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Hi, I'm a long-time reader, but infrequent poster in D&D these days, as this has always been my shitposting-focused account (which I found necessary to create as a result of sharing too many personal details on my older accounts). In my view, the problem with the "stale argument" rule is that it is antithetical to the Marxist approach to analyzing current events, especially in a setting with as much "posting history" as has grown out of American politics in a forum like D&D. As we all know, in order to think critically about a particular story in the news, Marxism teaches us that we must first identify the underlying material conditions that relate to (or led to) that event's occurrence. Furthermore, the tenets of fruitful discussion require finding a common ground among participants in the conversation in order to build a productive set of concepts; Marxists often will (and should!) find themselves starting from those aforementioned material conditions when forming their arguments, and (unfortunately for most of us) we all can agree that the class divide is the most impactful, if broad, set of conditions that underlies the behavior of our ruling class (and those downstream of their decisions). Given that our elected officials are the most signficant piece of our political superstructure, it's only natural that conversations about recent newsworthy events will converge back onto the topic of the behavior of those elected officials. Shutting down discussion of a broad topic such as their behavior under the pretense of being chock-full of "stale arguments" is therefore responsible (perhaps paradoxically) for the continued degradation of the discussion at hand, as it pushes conversation further away from a materialist view of the underlying sources of conflict that led to the event in question, which results (as we've seen) in clearly-frustrated, emotionally-driven posting that leads to ad hominem attacks and straw person arguments. Given the unpredictable application of punishments for the "stale argument" rule, I don't believe that it has had a true chilling effect, per se, on the broader class of American politics conversations, but I do believe the inability of the current suite of moderators to otherwise guide posters toward a more fruitful resolution of conflicting views is just as damaging to the longevity of a specific discussion. I've seen Koos attempt what I believe to be a steering in the vein I describe, but it often comes across as being adversarial to posters instead of something that more plainly aims to find consensus among participants about points of low-level material reality. So it's no surprise to me that when that fails, posters end up spinning in circles until the conversation dies or a big batch of probations needs to be given. Furthermore, these events just serve to breed more negative relationships between posters as attacks become more personal and folks are talking past each other or misinterpreting each others' words. So, in short, I believe that moderators should approach their role as posters (when not clearly engaged in the material as a typical "normal poster") as more of a committee chairperson steering a group toward productive ends, and less of a police officer looking for tickets to write or posters to threaten. Thanks for your time reading this, and the only other point I'll add is that while I think that Leon is a "bad poster", if his planned moderation philosophy (which has high-level points clearly in line with what I've just written) is truly given a shot, I predict he'll quickly become a more efficacious contributer to the overall positive health of D&D than any recent moderation style changes have produced. So I hope that he's given enough latitude and support to implement the sorts of policies he's shared in other threads as being in line with his goals.
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Jul 31, 2022 23:47
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Main Paineframe posted:Sounds like we're ripe for a thread about analyzing current political issues from a Marxist perspective! This is more than enough words for an OP. If you mean a thread discussing the set of skills used in applying a Marxist perspective to world events then I think that'd be pretty boring and there are better methods (i.e. textbooks or YouTube lectures depending upon personal preference.) If you mean a thread where people apply that perspective to world events as they happen, then I think USCE is already the thread for that, and often times if posters would more explicitly state their interpretations regarding the material conditions of a given event that it would be in a better place (hence my suggestion regarding moderators pushing discussion in that direction when there's unconstructive conflict). Sorry, I could elaborate more on either point but I'm kind of out of words for the day. But I will point out, at risk of "upsetting" Professor Beetus, that for me the CSPAM marxism thread was a great introduction to the intersection of Marxism and historic events. It's not really what you're talking about, but anyone broadly interested in "Marxism" should definitely check it out. (It's also probably the least shitposty/aggro thread in the entire subforum, for what it's worth.) cinci zoo sniper posted:Thank you for feedback! I hope you don't mind that I've taken the liberty to proofread and stylistically edit your letter, for improved readability. Good luck ever making it readable, lol. GreyjoyBastard posted:It's not been enormously controversial in my several years moderating DND that productive engagement generally works better than doing all our moderation through buttons. It also takes a lot more time and mental and emotional energy. This is in turn one of the reasons having a good number of ikmod staff is good, because spreading the effort of Moderating Correctly around reduces the burnout it can cause. Yeah, I definitely understand. I've been in that type of role for years as part of my day job and it's the least enjoyable part of the day. Koos Group posted:Well, I would agree, in the sense that I don't think it's a good idea to shut down discussion of the behavior of elected officials. That's certainly not what the rule is intended for. I don't want to type another huge paragraph, but to analyze the behavior of our elected officials is necessarily going to involve "stale arguments" because the same core "features" of our political superstructure stem from a limited set of historical events (and even more limited list of names -- our politicians have all been in office a billion years!), and those common threads weave through any news story about proposed legislature, posters generating ideas regarding solutions to problems, etc.. For example, "the Manchin problem" in the Senate is obviously relevant to legislature-related news story, and while I'm not proposing we discuss ad nauseum whether "one more Democrate Senator" can (or will) solve all of our problems, it can still be fruitful to incorporate that reality into a conversation even if it's been discussed in context of other events. So I'd like to see posters who make such "stale"-looking arguments "called out" in a more productive way. And if they turn out to have just been trolling, then ban them or whatever, but I've seen "stale argument" punishments (or threats) prematurely killed conversations that I think were still fruitful in a non-toxic way. I'm going to stop typing, though, because my family wants me to go Touch Grass, so this is a woefully inadequate response to what you've said, I just felt bad "ignoring" your post when I was answering others without saying anything. edit: I missed some posts while I was writing this so apologies if some parts were already covered by other people
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Aug 1, 2022 01:13
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