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USPol is a problem. It's the largest and fastest moving thread in D&D, and also arguably the worst one. It's dominated by contentless twitter embeds and grudgy slapfights, and extended or in-depth conversation is difficult as it get buried under a half dozen other arguments and and news stories. With the general election over it now generates easily 90% of both the reports and probations in the subforum, and despite adding a half dozen IKs to help out it still moves too quickly to effectively moderate, and I suspect it will remain so no matter how many mods or IKs we have watching it. Posters who are insightful contributors elsewhere become sneering shitposters The subject matter is too broad and the discussion too shallow. Meanwhile, while other threads occasionally have minor problems, they're frequently solvable via mod or IK participation instead of probations. So, my proposal is to break up USPol. We already have a number of threads like the Right Wing Media thread, Polliwonks, the Police Reform/Abolition thread, the State & Local thread, and a number of others that cover US Politics on specific topics or from specific angles, and we could easily have several others: US Empire & Foreign Policy, Biden Administration & Federal Government, The Democratic Party and the young Left, and more on specific but discussion-worthy topics like the aforementioned police abolition thread. The problem is, this has been tried before. USPol is D&D's Afghanistan. Several different sets of mods have tried to kill it and it always ends up re-forming. Despite the constant complaints, people keep gravitating back to it and it redevelops the same problems. It's possible this entire idea is wrongheaded, and that there's some other changes that could be made that would allow us to moderate USpol in a consistent and effective way. So, we want to hear for you: ---What do you like and dislike about USPol? ---Should we try to break up USPol into smaller threads? ------If so, are there any particular threads that you think should be mod-created prior to doing so? ------If not, what should be done instead to improve the thread? Reminder that this is not the place to prosecute posters you dislike, this include vaguebooking nonsense about "just ban the bad posters bing bang boom". That sort of thing isn't helpful. Feel free to let us know if you have any other concerns or suggestions for future feedback threads, but try to largely keep the thread on the current topic. Once this thread closes in a couple weeks, I'm planning on doing another feedback thread discussing tweets, sources, and how they are posted and discussed.
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Jan 5, 2021 17:43
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I like the fast news and general discussion thread that is uspol. I think that people should be encouraged to take discussion of other issues to new threads, and the barrier to opening new threads should be low. Maybe if it generates the most probations, the probations need to be longer or permanent, or thread specific. Getting a certain number in a certain time should result in some permanent consequence.
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Jan 5, 2021 17:52
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As a reader and infrequent participant in uspol threads since the days of watching Sarah Palin burst on to the scene, it seems to me that breaking up the thread is a fool's errand. A general chat-style politics thread has always emerged from under any partitions, and likely always will. The only thing that ever seemed to make a meaningful difference was when there was the DnD chat thread as a safety valve for shitposting, but even that didn't really elevate the content of uspol, it just gave posters more venues to slapfight. I personally feel like the solution is a combination of slow-mode and coming down with a ruthless banhammer on "posting about posting", but it's entirely possible that's just a projection of my own preference and not actually something that would help. Alls I know is that the most tiresome and tedious posts almost without exception are the ones where the usual suspects go on crusades against their forums enemies, so it seems reasonable to suspect that banning posts about other posters would improve the general readability, if maybe not solve all the problems. The other issue with this of course is enforcement and coming to a firm definition of what counts as posting-about-posting, but that's a problem for the mods to figure out lol Anyway please don't kill uspol, I like it
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Jan 5, 2021 17:56
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USPOL is one of my top sources for news, and it's one of two other threads that brought me to SA. I like/don't mind tweets being posted and discussion about elections and strategy. I don't like some of the derails as much (I don't mind the current one over drunk driving). My main recommendation is just to make sure that there aren't daylong derails over things like Obama's drone policies or whatever; they make the thread boring and I'm sick and tired of relitigating the 2020 primaries for the 1,377th time.
