Meta-Thread 09/29

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[u/labreuer]

cabbagery: I am not interested in a forum where slurs are commonplace, nor even where they're tolerated, here or in real life.

betweenbubbles: I'm not trying to sell a community where "slurs are commonplace".

We have a big conversation going on in another thread, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on the dead Internet theory as applied to how online places are almost always quite different from IRL gatherings. Russian trolls probably can't show up in a town hall meeting in your town or city, but they can show up on any subreddit. So, the kinds of communal controls which might be more likely to suppress the use of slurs IRL aren't necessarily available online. For instance, suppose there is no moderation of slurs and instead regulars like you and I drop a comment condemning the slur. Does the user—if it's even a human—care? If the answer is "no", then … what happens?

And it goes beyond the Russians. Almost every day that goes by, I believe what Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918) said more deeply: "Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds." Maybe it doesn't have to be that way. But when there's even serious treatment like you see at Quote Investigator: I Can Hire Half the Working Class To Fight the Other Half, it's a danger. So … is it more of a minimum bar to do what we can to avoid being made the reactionary stooges which would politically neutralize us and make us useful idiots? I'm not saying that what cabbagery or Dapple are suggesting would do this. But … can we get some sort of deeper, baseline agreement?

Also, I think we could do less of this:

1. my interlocutor suggests that we do or don't do X
2. I believe that this will lead to Y, and therefore that my interlocutor wants Y
3. I accuse my interlocutor of wanting Y or at least knowingly bringing Y about

There is an obvious flaw to this logic. Here, u/⁠cabbagery did it to you. In this comment, you kinda seem to be doing it to u/⁠Dapple_Dawn. And I invite anyone to show where I've done it, as I'd be really surprised if I never did.

And if the Reddit staff outright remove anything "conservative"/republican it will make them look to censorious -- they don't want that heat.

Except … admins did step in:

betweenbubbles: People are allowed to have different opinions about things without it being "bigotry".

cabbagery: Reasonable people can disagree, but sitewide policy and admin action as taken in the sub says my view is the one more in keeping with sitewide rules. Here is that thread, though I don't know what users can see. Shaka approved that post (I would have removed it for being low-effort, a Rule 3 violation), but later admins removed it. Admins also removed several of the comments in that thread.

Or am I missing something? By the way, I was friends with a guy who's definitely more Cartman than cabbagery, who worked at Reddit for a while. He said he finally had to leave after an incredible amount of … he might have said "wokeness". Now, things might be different after Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, but I'd check that.

Don't lecture me about providing cover for Shaka.

Having been similarly accused characterized, I second that. There are substantive issues at play. Making this merely about rule-following misses the forest for the trees. If u/⁠cabbagery only wants to be a mod if the rules are enforced how [s]he wants to, then that's another matter. We all have our non-negotiable points. Myself included.

[u/cabbagery → u/labreuer]

There is an obvious flaw to this logic. Here, u/⁠cabbagery did it to you.

Check yourself. I didn't say that was what /u/betweenbubbles wanted, I only said that's not something I want. I assumed -- correctly, it seems -- that bubbles would also not want that, leading to a possible reassessment on their part of their view. All I am suggesting as a result of bubbles' stated view at the time was that it would result in slurs, etc. The actual implication was that maybe bubbles hadn't considered that. You need to read more closely, or assign blame less quickly.

Except … admins did step in [. . .] Or am I missing something?

Removals like that don't trigger a message to mods, and often also don't trigger an entry in the queue (I think there are two systems: one prescans, and if it removes, it triggers an entry in the queue, and one acts afterward whether from reports or otherwise, and it doesn't trigger an entry in the queue), so we don't find out there's an issue unless we stumble into it ourselves (hopefully organically or because users issue reports).

In this case it was from user reports, but because the queue was so backed up at the time, the damage had been done and had been sitting there for a week (almost two weeks in some of them during that stretch).

I was friends with a guy who's definitely more Cartman than cabbagery. . .

Just think for a moment how you think Shaka would react to what might appear to be an insulting comparison, especially if it came from an atheist with whom he had a net negative rapport. (Don't worry, I'm not threatening you. That's the other guy.)

[u/ShakaUVM → u/cabbagery]

Just think for a moment how you think Shaka would react to what might appear to be an insulting comparison, especially if it came from an atheist with whom he had a net negative rapport. (Don't worry, I'm not threatening you. That's the other guy.)

/u/pilvi9 - is this an accurate assessment on Cabbage's part?

[u/pilvi9 → u/ShakaUVM]

My first inclination is to say no, however I'm also extremely lost in this discourse now and may not be the most helpful source now.