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PaperclipPerfector
7mo ago
(text post)
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
I have a suggestion for how to solve the problem of balancing the blog-length posts in the CWR with the more discussion oriented stuff a lot of people (like me) would like to see there, and I think I have a thought on why the confusion/frustration exists:
The original "culture war roundup" was meant as a containment thread for all of that weeks stupid culture war happenings. If some person showed up at a spa and insisted on exposing himself to a bunch of people in the locker rooms but insisted that he was just trans and this was just normal, instead of needing a lengthy blog post about this, you could post in CWR. It was a containment thread to prevent these sorts of common, repetitive posts from clogging up the more in depth discussions other people wanted to have.
[edit]: It's probably my fault for being unclear here. I am giving this as a historical example of the type of things which would get caught in the CWR, not as an example of the type of things which should be looked at as ideal posts for the CWR. I clarified in a response below that at least historically these types of posts stopped being made organically because people stopped interacting with them due to their repetitive nature. My general point, also made in that clarifying post, is that allowing users to organically enforce the culture of the community is a good thing, and I contrast this with what I perceive now, which is micromanagement. My response to the 'well tended gardens die to apathy' blog is that it is also possible to over prune a garden.
I think the problem is that the CWR thread has become a place where people go to post their blogs, and that they're trying to emulate the style (or more specifically the length) of SA's posts. In my opinion this results in lots of really, really unnecessarily long, usually pretty terribly written posts about long passed culture war topics. This is fine, and just like everybody else I've of course written tens of thousands of words of blog posts myself. So here's my proposal:
Split the blogs off into their own thread, call it "longform motteblog" or "the bailey: blogs from themotte" or something like that.
Allow the CWR to return to its roots: a weekly roundup of culture war topics.
Still remove low effort trolling, sneering, etc.
For reference, here is a link to the CWR from a random week in 2018: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9sabky/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_october_29/
Notice how most of the posts here follow the form of: here is a current event, here is a couple of sentences either describing it or giving a jumping off point for analysis, and then lots of discussion. The longer posts/discussion type stuff is usually contained beneath one of these topics.
Here we can go back to 2017: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/5z5dm1/culture_war_roundup_for_week_of_march_13_2017/
Almost every top level post made in there would be removed from the current themotte CWR thread.
Maybe this type of thing is just explicitly not what themotte is trying to do, and the name is really just a holdover. Hopefully this explains my frustration (which I believe is shared by others) with the way that length seems to be getting used as a proxy for quality. I hope this also explains the recent post (which I was banned for making) demonstrating that length is not a good proxy for quality, and is easily fakeable using LLMs. (Of course like most people who get banned for anything: I think this was completely unfair, I think the point I was making was obvious, I think it was on-topic, and I think I even made clear that I wasn't trying to deceive anybody, just demonstrate that length is a bad metric for judging quality, especially now that LLMs are cheap and available).
I value the CWR threads, obviously value themotte as a discussion forum, and it makes me sad to see something I value seemingly go away. I have enjoyed the CWR roundup threads for a substantial amount of time (at least 6 years), and I think my recent posts expressing this frustration are an attempt by me to keep that type of (imo valuable) discussion alive.
I think the whole point is that this kind of outrage bait is best suited to /pol/ or various other online forums or subreddits, rather than to this place. Another story about woke trans activism (something I’d say 95% of regulars probably take issue with) without commentary is just a space for people to affirm their beliefs without really saying or discussing anything. It’s like /pol/ collages of migrant crime stories, they just exist to make people mad and lower the quality of discourse; everyone there already agrees with the poster.
The value here (I’d say at least) is in interesting and civilized conversation with smart and often eloquent people who sometimes know things the average person doesn’t, I’ve learnt a lot here from people’s commentary. Another piece of evidence that something we all know is happening and all disagree with is happening isn’t necessary.
The CWR was originally a containment thread specifically for those types of posts. There is utility there if the CW is something you are interested in because you can come in and get a general sense for the current state of affairs. I think that the CW is radically transforming our society, and am thus interested in it, and having meaningful discussions with smart people about it.
Posting the 9000th “look at this trans person maybe this is actually autogynophelia!” take will just naturally receive less interaction, which is generally what the people posting are seeking.
The mods here are, in my opinion, engaging in the most common mistake that people with power make: believing in the idea of central planning or central authority. An individual mod (or small group of mods) cannot effectively plan or micromanage the discussions between thousands of people. The innovation that allowed Reddit, and digg before it, to succeed was the idea of distributed or decentralized moderation. Upvotes and downvotes actually are (with appropriate, hands off moderation to remove spam etc) actually very effective.
Discussion quality on both Reddit and digg took an obvious hit when overbearing moderators tried to micromanage the discussions. It is why Reddit has become such an awful echo chamber, and unfortunately (sadly, again because I value and have valued this community for so long) the signs of this are starting to show here.
Look at the CWR, the latest post is almost a full day old, and is about a sort of meta take on the CW in general not really a roundup of the weeks events.
Well tended gardens of course die due to apathy, certainly a blogpost we all have read and repeated to each other hundreds or thousands of times.
But overtended gardens never bear fruit.
Edit: as of now there actually is a new post in CWR, the previous one was 19 hours ago. The current post is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. It is essentially just a blog post about a realization the poster had about how good being a landlord is. Not exactly a bad post, but again really just a typical blogspot/Facebook style blog post.
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