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One thing I never understood on TL is the obsession with limiting the number of threads. The forum is big enough anyway that the thread listing isn't a useful thing, so why do you hinge on making it brief so much?
The biggest symptom of this approach is the existence of megathreads, from which the US politics one is the most terrible one. I don't know a great much about US politics, but I would enjoy reading about it on TL, because this is a nice place to read about stuff, the discussion has mostly a tone that I enjoy (when it's not about rape or gender, lol). But smacking everything politics-related into a single megathread just makes it completely infeasible for me to read anything on this topic at all. I tried to follow it for a while, but at the moment, I have some 2500 unread posts in the thread and they count up at an insane rate. I am not really sure that I would be able to keep up with the thread even if I put 100% of my TL time to it.
I suggest that you reconsider splitting at least the US politics megathread into smaller topical discussions. As it stands now, it just serves as a trash bin for posts noone but a small dedicated group will ever see.
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Germany25657 Posts
Any politics thread will quickly devolve into stupidity, that's why are keeping it bottled up in one thread.
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On May 28 2016 06:14 KadaverBB wrote:
Any politics thread will quickly devolve into stupidity, that's why are keeping it bottled up in one thread.
But that doesn't make any sense. Well, I would presume it does for you, because you are caught in a kind of an operational blindness, but what practical difference does it make if the 2500 "stupid" posts are in one or five threads? The unit of the forum is a post, not a thread.
Honestly, this smells of hypocrisy to me - you are willing to allow the discussion, but just barely, by making it inconvenient to take part in. I don't really think anyone would get hurt, if you reconsidered this stance.
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Johto4968 Posts
If you have multiple very similar posts, people will start cross-referencing them, and it gets a mess very fast, and even worse to moderate than it already is...
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megathreads seem fine to me; it helps prevent the proliferation of threads clogging up the listings, so other topics can be discussed.
it sounds like you want a more curated subset of the postings; but this isn't really meant to be a real news site for such things.
mostly people just skim through it, and or accept that they won't have followed all of it. such is the nature of online posting.
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United States24753 Posts
On May 28 2016 06:19 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On May 28 2016 06:14 KadaverBB wrote:
Any politics thread will quickly devolve into stupidity, that's why are keeping it bottled up in one thread. But that doesn't make any sense. Well, I would presume it does for you, because you are caught in a kind of an operational blindness, but what practical difference does it make if the 2500 "stupid" posts are in one or five threads? The unit of the forum is a post, not a thread.
It's much easier to avoid politics if it's in one thread than five because it's much easier to avoid one clearly labeled threads than five threads, some of which may not clearly be the thing you are trying to avoid. It is a tradeoff between helping people discussing a topic and helping people not wanting to discuss that topic. When that topic tends towards toxic (but isn't necessarily worthy of a blanket ban) then TL seems to side with the people not wanting to discuss that topic more than wanting to discuss that topic.
It is subjective, but I don't see it changing in the near future.
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I mean, I know it sounds like a nightmare as I say it, but if there were a politics subforum, you wouldn't have to have everything compiled into 1 thread. If it were reasonable to do, I would say why not, but the problem would be finding someone masochistic enough to sign up for political mod duty.
Given the way that type of discussion naturally progresses - i.e. not well - I happen to be fine with TL's stance on limiting it to begin with.
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indeed; I know of no mods who would sign up to do it; and the people who would sign up to do it (like me) aren't mods, and probably shouldn't be.
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lol, that rule list is ridiculous; not only is it utterly inoperable as a general moderation standard, it places way too much value on a very particular lens with which to view what "good" discussion actually entails. US politics deals in nonsense, paradoxical events, and opinions that necessarily rely on thinking outside the pale of logic. Attempting to sterilize conversations by artificially placing difficult to enforce and cliche restraints on methods of expression or argumentation is actually very much unlike what a true libertarian would want in a moderation standard.
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It's apparent that someone in this very thread has recently completed Philosophy 101 and is experiencing the most common of symptoms. Coolest thing, dude!
