month!

That said, it still would not have been your first, at least not on this site--you were in the November 2022 roundup for this comment.

Oh cool, I had completely forgotten about that post, and thanks!

So how do you sort through AAQC nominations? I mean obviously there’s probably a few that you can kick out right off the bat because they break the rules through partisan rancor or are lying schizoposts or got deleted right after posting or because it’s obvious the person who nominated it clicked the wrong button reporting or whatever, but you said most of the nominations could plausibly be AAQC’s, so I’m assuming there’s a bunch of reasonable AAQC’s which don’t make the cut. Is it number of nominations?

So how do you sort through AAQC nominations?

Here is my usual response:

All nominated posts go into a single pile. Dozens of posts, [sometimes] well over a hundred, are nominated every week. The soft goal for each week is to recognize about ten quality posts; sometimes less, sometimes more, but much more would get quite unwieldy. Some nominations are obviously people using the AAQC report to mean "I really agree with this user," but I think a solid majority (so far!) are posts that could plausibly be included in the roundup.

Unfortunately that means the primary goal of the moderator sorting through the pile is to look for reasons to exclude nominees. Posts that receive noticeably more nominations than other posts get more benefit of the doubt. Posts that themselves generated other Quality Contributions get more benefit of the doubt. Beyond that, it's a curation process. Did I learn something from this post? Are others likely to learn something from it? Does it represent a view I don't encounter often? Does it exhibit some measure of expertise? Is it surprising or novel or beautifully-written? Does it display a high degree of self-awareness, effort, and/or epistemic humility? Does it contribute to the health of the community? Is it likely to generate further interesting discussion? On rare occasion I will disqualify a post because the user who wrote it has other, better posts already included in that week's roundup--but sometimes a post seems too good to not include, even if it means that user gets three or four nods in one roundup.

But, sadly, given that it is a winnowing process, probably the single most important question is just--how does this compare with all the other posts I'm reading through right now?

Now, posts that do break other rules are generally discarded first.... Some AAQCs do receive negative reports also, and this is shown in the AAQC queue. A negative report does not automatically disqualify an AAQC nomination, but if the post is in fact unnecessarily antagonistic, heated, etc. then it's usually easy for me to throw out.... If I have included something in this roundup that had negative reports, I either concluded that those negative reports were being used as a super-downvote button, or I found that the post's positives greatly outweighed the negatives.

To the direct question--

Is it number of nominations?

--the answer is a qualified "yes." A post with many nominations definitely gets a harder look, but I read every single post, and there are almost always posts with just one nomination that get included in roundups that exclude posts with two or three nominations. I have excluded posts with as many as five or six nominations--usually, hotly antagonistic posts that were clearly drawing super-upvotes (for some reason people seem to especially enjoy AAQC-reporting posts that flame the moderators). So absolutely no one is included in this list based on number of nominations alone, but as always community feedback plays a central role in how things get done around here.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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