EPTUS Politics Feedback Thread - Page 120
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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Artisreal
Germany9235 Posts
His abolish the police is a constant reminder that police violence and the power they wield is not about establishing anarchist rule but to instigate discussion about how exactly get rid of obstacles to a good natured, protecting police force. As he's rather versed in his choreography it is difficult to engage him contrarily. Though with regards to the police force I've yet to see anyone fully engage constructively. If after all the thread doesn't want to talk about this, that's alright and exhuming the same story, albeit being incredibly present in the US, again and again, can under that pretext be interpreted as derailing. This is how I feel about the GH ban which I would have liked to be shorter (for the record same with doodsmack). I have not looked at the factual posting history of his and I'm sure it has be done and maybe/possibly/probably the ban length is warranted. It just feels a tad bit much to me. Also is it possible to just ban people from the US POL thread instead of the whole site? We all know that politics gets our blood boiling at times and unless those banned carry their strife to other parts of the forum, this would be a less drastic measure for rulebreakers (which maybe will become clearer with the upcoming announcement). | ||
tofucake
Hyrule19228 Posts
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Dangermousecatdog
United Kingdom7084 Posts
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On April 13 2018 03:18 Seeker wrote: I'm working on a public statement for the US Politics Mega-thread. I just haven't had the chance to finalize it because I've been busy with work. All that I would ask is that the statement have some honesty and candor in it, regardless of whatever the overall message is. | ||
Falling
Canada11583 Posts
Though with regards to the police force I've yet to see anyone fully engage constructively. No? I tried really hard to figure out what his views were, but he has a tendency to deny attempts at constructing his positions: 'that was not what (he) was really talking about', but then not positively put forward what he truly meant. I was trying to dig down to some fundamentals- his views on human nature, but he didn't really answer and then I lost steam/ interest. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On April 13 2018 08:43 Falling wrote: No? I tried really hard to figure out what his views were, but he has a tendency to deny attempts at constructing his positions: 'that was not what (he) was really talking about', but then not positively put forward what he truly meant. I was trying to dig down to some fundamentals- his views on human nature, but he didn't really answer and then I lost steam/ interest. You are not alone in that one. It is tough to get him to commit to any specific, or vague viewpoint. Questions are often answered with questions. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On April 13 2018 08:17 xDaunt wrote: All that I would ask is that the statement have some honesty and candor in it, regardless of whatever the overall message is. The only one that makes sense right about now is "If you see people are getting riled up, drop it." It cover's Seeker's past he continued to post in a manner that was causing everyone to get riled up when they responded to him and KadaverBB's all I know is that Danglars made the thread worse. Some of GH's business (debating technique?) is involved there, too. The moderation team has done good work with other threads. Just to frame this on my own case, this one they were clearly overwhelmed on contentious topics and picked the easy way out (a somewhat natural reaction given their ideological predilections and unpaid moderator status). You see, I don't actually have to argue with the crowd that behaves much worse than me and reduces to repetitive arguments and insults in short order. I just sometimes choose to humor the worse behaved to see if they can handle the same flippant talking points from the opposite ideological perspective hurled back at them, or expand their worldview to include those with very different thoughts on the matter. Apparently, there was a parallel mod conversation next to mine that did not accompany any warns or prior tempbans visible to me that wanted less belligerence and thought removing the contrary viewpoint was preferable. If this is a turn for honesty in ban reasons, it should include an explanation that mods will ban arbitrarily if you continue an repetitive argument with multiple posters without change in opinion or stance. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
On April 13 2018 05:03 Artisreal wrote: I'm a little more good-willed to GH's posting style than others (possibly because I'm not really an active or quality poster), and I do see that his posts can be interpreted as whataboutism. Personally I think they're more of a call to arms to tackle the underlying problem he sees with the way people approach the two party system and their players and set in stone allegiances. Not saying that this is mutually exclusive... His abolish the police is a constant reminder that police violence and the power they wield is not about establishing anarchist rule but to instigate discussion about how exactly get rid of obstacles to a good natured, protecting police force. As he's rather versed in his choreography it is difficult to engage him contrarily. Though with regards to the police force I've yet to see anyone fully engage constructively. If after all the thread doesn't want to talk about this, that's alright and exhuming the same story, albeit being incredibly present in the US, again and again, can under that pretext be interpreted as derailing. This is how I feel about the GH ban which I would have liked to be shorter (for the record same with doodsmack). I have not looked at the factual posting history of his and I'm sure it has be done and maybe/possibly/probably the ban length is warranted. It just feels a tad bit much to me. Also is it possible to just ban people from the US POL thread instead of the whole site? We all know that politics gets our blood boiling at times and unless those banned carry their strife to other parts of the forum, this would be a less drastic measure for rulebreakers (which maybe will become clearer with the upcoming announcement). Nah. This is a guy who unironically talks about a proletariat revolution, or if he does talk about it ironically it's really hard to tell. GH