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.
- 78
- 2
PaperclipPerfector
7mo ago
(text post)
2451 thread views
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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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've had this conversation a lot lately.
Go through my old posts:
Previous versions of CWR did not have this length requirement, and yet fostered many, fantastic discussions for half of a decade.
What did precious versions of the CWR have that allowed them to be so high quality, and yet not require the length requirement you are outlining here?
As far as demanding content etc. again I just ask you to look at previous CWR threads back on SSC. These seemed to follow a traditional discussion style where a topic is introduced, and as you go down the tree the posts become deeper and longer. There were many, many, many really good discussions that happened in these spaces.
Those were valuable and I think we have lost something now that they’re not allowed to happen in that form. There are a LOT of places to write the type of blog posts that have taken over the CWR threads.
I understand you have had this discussion a lot, but I think that’s because there are enough people who found value in the types of discussions that were previously allowed, and miss that. Originally when themotte splintered off of the SSC sub, and then finally off of Reddit, it was proposed and grown as an extension of those existing communities and the move was being done for practical reasons, not to change the format to more blog like posts.
That could be where the frustration is coming from. If the pitch had been to move away from the existing CWR style and towards the current blogpost style, I suspect there would have been more pushback.
My first point in the list is how you don't really need that much effort to meet the minimum standards. If two paragraphs is hard for you to write, what are you doing here? It took you what, 5-10 minutes to write this response to me, and its double the length you need.
The longer posts have happened organically.
I think we are just going to go in circles on this forever.
I don’t believe that length is a proxy for quality, and I think they enforcing length requirements for a discussion forum results in people writing extremely low quality posts so as to avoid being banned or having their discussions removed. The noise has gone up substantially, and the signal has gone down. While I understand the intent, I think that the effect is obvious.
You’re right that I don’t have a problem writing several paragraphs to accompany submissions. The reason I don’t like the length requirements are not because I’m unable to fulfill them. It is exactly as I keep saying: this policy drives the quality of posts down because it incentivizes bad writing.
I think this is a bad thing. Obviously.
It's not a length requirement, it's a requirement to start a discussion and invest some amount of effort. Length is easy to quantify and generally people say enough things within certain lengths that I can give that as guidance.
We have a general policy of not removing discussions. If you see disappeared posts it's cuz the user deleted them.
Ban lengths are pretty light for low effort posting. Usually no ban at all. 1 day recently.
I am not asking for length I am asking for some/any signal. Not a signal from the outside world but from the poster, the one who is supposedly posting because they are interested in a discussion.
I am typically trying to stop posts that have no signal at all.
I don't get why writing two paragraphs is destroying quality. It barely takes any effort, and if it does take a bunch of effort for someone, then I don't get how the rules forbidding them from dropping bare links is somehow preventing a quality contributor from being here.
I'm not incentivizing long posts I'm disincentivizing content-less posts.
This post is longer than it needs to be. I do this all the time when I write. I make the same points in multiple ways. I have found over many years of online discussions that this is sometimes the most efficient way to get through to someone.
If I don't say it all up front it just ends up coming out over multiple posts. But by the end of it those posts are long buried and the casual readers have dropped off. That's if the other participant even wants to bother having a multi day back and forth.
I think what is happening is that we are asking people to say something, and they are realizing it's hard to say things in a short and concise way. So they have longer posts. Or they start saying something and realize they have a lot to say.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link