Next up: submit to a journal
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On May 30 2016 15:03 Barrin wrote:
There is nothing more clear (and fair, as in conducive to meaningful discussion) to enforce than logical fallacies; as this is my main premise, simply give one example otherwise and my argument is defeated. I'll wait here while you realize whatever you had in mind is already a logical fallacy. I was a banling on this site before and I never went wrong (was even commended once or twice) by just sticking to the 10 commandments and highlighting logical fallacies; I'm not sure where you get the idea that it is "inoperable".
Of course a libertarian wouldn't choose to make such rules on their own (red herring spotted). They wouldn't be the one making the rules, just enforcing them, as clearly stated.
When it comes to public property, such as a forum, libertarians are actually quite the sticklers for fair rules, btw. The freedom/liberty part is mostly contained to private affairs with the exception of constitutional rights.
Opinions are a tricky thing. If you take a close look, none of these rules actually forbid them. If you look at the current US politics megathread rules, "arguments in absentia" or "giving opinions without giving reasons" are already forbidden. Giving opinions without reasons would fall under rule #5 here, as that is one of the many fallacies, but perhaps it's big enough to be its own rule (there's probably more that are).
Claims, statements, arguments, opinions, and genuine (non-rhetorical) questions would all be permitted in discussion under these rules btw.
I see no reason why "nonsense" and "paradoxical events" couldn't be tackled under these rules. What other lenses do you think are "valid"? What do you think a "good" discussion entails? I understand it takes an extra bit of effort, but these opinions of yours could use some further reasoning.
P.S. You might find a logical fallacy or two above. Go ahead and support my argument by calling them out.
The fact that you admit to not being able to post to your own standard would probably tend to support farvacola, right?
On May 30 2016 15:03 Barrin wrote:
In fact, literally every sentence you wrote contains a logical fallacy.
Maybe you're just carrying a fallacy-shaped hammer? Informal logic isn't rigid, and it's well open to (mis)interpretation.
That's just his opinion.
"Math should take E.E. Cummings into consideration more."
-"Math is about numbers."
"is-oUGHT FALLAC-"
On May 30 2016 15:03 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +Attempting to sterilize conversations by artificially placing difficult to enforce and cliche restraints on methods of expression or argumentation is actually very much unlike what a true libertarian would want in a moderation standard. straw man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Is that a straw man or do you just think he's wrong?
See, when you call an opinion hyperbole and then say hyperbole should be actionable, you may want to reconsider whether you've gone too far.
On May 30 2016 15:03 Barrin wrote:
At risk of committing an ad hominem myself, I did a quick search of your posting history and literally the first post I see has a reply under it calling you out for committing a fallacy.
This isn't an ad hominem, it's just you saying something.
On May 30 2016 15:03 Barrin wrote:
The thing about arguing with people who don't mind committing fallacies is they simply don't respect the framework of logic for discussion. Of course people who don't respect logical frameworks don't want to be moderated by one. Yes, a sub-forum filled with such people would be incredibly difficult to moderate (someone please tell me if I think too highly of TL members).
It seems to me you might be one of these people (which I find surprising). I'd love for you to prove me wrong by posting a factual claim with supporting arguments devoid of fallacies.
You don't think highly enough of them. A reasonable group of people guide their own discussion organically. They need only occasional nudging and debridement. Logic is one of the subjects closest to my heart. But this isn't what informal logic is for. You're taking a good thing and going way too far with it. It's nice that you have an ideal in mind where everyone is infallibly sound, but you can't use that as a posting standard. We don't want an empty forum, but then I'm assuming we're here to socialize with the community and not be undergraduate philosophy bots. When you deal with politics, you're thinking on many levels at once: Are these statistics accurate, was there a hidden variable, were the results published selectively, of the two correlated things, which one intuitively seems like it should be the causative factor, what's the significance of the result to my worldview, are people hijacking the issue for other ends, what's their motivation, what's my value judgment about whether those ends are important in theory, how about in practice, can I trust this public official? People are constantly operating from limited information and incomplete or even contradictory assumptions. There will be mistakes. The whole reason we're on Earth is to talk it out, not moderate it to death.
"It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs." Aristotle
"Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end." Spock
Anyway, I'm not sure about a politics subforum (it would still have like an election main thread), but I don't think new megathreads should be encouraged.
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EPT
