Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Is everyone satisfied with the moderation here? For me, it’s getting to unacceptably high levels. For some reason, they recently felt the need to almost double the mods to take care of the shrinking userbase.
Our old charitable custom was to treat strangers as if they were worthy of good faith. Increasingly the mods treat those whose good faith has already been established (such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers.
Like reddit, you can start off as a bastion of free speech, but inevitably mods identify with their function and see mod action as an end in itself, until they become more prison guards than janitors.
So are there good alternatives to the motte out there?
Your opinions on moderation, are, of course, entirely your own prerogative. The Motte seems to form a very small, in absolute proportion, but enormous, relative, in the overlapping circles of the Venn diagram representing "freedom to express controversial opinions" and "relatively high quality discourse", throw in "politely", if you care to be stricter.
You want to get away with saying just about anything? Well, there's 4chan. Maybe Twitter. You want articulate and earnest users making long-form content? Plenty of options, none with a particularly wide Overton Window.
Before I became a mod, or even had any reason to assume they were going to add new ones, I certainly felt the poor bastards were overworked and underpaid (well, they're still the latter). I have access to site usage metrics, and they're largely flat since we left Reddit, which is surprising enough. Is the user base shrinking? Not that I can see by eyeballing a graph over months or years, though I am as concerned as anyone by the loss of the old pipeline from Scott endorsing us or simply through the contagion of being an active subreddit. But I foresaw apocalypse before the migration, and that very much hasn't happened.
At any rate, it would be a bit awkward if adding more mods didn't result in more moderation decisions, or minor changes in how it's done. What would the point be then, at least for the former.
Oh boy, or maybe "if only you knew how bad things really are"(if we didn't take action)
I assure you that much of the suspicion of new users is because of the tendency of certain undesirables to play whack-a-mole, and that, if someone posts something only mildly objectionable, we usually let them right through.
I find Kulak and BC entertaining, they even have a point at times, I am studiously mute on certain others, but Kulak didn't get banned (last time I checked), merely warned not to be unnecessarily combative, and BC is an out-and-proud fan of drama who got away with a lot before a time out.
What you can get away is with is pretty proportional to your standing in the community, believe me I'm sure I've gotten away with things I feel compelled to mildly mod these days, if only because I hold myself to higher standards.
Not that I'm aware of. The SSC subreddit is neutered. The Schism, an offshoot of us more tuned for progressives (and I believe) more restrictions on speech is barely in action, the Culture War Roundup subreddit, well it was dying a while back, and I half suspect is gone. /r/Drama? For very loose definitions of "good alternative", I suppose, though I'm glad it exists. It's slim pickings out there.
Hence my wondering why that multiplication of entities was necessary. If the previous state was decent, it’s now overpoliced. I’ve always preferred even less moderation, and I complained occasionnally, especially when those getting moderated were arguing against me at the time.
But warnings go on the record, then when you ban them you implacably cite the warnings in some grand narrative of misbehaviour.
His opinions are merely a mirror of extreme pro-white viewpoints that are popular here. There is no realistic way to present his honest opinions in here without coming across as hostile, ‘baiting’, ‘trolling’, etc. Not that I endorse his opinions in the slightest: they are probably the furthest away from my own than anyone’s here (my last ban was for a blasphemous response to him).
I think you mean rdrama.net
There’s gotta be more. Are all the forums dead, do people just comment on substacks, or youtube?
So, here, lemme quickly explain.
We've (okay, "I") have a general policy of not demodding mods merely for inaction. I'm happy for them to come back, I'm also happy to have them giving feedback in the Mod chat channel. All of that is useful!
The downside is that this means we have a list of mods and a significant number of those mods don't really do anything. They're still valued people who I'm happy to respect, we just don't get a lot of work done, and the work needs to be done.
Before inviting new mods we were basically down to two mods who were commonly active and another two who were occasionally active, but one of the commonly-active mods was mostly active in doing the quality-contribution reports (which is valuable!) and so practically one mod was doing most of the moderation work. They were doing a good job but I'm always really leery of a bus-number-of-one situation:
In addition, it's a lot of stress on someone's back, which of course increases the chance that they decide they're done and they want to move on. Worse, they know they're a column, so maybe they end up feeling obliged to keep doing this when they don't want to, which pushes us right back into "start turning toxic" and "value drift" territory. It's a bad scene all around.
My main goal here was to take that bus-number-of-one and turn it up to two or three mods, entirely just to solve the problems with having a single mod.