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Jan 5, 2021 17:59
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I think the problem here is that people want USpol, for all its bullshit. They want a place to react to the news and to destroy their posting enemies, without having to catch up on what the thread has been discussing or researching what the specific topic is about. You can split it into multiple topics, but one of them will just become USpol again. Slow mode seemed to help cut down on the bullshit but whatever timer it was at previously felt a bit too long. sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 18:02
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Friendly neighborhood admin here. I'm also reading the thread and if you have any specific questions for me I can answer them. Feel free to be honest but constructive in this thread but if you want to PM me privately I will respond to them all (sometimes I get behind when they come in batches, but I get to every one). Use that option if you want to keep things private or you don't think you can calmly bring up issues in public thread.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:02
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Seconding that I like the fast news and discussion, if there was a way to easily generate and link a subthread for discussion on specific stories or tangents that would probably be ideal but don't know how feasible that is. That way the main thread can be mostly links and the start of discussions and if you want to delve deeper you can click the link to the subthread and however many pages that might be, instead of having to read past a 5 page derail about breakfast cereals that could be generated as it's own subthread.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:03
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sit on my Facebook posted:As a reader and infrequent participant in uspol threads since the days of watching Sarah Palin burst on to the scene, it seems to me that breaking up the thread is a fool's errand. A general chat-style politics thread has always emerged from under any partitions, and likely always will. The only thing that ever seemed to make a meaningful difference was when there was the DnD chat thread as a safety valve for shitposting, but even that didn't really elevate the content of uspol, it just gave posters more venues to slapfight. I personally feel like the solution is a combination of slow-mode and coming down with a ruthless banhammer on "posting about posting", but it's entirely possible that's just a projection of my own preference and not actually something that would help. Alls I know is that the most tiresome and tedious posts almost without exception are the ones where the usual suspects go on crusades against their forums enemies, so it seems reasonable to suspect that banning posts about other posters would improve the general readability, if maybe not solve all the problems. The other issue with this of course is enforcement and coming to a firm definition of what counts as posting-about-posting, but that's a problem for the mods to figure out lol I agree with this post 100%. USPOL is a great place for up to the minute news and discussion of such, but the endless virtue-signalling, purity testing and poster slapfighting has to stop. Of course, as sit on my Facebook said, enforcement of such a policy would be difficult.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:07
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Seconding that I like the fast news and discussion, if there was a way to easily generate and link a subthread for discussion on specific stories or tangents that would probably be ideal but don't know how feasible that is. I disagree with this suggestion. Derails aside, the interleaved nature of the discussion when multiple interesting things are happening at the same time is probably what I like the most about USPOL. Splitting things off in subheads would break that. I get that I'm selfishly asking to indulge my ADD tendencies, but hey, it's what I like.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:09
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I like having one consolidated thread I can check for current events and would be sad if it went away. For all its problems and faults, USPol is one of the most concise and informative news sources I've encountered online. Edit: it seems like when derails get large enough they organically split off into their own threads anyway. Like half the threads in this sub-forum are USPol spawn.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:11
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The issue remains inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of all rules. As an example, Sexpig received 3 day ramp for apparently referring to the press conference threats described below as an "order" then failing to produce a literal EO.Lemming posted:The initial tweet that kicked this off was in specific reference to this, you can say that this wasn't an "order" if you mean like a specific piece of paper which is an "order" as a term of art, or you can say it was an "order" in the sense that the governor told hospitals to use all their vaccines in a week or they'll get fined and they won't get any more vaccines. I don't think the second interpretation is unreasonable because he's telling hospitals to use all their vaccines within a week or he'll fine them and they won't get any more vaccines.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:13
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I would support a permanent slowmode, at least.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:14
