site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3635 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 14, 2024

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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?

(such as the recently modded Kulak, Hlynka, Burdensomecount) as if they were strangers

Kulak has been modded plenty before, and Hlynka and Burdensomecount have long been dancing close to a permaban.

You can dislike the moderation for whatever reason, but you chose some really poor examples of people "suddenly and inexplicably being modded harshly."

I don’t mind if they dance on the ban line all their life, I have a problem with the actual banning. You ratchet the punishments automatically, so their days are numbered – as you sometimes remind your victims, like Hlynka here, which is hardly helpful.

Warnings that never result in punishments are meaningless, just like a stock that'll never pay a dividend or buyback or ever return profit somehow.

Sure, if by ‘consequences of warnings’ you mean a few days ban to cool off, a slap on the wrist, that’s fine, mods need to work. But I have a problem with weeks-long, month-long bans, they’re pseudo-permabans. You don’t send a guy to the chair for accumulating parking tickets. Near permabans are a far graver violation of someone’s freedom of expression, and should be reserved for grave faults like clear bad faith, constant disregard for the rules, or so thoroughly disliked that the sub produces 6000 shards of pottery with your name on it.

or so thoroughly disliked that the sub produces 6000 shards of pottery with your name on it.

If the length of bans were a function of popularity alone, then @guesswho would need cryopreservation to ever survive long enough to post here again.

Whether the sub dislikes you is, while not entirely irrelevant (because we are quite successful in aligning the desires of the mods and users), it is by no means the deciding factor for who gets banned or for what. If you are deeply unpopular (justifiably or not), and the mods don't think you broke any rules, you're not going to get permabanned.

I'll second that for people who have been quality contributors in the past, it's best to avoid permabans or extremely long bans to the extent possible, and lean on frequent use of, e.g., one week bans. (And I assume the mods agree, hence why temp bans seem more common.)

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