When I've added mods before, my general experience is that for every two mods you invite, one accepts, and for every two mods who accepts, one contributes. If I want one active mod I gotta invite four mods.
So I invited four mods and they all accepted.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm honestly quite happy about this - maybe this means we'll have a healthy mod population until I can finally get some of the next set up updates to the Volunteer system done. But it still wasn't quite intended.
The tl;dr:
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Let me know what you find.
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I can't really complain about the current moderation, since in my solipsism I have decided I was responsible for all of it (I am joking (about the solipsism)). But I think this is pretty normal when you get new mods. The job's got a bit of a learning curve, you can't expect everyone to nail it right out of the gate. Power is intoxicating and everyone wants to learn what new functions they have access to. Give them a chance man, I'm a good judge of character (this is also why I don't want you to leave.)
Thanks, man. I don’t want to be the guy who uses his theatrical exit to make a grandstanding argument, but I gots to be a little. Besides, if they keep to the same trajectory, I’m getting long-term banned anyway, and I feel I owe you guys at least a heads-up before I leave. I don’t want to, I had a great time here. We can have quick friendly sparring because I know most commenters’ disposition & allegiance, and would have to relearn all of that somewhere else, even if I could find similar quality.
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I'm pretty sure if you swapped the races in that comment but kept the words the same it'd still be considered rulebreaking.
Nah, not at all. What about: "In the tradition of Nietszche, I hold that the moral value of humans comes primarily from their will to and ability to exercise power. Just as Europeans came into greatness as they conquered the known world several centuries ago and brought their civilization's seed and bounty to all, a new class of Great Men is emerging - this time selected not based on skin color or ancestry - correlated with merit via genes, but imperfectly - but directly via social stratification based on intellegence and competence. Racial nationalists long for the aesthetics of the old order, but fail to perceive this material logic of the new one."
And "As a high IQ person, yes, I've observed that intelligence is correlated with race. And yet, the people I work with, spend my time with, just happen to chat with on the internet -- the people I judge to be worth interacting with - are members of a variety of races. I just see no evidence that an Indian, Jew, or Chinese person lacks any essential qualities that White Men have. And, indeed, Indians, Asians, and Jews have ascended to every height of post-European society seemingly by merit alone. Given that, BAP's complaints about the new multiracial elite seem tinged with ressentiment - just like white overrepresentation is 'structural racism' and the bailey is 'intentionally exists to exploit black people', jewish/indian overrepresentation exists to ... intentionally hurt white people."
(I to a significant extent agree with both of those, although they weren't written as my view, have various problems, and they're more half truths due to missing a lot of context (and no the full context doesn't 'sound better'))
I agree that insults are to a large extent just direct statements of things that directly make people look bad, and people shouldn't react negatively to them. But it's very easy for anyone here to reword their statement to communicate the same idea without getting moderated.
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Maybe "decent" for you. I can only imagine it was far more stressful for the mods at the time. Jannies do it for free.
The only major difference, after the influx of new mods, is that what might have been noticed and acted on maybe 2 or 3 days late gets deal with in a few hours. That might seem like overpolicing to you, but it also represents far prompter turnaround times.
You do see he's been around here for years right? If every accusation of him being a troll or hostile was taken up, he'd have been gone in a week.
As for whether it is possible to represent his arguments, in a less inflammatory manner? I think so. And apparently he himself is an existence proof, given that he's been making them in one form or another for ages, and only once (I can't be bothered to look up the exact count right now) or a couple times got punished when he crossed the generous lines. The same is also true for those who make the inverse argument.
So he himself argued the same case before, in a more acceptable manner. And he also happens to have AAQCs, which aren't a popularity contest.
I know what the website is, but apologies for being unclear.
What exactly do you think a warning is for? A cry for help into the ether? Of course it is backed by the implicit threat that the mods will take action, if not now, then in the future. That's the entire point!
If someone has been warned in the past and doesn't get their act together, then that is not a free pass to be precisely as bad again and expect to just keep getting warned indefinitely. You either get your act together and meet at least minimum standards, become so net positive that the mods sigh and let you off (including turning bans into warnings, or shorter bans)*, or you get booted.
I really am confused why someone who see this as a sticking point. How many people think it's worse for a cop to fire warning shots before mowing down an onrushing criminal, as opposed to just shooting them in the head? A warning gives an opportunity to change course, not every chiding by a mod warrants a note or constitutes a formal warning.