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To me, the biggest problem I see comes from derails which unnecessarily bloat an already post-heavy thread and completely drown out other, relevant conversation (today's derail: is a DUI an unforgivable crime?????). How to combat that I'm not sure other than direct mod intervention to say "Stop talking about this and take it to its own thread." Which is something that occasionally happens but how many foodchat derail threads would D&D need? Slowmode has been tried with minimal results, so I don't know if something drastic like shutting the thread down entirely for a short period of time when a mod or IK puts their foot down on a derail may be in order. Fake Edit: I agree with this, too: Anarchy Stocking posted:I agree with this post 100%. USPOL is a great place for up to the minute news and discussion of such, but the endless virtue-signalling, purity testing and poster slapfighting has to stop. Of course, as sit on my Facebook said, enforcement of such a policy would be difficult.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:14
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Calling things "virtue signalling" is a right wing thing and it, like "purity testing", is a dismissal of concerns you don't share without giving any real consideration to them, so anyone using these terms is telling on themselves
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Jan 5, 2021 18:16
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I think slowmode would effectively kill USPol as a place for active discussion (which is what a lot of people want out of it) and turn it into a news aggregator - if you're going to do that, you should instead create a looser discussion/chat thread and then a more strict news style thread (similar to the old U.S. news thread), which I think is what is being proposed here. That way there'd be a thread for people who just want a news aggregator, but also a place for people who want to talk (and even argue and slapfight) back and forth about the news - or whatever other topics. I think the problem with USPol is that it tries to be two things and can't really be both.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:18
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I like it for what it is, it can be fast at times and I miss when there was a separate Trump Tweets thread.. but for the most part I like the tweet embeds as it's a way to get the absurdity faster than anywhere else honestly. The only issue I think I've ever took is that it pushes really far left at times, with hyperbolic comments and being piled on if you don't share that ideology. That's the nature of the internet though.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:19
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I'm just an outside reader but I like it for what it is, derails and all
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Jan 5, 2021 18:27
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F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:USPOL is one of my top sources for news, and it's one of two other threads that brought me to SA. I like/don't mind tweets being posted and discussion about elections and strategy. I don't like some of the derails as much (I don't mind the current one over drunk driving). My main recommendation is just to make sure that there aren't daylong derails over things like Obama's drone policies or whatever; they make the thread boring and I'm sick and tired of relitigating the 2020 primaries for the 1,377th time. This, mostly. I like the news and chat part. I hate the derails and endless primary / dems are the real monster harping
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Jan 5, 2021 18:32
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USPol is my main news trunk/firehose too and appreciate seeing stuff roll into there. Having a bunch of it be tweets is fine by me since it's kept me from having to be glued to Twitter myself. I would like to have something like that continue, but I also appreciate trying to rein it in. My own take is that most of the shitposting rolls in overnight when news is particularly slow. I have a theory that people are being kept up with whatever (like anxiety) and they just unload it unnecessarily on each other since there's nothing else to talk about. Slow mode did make things more civil but it also harmed it as a news trunk. I think a fundamental, unsolvable technical problem here is being unable to readily subthread so we can hide some of the side conversations. Then pissing matches don't clog up the main view. SA just isn't designed like that and if I wanted a threaded Reddit view then I'd just go to Reddit. Regarding moderation, I've had plenty of "what the gently caress?" takes to the point of saying it straight out loud at some of the probes. If I'm on my phone, it's hard to tell what really was going on. I've had some of them make total sense after checking the report from a PC, but there were still others where I just didn't get it. At this point, I mostly treat the thread as read-only more out of the moderation than out of a fear of being called some kind of fascist or something.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:35
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Roluth posted:I would support a permanent slowmode, at least. I think this is the best option. It would do a lot to cut back on slap fights as people can't just immediately make another post in response to another poster as they continuously talk past each other. It would also give Mods/Iks more time to review posts that are problematic before they get buried.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:36
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fool of sound posted:Reminder that this is not the place to prosecute posters you dislike, this include vaguebooking nonsense about "just ban the bad posters bing bang boom". That sort of thing isn't helpful. If you're not going to get rid of the problem posters, we'd be better off just making the thread no-probes (except for threats, etc) so that people can actually respond to unwarranted hostility in kind, instead of having to tip-toe around invisible and arbitrary lines set by mods and IKs. Otherwise, how about this? Once a person lands on a certain number of ignore lists, you politely ask them not to post in USPol anymore? Even if, by some chance, I wound up over the chosen threshold (which I think is unlikely, not because I'm such a great poster, but just because I don't post all that much), I would gladly accept being unable to post in USPol anymore if I could lurk a thread that didn't have those problem posters in it. E: Generally speaking I think it's not a terrible idea, however you want to work it, to consider posting in the "marquee" thread of D&D to be a privilege that is easily revoked, while posting in other threads is permitted for all forum members. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 18:38