makes extreme arguments about how bad things are now, and he recommends extreme solutions to them. When people point out how impractical his "solutions" are, he will deflect until someone provides a particularly good, comprehensive argument about how absurd he sounds, then he'll retreat back to various insinuations about how people don't want change, they're part of the establishment, etc. That isn't to say his points are invalid. There are plenty of problems in America which he correctly frames. However, his refusal to acknowledge how complex change is - and that the unplanned, radical change that he advocates for - can in fact be worse than the status quo and his waving away of the facts and expert knowledge, makes him incredibly difficult and frustrating to engage with. I don't think he does it in bad faith, but he just believes he knows best. But it's a belief, not subject matter knowledge of healthcare, finance, taxes or whatever else. And that's ignoring his 9/11 trutherism, and the fact he never made good on the bet from the 2016 election with me. | ||
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On April 13 2018 11:22 LegalLord wrote: If I wanted to put it simply, GH is a guy with interesting ideas but also flights of passion. I like him, but I don’t always like reading the arguments he gets into. He had a lot of good stuff to write when he was literally the only guy writing it. You had maybe 4 Hillary shills going on about how Bernie had no cause to gripe and Hillary's faults were mostly inventions of the vast right wing conspiracy. He would come in with obvious but necessary points on the topic that nobody else said from a left-wing perspective. I appreciated that. He can see that issue for what it is, and some of the stupider anti-Trump hypocrites for what they are, and most of the mainstream left around here play the tribal game. All things considered, it's probably a just tempban for the past couple day's interactions, but sad for his overall contributions. | ||
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
I could name at least 3-5 regular center-left posters offhand in the the US Poli thread who literally never offer any original arguments or insights and are repeatedly toxic. You can't purport to ban on posting quality and "whataboutism" yet leave these obvious offenders out. "Derailment" only applies to GH and Danglars more than others because they fall out of the political orthodoxy of the thread. I can understand the motivation to minimize derailment (especially when coupled with poor posting quality), but the action against it should be applying high posting standards consistently to all posters. Otherwise it effectively applies a penalty to those who deviate from the orthodoxy. This is not only unfair, but it hurts the quality of the thread in the long run. I would be enticed to post more if we had more posters like GH who offer some original ideas and arguments, and whose posts that don't mostly revolve around the latest anti-Trump circlejerk gossip. Banning GH (i.e. the opposition) rather than the conforming bandwagoners whose post quality is obviously worse is a step backwards for intellectual discussion in the thread, not a step forward. In general, I'm of the opinion we should be more tolerant of someone like GH, who might occasionally derail the thread with a particularly poor argument but who contributes original thought to the thread, then someone who posts regularly, never contributes any ideas of value, and exhibits a pattern of condescending and content-less dismissals. People are more likely to get value out of and return to a thread where they might learn something or understand a new perspective I think, even if the thread is an occasional shitshow. You can always skip pages or come back the next day. Whereas with a thread full of the latter type of poster (who definitely outnumber GH) provides no incentive to even read in the first place. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On April 13 2018 12:26 mozoku wrote: I would be enticed to post more if we had more posters like GH offer some original ideas and arguments, and whose posts that don't mostly revolve around the latest anti-Trump circlejerk gossip. Banning GH (i.e. the opposition) rather than the conforming bandwagoners whose post quality is obviously worse is a step backwards for intellectual discussion in the thread, not a step forward. This is where the mods have catastrophically failed. They have banned or run off all of the posters who actually had something interesting to say while stubbornly refusing to moderate the true cancer of the thread: the circlejerking bandwagoners. | ||
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Tachion
Canada8573 Posts
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Zambrah
United States7393 Posts
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
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Excludos
Norway8270 Posts
On April 13 2018 15:38 LegalLord wrote: I honestly don't see any real likelihood of the thread improving and I've mostly stopped following. It's pretty much the anus of TL at this point. The sad thing is that even this mess that none of us are happy with is somehow not worse than any other internet discussion I've been able to find. It's just a symptom of discussing politics really. Unlike arguing, say, science, it can be difficult to get conclusive evidence of something, and everyone has their own opinion which from their viewpoint is the only correct opinion. There isn't a politics discussion thread on the internet which isn't either a small circlejerk or a clusterfuck. And yet it's important that we have them, so we have other avenues of enlightenment than russian facebook troll posts and twitter messages from <insert favorite politician here>. I've been to a few of these, and TL really is one of the better; striking a good balance between meltdown and echo chamber (despite what people are claiming, it really isn't. Go to reddit to r/the_donald or r/politics if you want to see what a real right and left respectively echo chamber looks like). | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On April 13 2018 14:48 xDaunt wrote: My comments aren’t even really about Danglars or GH. There has been years and years of attrition on the thread’s best posters. Most are gone. I think that has more to do with the nature of politics today. The debate moved away from a clinical discussion about the role of government to culture wars and grievances. Not a rousing topic for debate. | ||
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