*Before I became a mod, I am very certain that certain comments by me would have gotten a fresh user warned or even banned. The one ban here I have on record, a very short one, might well have gotten much, much worse for a user without a reputation.
I don't want them shot in the head. Mods are janitors, mall cops, their use of lethal force should be strongly restricted.
Mods are judge, jury and executioner, and the legislative branch. They are the ones who set up and run the space, therefore they get to decide everything. If Zorba wants to shut the site down entirely that is his prerogative. We don't have any rights in a space, we didn't create and don't help run. We don't even pay taxes!
In other words this is not our house, it is Zorbas and as per the Castle doctrine, he is quite entitled to "shoot" anyone he doesn't want here. Think of yourself as a guest, and consider the host has an absolute right to throw you out, if you do not behave the way they want you too.
The fact Zorba handles that generally with a light touch (as do his deputies) is irrelevant. That is the cold hard truth of the matter.
You're obviously correct, but FWIW I think it's best to be gentle hosts, since Zorba and the mods are also (I presume) very interested in attracting rather than repelling new blood.
Oh absolutely I agree. Being too harsh is likely to be detrimental to the health of the space. I was mainly arguing against the "mods are just janitors" point. They are clearly much more than that, and I think not recognizing that is a flaw.
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I take great pains to, including commending new posters who are doing things right.
And in a more general manner, we have AAQCs, and once in a blue moon, you might get drafted to help elect the new mods or become one yourself.
We would, of course, prefer that every comer is maximally civil, curious and earnest from the start, but to the extent incentives matter, we try to be carrot as well as stick.
And it does seem to work. We're still here, a functioning community.
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Look, let's be clear here: comparing a permaban to being shot in the head is just silly. This is a small niche forum, restricting your ability to post here is not killing you or even infringing your precious "freedom of speech" to an appreciable degree. We do care about freedom of speech which is why permabans are not applied casually. But there are rules here, you can like them or not, choose to follow them or not, you can even argue endlessly with us about how they should be enforced and whether they should be changed. Nonetheless, the rules exist and we enforce them with careful (if imperfect) consideration, and the people who get permabanned are people who, in every single case, made a deliberate choice to say "fuck your rules." And even then, as you have observed yourself, it's pretty easy to come back as an alt as long as you don't make yourself too obvious. So please stop with the histrionics about how mod punishments are like a cop shooting someone over a traffic ticket.
This solution filters out good faith participants who will just leave as directed, while the worst stay. But if you tell me it’s unofficially tolerated, then I have to agree that a long ban is no big deal for freedom of speech purposes, but then, what is even the point of handing it out.
It's not, it's just that we don't have a 100% accurate way to detect alts, and we tend to err on the side of allowing false negatives vs banning false positives.
You have to take responsibility then, and endure my tedious metaphors, like I endure your knife on my throat. The fact is, with the centralisation and censorship on large platforms, there aren’t many available alternatives anymore, so a long ban does represent a significant infringement on a commenter's freedom of speech, more than it used to.
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I mean, sure, you might want that. And that's fine, but it's also never going to happen. Even 4chan is not Free Speech Maximalist, try posting CSAM and see where that gets you.
Given that Kulak didn't get anything but a warning, and a mild one, which is mostly ameliorated by the fact he acknowledged he was overreacting, BC is only gone for a month, and Hlynka is already back, it is not so much as anyone being "shot in the head" as the local Sheriff throwing some of the pub regulars in the drunk tank.
The people who are kicked off the site for good, and their alts banned relentlessly, have it coming.
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If you enjoy getting around bans from the wider internet and don't love civility, there's Kiwi Farms. I do not go there, because I like both ease of use and politeness.
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The CWR subreddit is barely active anymore- I think most of the non-shared regulars got permabanned from Reddit and the shared regulars don’t feel the need to post their as often.
Maybe datasecretslox?
Ah, I forget DSL exists, and I'm not even sure what it's like over there. All I can really say, after a quick look, is that the design of the site on mobile leaves much to be desired.
Though I think they have harsher moderation standards, but that's from vague memory.
I don’t think their moderation standards are very different from the ones here, though moderation actions there are treated with a bit less deference than here. Every time one of the regulars gets modded, it sets off a firestorm of protest, including frequently from the moderatee’s ideological opponents.
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DSL's pretty okay.
Getting modded does seem to always result in a ban, but there's still a long ladder of them, and what actually gets modded seems a bit less strict.
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