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Make it so posting nothing but twitter embeds without any actual post on the meat of the embed is probabtable. Then make it so that if you post literal nobodies you better have evidence or support to back it up because there are more then a few people that literally post tweets from bots or fake accounts as breaking news that even the barest glance proves is false or totally made up. Hell we just had one where someone posted a tweet saying the proud boys are here and blah blah blah in dc sunny with no clouds. When it had been overcast for three days with rain. Also slow mode needs to be a thing. Uspol as an aggregator is good, have a general thread for bitching about other stuff. Many people forget that uspol came from lolgop threads back in 09, and was focused on general going ons in the goverment and what the gop was doing flayling around. It was generally like this until 15 when hell came down the escalator and then yeah. Back the. It was fairly decent and you could learn poo poo reading and build up your knowledge of stuff, now it's just people screaming at eachother and crying doom everytime a new tweet is shat out by someone that has 20 numbers after the name bob
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Jan 5, 2021 18:41
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I think an empty tweet post is fine if it is a news tweet that isn't from some rando
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Jan 5, 2021 18:46
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:Slow mode did make things more civil but it also harmed it as a news trunk. I think a fundamental, unsolvable technical problem here is being unable to readily subthread so we can hide some of the side conversations. Then pissing matches don't clog up the main view. SA just isn't designed like that and if I wanted a threaded Reddit view then I'd just go to Reddit. I strongly agree with this. I've suggested argument mapping of some kind a few times, but I know it's a big tech change. Maybe we could do an organized field trip to another site to try debate on a specific topic (I'm very much not trying to suggest a forums invasion) and try it generally. Being able to side thread specific disagreements would be huge, but only if there was a way to keep it them from all withering on the vine. I have always liked D&D and want it to succeed, but the solution is not more punishment for people we don't like or to run out dummies who disagree with us. we need to be more charitable with one another and the presumption of good faith should be enforced more rigorously.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:50
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Harold Fjord posted:Calling things "virtue signalling" is a right wing thing and it, like "purity testing", is a dismissal of concerns you don't share without giving any real consideration to them, so anyone using these terms is telling on themselves And this is the exact kind of thing I'm talking about. Thank you, random internet person, for letting me know how awful I am for having an opinion that you don't agree with.
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Jan 5, 2021 18:52
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Anarchy Stocking posted:And this is the exact kind of thing I'm talking about. Thank you, random internet person, for letting me know how awful I am for having an opinion that you don't agree with. That's a gently caress of a strawman you have built there friend. I think the posts demanding we ban purity testers and virtue signallers are barely disguised request for viewpoint specific moderation, not dissimilar from other requests that posting enemies be banned. Those don't make anyone a bad person, but don't seem very on the spirit of debating and discussing, where we have to allow room for disagreement. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 18:55
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I think there's been an increase in the frequency of probations handed out for simply reposting tweets to incite rage, regardless of the age, veracity, or relevance of the tweet. That is a good start. Similarly with the probations for misrepresenting the contents of links, or just reposting random people from Twitter. Threadbans are good, ramped probations are good, please keep the list of miscreants updated. More enforced vacations for anyone trying to blame Obama for Trump's actions, because that's both dumb and also just shits all over the thread for ten pages or so (i.e. the N95 "discussion" yesterday). I like newsworthy links and articles, but I think anyone posting them has some duty to actually add something of their own as to what they think is relevant or why it is interesting. Maybe if you're tweetdumping, it has to be in the "News: [thing] Views: This is a terrible idea because [reasons]" format. I'd also prefer articles over tweets, but I sort of accept I've lost that battle. I sort of struggle with how you could break things up. Polliwonks is a good setup and a good thread. Maybe you could sort of resurrect the "Republican Rebuilding" threads for laughing at the lunatic state reps who accidentally shoot themselves while trying to inject COVID through the door of Comet Ping Pong or whatever, while keeping a separate thread for federal government current events?
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Jan 5, 2021 18:57
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It would probably be helpful to just have a no holds barred hostility flaming thread where the only thing that can be probated is doxxing, bigotry, and illegal activities. Some people want a yelling thread, so why not just let them do that?
