site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   11047 thread views

[META] Out Of The Frying Pan, Into A Different Frying Pan

We have somehow survived another move.

I feel like a broken record here, but, seriously, good job everyone, and thanks. While the moderators of a community are important, the community simply doesn't exist without its members. Y'all came over here and kept on posting, and that's exactly what we needed.

With luck, this is going to be the last move we ever need to make; we have our own domain and servers, we're no longer really existing with any specific other person's permission.

We are, however, not out of the woods.

I mentioned during some of the original Reddit-exodus posts that I had a serious medium-term worry about userbase. We've cut ourselves off from the Reddit pipeline and that means we're in danger of slowly eroding away; people will always leave the community and right now we don't have a good way of getting new users. We wouldn't be the first community to do so! Every community needs an influx of people, and now we need to figure out the right way to manage that.

So I now have a few requests, ordered roughly by how comfortable I am asking it.

First: Send links to people that you think will be interested. If you know someone looking for political discussion, send them a link to the site as a whole; if there's a specific post you think they'll be interested in, link that. Remember that we have The Vault, which has unfortunately gone a bit neglected while I worked on this changeover. Please don't spam anyone - I don't want anyone just posting links to our front page on a hundred subreddits - but if you have a good opportunity, either regarding friends or communities that you're an established member of, take it.

Second: Propose places that might be willing to do a link trade. I'm planning to reach out to a bunch of subreddits shortly and see if they're willing to crosslink, especially places that are serious-political-discussion-adjacent in the hopes that we can draw off that section of their population and both be better off for it. If you have personal connections you can bring it up to them yourself, otherwise just let me know and I'll see what I can do. I expect a low success rate but even a low success rate might be pretty dang valuable.

(And don't limit this to subreddits! There's a number of good communities out there that aren't on the big social sites.)

Third: If you have time, help out. We have a dev server that you can join if you want to work on a huge number of pending issues, and it's thanks to the people on this server that we've had such a constant flow of updates, fixes, and tweaks. If you're less programmery but more editorial, we do have a lot of Vault-related editing that we'd like to get done; this goes faster than you might think. If there's some other skill you have that you think might be valuable, hop on the dev server and send me a message.

And finally, fourth, which is the one that I really hate to ask, but I'm doin' it anyway.

I've set up a Patreon to take donations. If you have spare cash and think this is a worthy destination for it, please chip in.

I'm not sure what this whole "money" thing is going to end up looking like. At the very least this will pay for server costs; any income above that will go into making the site better, in whatever way seems most valuable. I've been thinking about taking out ads in an attempt to pull more users here, for example, and that isn't cheap.

This is going to be very experimental and will probably involve false starts. I'd love to hear suggestions on good ways to spend money on the site - if you have any, let me know - but note that in order to hire programmers we would need a lot of money.

For those who are more crypto-minded, I'm also taking donations via Ethereum (0xa97e126DCEcC7Ea3AF05d252B49c03ae35547dD9) and Bitcoin (bc1qnj0mvg90dfawjq3kxq4wdvcq0ejksgyf2m0xnq). All of these links are on the new (and very primitive) Support page.

I know there's going to be people who think that we left Reddit just so I could cash out. I frankly suspect that even if I just pile all of the results into a giant sack with a dollar sign on it and walk off while cackling evilly, I still won't be making minimum wage, so this would be a terrible plan :V No, I do actually like this community a ton, and want it to keep going, but I can't fund an indefinite amount of stuff on my own. And part of this push is to figure out just how useful this site is to all of you, in order to see what can be justified and what can't be justified.

So there's the ask! If you have connections, use them; if you have time, contribute it; if you have money and want to put it towards this, please provide financial support so I can figure out how to keep the new-user pipeline going.

If you don't, that's cool! Keep on posting and I hope you enjoy your time here.

Finally, this is the new Bugs/Suggestions/Small Comments thread. If you have feedback, post it here! A lot of the stuff in that Pending Issues link up above was submitted by users, and we're getting through it slowly.

63
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I just set up a 17.50€/M patreon donation to The Motte. Money is tight here, so this wasn't done without a little pain. Zorba, make it worth it!

Discuss: Donations like these should be made publicly to encourage others.

The Motte uses Patreon? I harbor a grudge against them for deplatforming Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) after they swore, just like a year before, that they were deep free-speech advocates and would remain so. I still don't want to give any money to them.

I haven't heard that name in a while. What did he even do?

I'd forgotten, myself, and I just looked up some of the details to remember. It wasn't just that Patreon said they were free-speech advocates, it's that they said unequivocally that they will not ban people for content that isn't hosted on Patreon. And then they banned Sargon for content that wasn't on Patreon, just cause they don't like him. Here's relevant excerpts someone did on a rundown I found in Quora

On the 31. July 2017 the CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte, is interviewed live by Dave Rubin. In the interview, one of the things that are discussed is none other than media censorship. Jack explicitly states that the Terms of Use of Patreon apply only to content that is on their site or is directly sponsored by patrons.

Carl Benjamin (a.k.a. Sargon of Akkad) wakes up one day and after logging on social media sees a lot of tweets and messages concerning his Patreon account. Naturally, he tries to log himself on and, lo and behold, his Patreon account has been deleted without any explanation or prior notice. Taken aback by the fact, he sends them an e-mail: the main question being why exactly they removed his account. A few hours later he receives an answer stating that his account has been deleted due to a violation of their Terms of Use. As he wasn’t aware of what exactly he did wrong, he followed up with another e-mail asking about the specifics of the violation.

A day later, they reply: he had said the N-word on stream and that’s why they are banning him.

He responds by saying that the ban is nonsensical on the grounds that: 1. The stream in which he said the N-word, wasn’t on Patreon; 2. The stream wasn’t on any of his accounts and therefore not sponsored by his patrons; and 3. That the manner in which he used the N-word was, first of all, against an alt-right group and second, to mock how people who are actually racist use it.

Thus far, they have not responded with how Carl can appeal the removal of his ban.

Following these events, Patreon, fully knowing what they’ve done, have contacted some of their users to “butter them up” in a way, their message being along the lines of: “Don’t worry, we won’t come after you. If you behave…”

I remember some of that. One of those people Patreon called recorded their conversation. And the patreon rep kept saying that they didn't really want to ban Sargon, they just wanted him to apologize for what he said, even though by their own terms of service at the time, they had no right to demand that of him. What a shitshow that all was. I really wish that people had banded together against Patreon at the time and that Patreon went under, but in retrospect, years later, it's had no impact on them, and they're still the industry standard for patrons. How sad.

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.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats