So I left to drive around and calm down from the about moderation thread and came back to this. I think you guys should hold a new vote in light of the post I’m about to write.
First of all let me say up front that the takes everyone voting no has are absolutely 100% accurate. I think the current system we’ve been using such as it is is garbage and have zero respect for it. I think the navel gazing we do here about moderation is easily the most toxic behavior of the whole forum and I’m super sick of it. I think it’s a moderators job to make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. Whether they are a good mod or not is dependent on how good those decisions end up being for whatever goals they are measuring.
So I feel like I should be super up front about what my goals for the forum are:
First and foremost I care about the quality of the content. I want great takes that I can steal whole and incorporate into my world view and then have them work well enough in real life that I could bet real money on them and be massively +EV. And I think the posters who can deliver up that content are the golden goose, and any attempts to irritate the golden goose had better be awfully funny or counterbalanced by a significant amount of similarly great content.
I also don’t think posting on the threads here is a right. I think it’s a privilege, and more importantly a privilege that has been getting abused left and right. Churchill for instance has been AIDS in the COVID thread which is probably the single most useful thing on this site. I’d perma that guy the first day because he adds nothing of value and costs the forum quite a bit of quality.
There are a few specific kinds of toxicity that I’m seeing over and over again. The worst thing we have going on right now (to the point where it’s making the whole experience of the site pretty stale and is a major driving factor in why I was on the fence about staying even before it looked like Cuse was almost certainly leaving… I’m hoping I can talk him off that ledge with the promise of actually moderating) is straw-manning which most of us, absolutely including me, are guilty of. Instead of trying to view what others post here in a good light many of us are instead trying to find the least charitable reading of their post possible and drill them with it. That’s not contributing to the conversation. If they really think that way ask some questions and let them dig the hole deeper before you go after them.
I’d ban Vict0ar, churchill, and jalfrezi on the first day without discussion. If you guys would unmod me and restore them you should vote no. Watevs is on super thin ice and would get perma’d the first time he pulled another disgraceful series of personal attacks on skydiver because he hates Pete. I don’t like Pete either, but that was way over the line and I’d probably have given him a month off for it.
This site is about having substantial conversations about the issues of the day. If all of your posts are going to be two-three sentence dunks on other posters that are basically just ‘worst possible reading of the post + you’re a terrible person’ you aren’t going to last very long with me as mod. If you’re going to play a short game you’d better be good at it (Trolly that means you lol. You’re literally the standard for what people should be trying to accomplish with that posting style)
And to those worried that I’ll pick sides… um yeah. I’m going to carefully read what’s happened, analyze it, and then make a judgement call… because that’s the job IMO. I sided with cuse because I read the post exchanges and knew the board wide context. I think moderators not siding with cuse far earlier in this whole mess is how this thing metastasized into a real threat to the forum’s survival.
TLDR Cliffs: Seriously you make me a mod I’m going to actually use it to do the dirty work I suspect most of you know deep down needs doing. It’s not going to fix itself except by breaking down to the point where it’s not worth anything to anyone. And absolute best I’m not going to make a thread groveling for permission to execute my role. I’m going to just do something and if I end up having made the wrong decision it’ll be me who has to live with it (and it will bother the shit out of me).