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Jan 5, 2021 19:01
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I think slow mode with a 3 minute timer is fine. 10 minutes is much to long. The interaction that happened above is a good example of a really bad problem is US POL. Pick posted:It would probably be helpful to just have a no holds barred hostility flaming thread where the only thing that can be probated is doxxing, bigotry, and illegal activities. Some people want a yelling thread, so why not just let them do that? Because it then becomes the quarantine thread and the posters there invade other threads and start poo poo. There should be a place where posting about other posters is just straight up prohibited.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:03
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Nthing what many others have said about how USPOL is generally fine for what it is, a fast-moving "serious" thread (as opposed to a chat thread) for discussing US political news. I'm even fine with most of the foodchat derails on slow news days. However if I could make one specific suggestion, it would be to ban slapfights over which president is "worse" than the other. We've had multiple pages-long arguments in recent months about such illuminating topics like "but can you REALLY say Trump was a worse president than W. Bush?" It's such an incredibly broad question that it's basically meaningless, and yet you end up with pages and pages of gotchas about poo poo like Bush technically being responsible for more deaths in Iraq and impossible-to-measure questions like "but who really did more harm in the long-term?" I don't mind people discussing specific policies in USPOL, but if people really want to have a "who is better" debate, it should probably be relegated to the Pontificating About Presidents thread.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:15
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DnD's USPOL has worse issues for its high traffic, but also has issues with specific patterns of behavior and use. Regardless of the appeal of an endless flow of seemingly enlightening information, a "firehose" thread- a format of discussion which is inherently impossible to moderate, in which ideas can't be discussed or scrutinized - is in fact a bad thing, and produces a bad posting culture. One thing that's been better very recently specifically because there's been a degree of enforcement on dropping random twitter posts into the space. Twitter as a format breeds decontextualization and reactance. People see something, get mad, and are incentivized to effortlessly spread it without considering the source or context. Rules specifically addressing sourcing and preventing this pattern would be helpful. This does not mean that sharing all tweets is bad, but means that the practice requires some form of constraint. One possible option: require that users posting tweets also take the time to identify the person posting the tweet (including any reframing or contextualization work that's being done), and actually quote the material linked in the tweet. This...this really shouldn't be a burden to people. It does mean that users (including moderators) need to be able to collectively apply source criticism. This cannot take the form viewpoint rationalization based on the equivocating rejection of all "mainstream media". RT et al must not have a footprint on the forums as a source of information. Individual items like these are only a partial fix, however, for the reasons Mellow Seas has already articulated. The DnD mods need to have a consistent, communicated set of rules that are clearly applied- by moderators, for whom IKs are not a substitute. There are rules posted for DnD; they're not very well enforced. I appreciate that moderators are subject to a lot of abuse. This abuse reflects a deliberate tactic by some users to render moderators reluctant to moderate- to treat the practice as a chore or as something done only reactively. This advantages those seeking to abuse the space, and who wish to exercise deliberate control over the scope of acceptable discussion. Pick posted:It would probably be helpful to just have a no holds barred hostility flaming thread where the only thing that can be probated is doxxing, bigotry, and illegal activities. Some people want a yelling thread, so why not just let them do that? Containment does not work. It creates a space where people define themselves and their behavior by opposition to other spaces.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:21
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I'm not a fan of no-content tweet posting. Especially when it's a retweet of some nobody and it's purpose is to signal-boost for derailment. Also I feel like if a derail is going on for 2-3 pages... that's probably too long. If I was going to make new threads it would be for these topics if they don't already exist: Historical US Administrations Your Political Party Sucks
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Jan 5, 2021 19:23
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fool of sound posted:So, we want to hear for you: USPol is pretty much fine. I do not acknowledge the existence of a serious problem with USPol in general. Regarding breaking it up, at most I guess you could encourage very long derails to start a new thread? This is a "problem" that often solves itself with the next big news event blowing out whatever it was that had been discussed before, but if we are still talking about DUI's in 12 hours, yeah take it to a new thread.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:24
