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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30454 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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The mods do.

The mods have some slack in terms of what we choose to enforce.

If there was ever a case where:

  1. Someone posted interesting content
  2. AND I didn't think it was crowding out a more meaningful post on the same discussion
  3. AND it starts an interesting discussion
  4. AND it doesn't set a bad precedent for other people doing it

Then I probably won't enforce the rules.

This has happened before. A borderline top level post on an obscure topic, and some people jump in with interesting back and forth. The top level gets buried quickly because other topics come up. I've hit approve and moved on without a mod comment. Its already annoying enough to get into this same argument with people every time this comes up.

Basically we already have your system of "if mods think its ok, then we allow it". And I (a moderator) decided, that this post wasn't ok. Knowing all of this, you should be happy now, correct?

No, I think the rules have gradually been getting stricter while losing sight of their original purpose and I would prefer to see them go back to how they were a few years ago.

You say things are getting stricter because we say no bare links and actually enforce the rule?

This is probably the least popular rule that we enforce right now. But it is far from some of the unpopular rules we have had to enforce in the past. We once banned discussion of HBD. That was very unpopular.

I think our users have gotten better behaved, so you notice some of the light touch mod stuff more. Back on the subreddit it wasn't strange to have a half dozen bans each week, with a perma-ban once or twice a month. Now we probably average about 1 ban a week, and maybe one perma-ban every 6 months.

Your complaint ultimately boils down to "I don't like this rule, so please stop enforcing it". The answer is no, I'm not going to do that. There was a halfway decent natural experiment we ran where the culturewarroundup subreddit allowed bare links, and themotte stopped allowing them. Themotte lives and the culturewarroundup subreddit is almost dead. Saying that I am "too strict" is silly. I didn't ban the top level poster, I asked them not do this, which is a basic level warning when I put on my red mod hat to say it. Its literally the least strict I can be while still saying "hey, please follow the rules".

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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."

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