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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
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?
I'm the opposite, until recently I thought there was a big drop in the amount of moderating, to the detriment of the space. Hopefully the additional mods, mean we can keep a tightly moderated space. The whole point of theMotte is that civility needs to be modded for, in order that people with very different opinions can interact. TheMotte allows you to say almost anything...as long as you do it with an eye to framing it civilly for even your opponents. Good faith is helpful, but you still have to maintain your civility. That means not using terms that are likely to be inflammatory to your outgroup, unless those terms are vital to your post.
That requires a significant amount of moderating I think.
Many moons ago, on old reddit, when the ultra-progressive subs like SRS started banning certain words like ‘retarded’, everyone laughed at the futile attempt to stop the euphemistic threadmill. Now, even here, new words are regularly put on the index.
Yup, and that is fine. Its the way of the world. We don't get to decide what people find offensive. And here we have to try to be as inoffensive as possible given the point we are trying to make. So we have to keep up. Thats one of the costs of trying to keep a space where even people who hate each others ideas can talk.
The ways of the world are mysterious, my friend. You’re somewhat progressive. Do you approve of what has become of reddit? They certainly ‘keep up’ with 'what people find offensive', but people who hate each other's ideas can't seem to talk there. I don’t want this model of discourse applied here, no matter how popular or historically inevitable it is.
Well the mods here moderate for tone not content. If you want to argue black people are inferior or trans people are mentally ill you can. You just have to try to write as if you want black/trans people to read and interact with you.
I am not progressive by the way. I'd consider myself a left leaning authoritarian neo-liberal if anything. I just directionally agree with progressives more than conservatives as it stands. But i've voted and worked for both left and right leaning political parties. So i can go back and forth.
Reddit should do what the owners of Reddit want it to do, that is the point of ownership. Just the way Musk has been able to change Twitter. They aren't public squares so allow or disallow whatever they like.
I don’t think it’s liberal of you to support the punching of innocents.
Aren’t authoritarianism and liberalism usually opposed to one another? Authoritarian neo-liberalism sounds like the ultimate booword every political party says they oppose. Or maybe it’s Pinochet.
Cop-out. You have no opinion on the choices they made, and the state of our old home? How would you, as the legitimate owner, moderate it?
You'll note I don't support the punching of innocents. I say "I am not saying it is morally correct".
I am making a point about human nature. Whether I think its good or bad is irrelevant it just is. But a lot of people struggle with that position. I am saying that is what I think must happen if progress is to be made.
I would certainly prefer it if people were more forgiving and nicer and that were not the case! But that is not the world we are in. Similarly, I truly believe one of the benefits of owning a platform is getting to decide who can use it, what can be said and how. How I would moderate it is irrelevant, what matters is how the people who do own it feel.
If I were to ever buy it, i would probably aim for something like theMotte but with even more strict civility rules. Then if I was trying to make money from advertising on it, I would also censor and ban anything that impacted my advertising revenue, no matter what it was. As I wouldn't be buying it for free speech reasons but merely to make money. I'm a pragmatist not an idealist.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link