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I use USPOL as a news/Twitter content filter with a leftist bias, and I love it for that. If my options were to keep USPOL as is with no changes in moderation and all the same problems, or break it up into other threads, I would choose keeping it as-is and it wouldn't be close. I said this in the main D&D suggestion thread a while back but I think it's true - so many people just don't use the ignore list and it boggles my mind. If you have in your head a list of "usual suspects" that gently caress up your enjoyment of the thread, ignore them and move on. poo poo's not that hard. Edit: I do think people could be better about assuming good faith and limiting hyperbole, but I mean that's just want arguing about politics on the internet is. I don't think more rules or different enforcement will actually change behavior here. Sub Par fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 19:31
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As a lurker, USPOL is probably one of the threads I keep up with the most, because of its value as a news aggregator. I like that there's one place I can go to to keep up on the news, rather than have to wade through Twitter myself. It has, however, become increasingly unpleasant to read, mostly because of the constant slapfights, relitigating the primaries, relitigating Obama, twisting other posters words, and so forth. I think it crossed the line from "discussion of current events which sometimes gets heated" into "frenzied ideological battleground" when the General Election thread was closed and merged into USPOL. I don't know if that was because the GE thread dealt with certain subject matter, or if it's something specific to the people who used to post in the GE thread, but I feel like that's the moment I can point to where USPOL started to get noticeably worse, in my opinion. I think two threads with drastically different aims and posting populations were dumped into one, and whatever the old USPOL culture was got subsumed by whatever the GE thread posting culture was. If you can identify what differentiated the two threads, that might be a good start. I've also noticed that moderating (mostly by the new thread IKs) seems to be affected by what side/clique/whatever the poster in question is on (as much as we might want to say cliques don't exist, they absolutely do), which isn't ideal. There's also been issues with the IKs moderating threads they're participating in, which can give rise to the appearance of using moderation powers to shut down lines of argument that the moderator doesn't personally agree with. I think this is always going to be a problem to some degree, because I don't think it's fair to demand they not participate - but it seems to have gotten worse lately. I do appreciate that the IKs have started to specify when they're saying something as a poster and when they're saying something as an IK, though. I understand the distaste for "quarantine" threads, but I think you could reasonably have separate threads for criticizing the Democratic party or for critiquing past administrations. I don't think moving that out of the main USPOL thread means that it'll become a hugbox or that there's censorship afoot or whatever, it's just an acknowledgement that those arguments tend to overwhelm everything else. That aside, I do like that the mods have been coming down harder on lovely tweet posting. Posting tweets is fine, and I think it's even okay to post them without comment if the tweet speaks for itself, but I like that they've been making sure posters don't just post inflammatory nonsense from twitter randos. It seems like some people post to spread news, and others post to spread outrage, and I think we can do with less of the latter. I'm personally not a fan of slow mode, but if it were to return, I think we'd need a low threshold (2-3 minutes) - and as far as I know it's stuck at 10 minutes. All in all, it's a good thread for news and commentary. It's just devolved a lot into repetitive circular arguments lately.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:40
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chat thread exists for general discussion of politics and whatever. nuke USPOL also when is that feedback thread getting made
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Jan 5, 2021 19:41
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The biggest problem I have with the USPol thread is that there's a rule that says you should assume good faith from others but there's zero punishment whatsoever for posting in bad faith (trolling, avoiding the point, etc), so the best way to own your posting enemies becomes to just piss everyone off by being as stupid and obnoxious as possible. This consistently causes the worst, stupidest discussions, and the only punishments are for the people who get frustrated at it or call it out ("posting about posters"). As an example I'll bring something up from a little while ago. There were a few people talking past each other, so I attempted to call out what I saw as the main disagreement and try to clear up some of the confusion people were having around what I assumed were just people talking past each other:Lemming posted:
The response to this was so utterly brain dead and obviously worthless that it boggles the mind: Darkrenown posted:
So he cuts out the part of the post where I clearly and explicitly lay out what my argument is so there can't be any confusion, leaves the not directly related example I gave as an attempt to make the point as clear as possible, and then posts as if he's correcting me over thinking that she was actually in danger of starving to death if she didn't took the job. This kept devolving over multiple pages, where I kept trying to explain my clear point, and he was intentionally not getting it. I fundamentally do not believe it is possible to evaluate this kind of thing as anything but bad faith, stubborn disagreement because he disagreed with the opposite position and instead of addressing it, just wanted to shitpost annoyingly. I eventually call the guy a loving toddler and get probated. The problem is, their posting is given a complete pass! There's no repercussions whatsoever for posting like this. You can intentionally misread posts, warp other peoples' arguments, put words in their mouths, whatever you want, and there's no downside. It's extremely easy to shut down conversations like this, and it makes for a phenomenally lovely atmosphere that nobody wants to read. This teaches people to post like complete garbage because this style of posting never gets punished and tends to piss people off enough that they'll often say a mean word like "gently caress" and get probated themselves. What I'm saying is I think posts that are transparently stirring poo poo to shut down conversation and blatantly in bad faith shouldn't be stopped. These posts whether they're made by habitual trolls and shitposters or just people who want to shut a particular conversation down for whatever reason are the seeds that to lead to the vast majority of times when the thread gets unbearably lovely. If these were nipped in the bud instead things would be way better. The thread is great when it's good, it just needs to have the posts that cause most of the problems to be punished while right now they're completely passed over.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:46
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Nietzsche posted:I understand the distaste for "quarantine" threads, but I think you could reasonably have separate threads for criticizing the Democratic party or for critiquing past administrations. I don't think moving that out of the main USPOL thread means that it'll become a hugbox or that there's censorship afoot or whatever, it's just an acknowledgement that those arguments tend to overwhelm everything else. I know that some people like "Dems bad" containment threads, but I'm not sure how we do that when Biden is the president. Biden is going to generate most of the USPol content, and he is pretty much going to be the physical embodiment of the mainstream Democratic party while in office.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:48
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Discendo Vox posted:DnD's USPOL has worse issues for its high traffic, but also has issues with specific patterns of behavior and use. Regardless of the appeal of an endless flow of seemingly enlightening information, a "firehose" thread- a format of discussion which is inherently impossible to moderate, in which ideas can't be discussed or scrutinized - is in fact a bad thing, and produces a bad posting culture. I don't want to empty quote but this post wraps up pretty much all of my thoughts on the issue in a more succinct way than I think I can put it. I will add one addendum to the twitter thing: If someone posts a tweet they should be responsible for that veracity of that tweet unless they explicitly note otherwise. This has kinda/sorta been the case with some of the inflammatory out of context tweet probes, but I think it should be an explicit rule. Posting a tweet which is taking an article completely out of context should be treated exactly the same as posting a claim about and article that turns out to be completely out of context. In my ideal world posting tweets shouldn't be allowed unless the purpose is to show the tweet was made (like hearsay rules), copy paste the link to the article in the tweet if you want to post an article. I do realize that's probably an unpopular idea.
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Jan 5, 2021 19:52
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Discendo Vox posted:DnD's USPOL has worse issues for its high traffic, but also has issues with specific patterns of behavior and use. Regardless of the appeal of an endless flow of seemingly enlightening information, a "firehose" thread- a format of discussion which is inherently impossible to moderate, in which ideas can't be discussed or scrutinized - is in fact a bad thing, and produces a bad posting culture. I think this is an insightful post and a good summary of the issues. The worst posters have made it impossible to do anything here. I myself have completely given up posting or even reading here given how bad it's gotten and how much disdain is thrown at anyone with any expert knowledge whatsoever (see the athanatos thread where people argued an actual ph.d. economist shouldn't be allowed to post because they don't like the field of economics). People are going around policing what are and are not acceptable things to talk about and if you dare deviate they will poo poo up the thread and then blame you for it when you call it out. The anti-intellectualism is a serious problem and has utterly destroyed this place. It used to be a place where people with actual real world knowledge in things like public policy, law, finance, government regulation, etc posted. It's now just become a screaming chamber where people grind axes. I don't really feel bad about not reading or posting here anymore as all the value that existed circa 2011-2018 is gone and it's done wonders for my blood pressure not to get in arguments with people who fundamentally don't want to have a discussion but rather browbeat people and only have Right Thought here. I'm skeptical anything will actually improve but still wanted to say my piece. axeil fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jan 5, 2021 |
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Jan 5, 2021 19:54
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