There’s probably a better community for asking this, but I haven’t been able to find that one either.
What I’m looking for is a place to discuss ideas that encourages good-faith conversation, staying on topic, and being decent to one another - while actively discouraging mean-spirited, facetious, or bad-faith responses that focus on criticizing the person asking the question rather than engaging with the substance of it. And by “discouraging,” I mean active moderation with very low tolerance for that kind of commentary.
Anytime this vague question is asked we find it’s because the OP has bad takes then gets hurt.
It’s not criticism of my takes that hurts me, but the mean-spirited responses when they target me personally rather than my ideas - especially considering the effort I myself put into being fair and decent, even toward those I disagree with but then seem to get next to none of it in return.
You’re right about me getting hurt, though. I’m a real person with real feelings, and I’m not immune to cruelty. Dealing with rude, indecent people here does make me feel pretty bad on a regular basis.
If you start such a community, I’ll subscribe. What topics would you want this community to address?
*crickets*
I think OP is fighting windmills here. They want to keep this discussion completely theoretical, probably so they don’t have to get off their high horse, make themselves vulnerable. I doubt they’ll ever come up with anything constructive 🤷
I don’t think crickets really means a lot when your commenting 1 hour after someone else…
What exactly is your problem here? Do you not have even a drop of self-awareness to realize that you’re now acting exactly like the kind of person that made me want to find a community free of people like you in the first place? You’re being a textbook example of someone who just can’t stay on topic and insists on making it about the person asking the question rather than addressing the question itself.
My comment history is open for anyone to see what kinds of topics I like to explore. I’m not going to start listing them here, because that’s not relevant to my question.
This entire comment section is filled with people talking to the music in their head, not to you or the topic you’ve raised.
This is the fundamental issue at play, people have severe self worth and emotional issues, and they leap at any chance to show it to the world.
Don’t you dare advocate any place where they can’t shoot their mouth off endlessly without considering their words!! Don’t be elitist! The stupids have value toooo!!!1
From what I see in your comment, you’re basically asking for a place where moderation handles endless logical fallacy, surly childish remarks, uninformed buffoonery, obnoxious aggressive posturing… Apparently that’s too much for people to handle.
I would love what you are advocating for, but we need something like an intelligence or LSAT-style test to vet people. 95% of people have absolutely fuck all to say. 95% of people literally cannot think; they are trapped in some kind of quasi-thought process that is largely governed by emotional self-protection mechanisms.
I haven’t found any. Anything of that sort would need heavy handed and laborious moderation and would lend itself to quite a lot of bias from moderators. Your best bet is to do this sort of thing locally with a small group of friends (or internet friends).
Based on my experience trying to have deep and sometimes difficult conversations here, I’ve come to believe that if such a community did exist and gained even a bit of popularity, it would likely result in a large number of the currently active users here getting themselves banned from it. In the end, it might just be a small group of users left - the ones actually interested in playing fair. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, though. You really don’t need that many people to have insightful discussions. Often, even one person is enough, as long as they’re approaching it in good faith.
Moderation would definitely be an issue, though. Dealing with the worst offenders is easy - it’s the gray areas that are challenging. The space wouldn’t just need to be heavily moderated; that same standard would also need to apply to the moderators themselves.
it would likely result in a large number of the currently active users here getting themselves banned from it
Absolutely. People here can’t even help themselves when it comes to going into a community literally called “Reddit” to shit on people for talking about Reddit. Or going into a community called “WitchesvsPatriarchy” to not all men any conversation about the patriarchy.
You can bet your ass that any community like one that you’re talking about would be flooded by smartass replies and jokes at first. And the moment moderators start banning people, they’ll be crying about their ‘free speech’.
I actually found pretty much what I was looking for. Not very active community and I don’t know how well it’s moderated but at least I can give it a chance next time such topic comes to mind.
Crazy what amount of pushback I’m getting for even daring to ask such thing. It clearly must be fascism and pedofilia I want to advocate for in there because why else would someone want to have serious conversations…
Each type of topic needs a different style, tolerance and shape of moderation for this, so it’s more effective to look for this per topic instead of a general solution.
E.g. transgender discussion has different problems than russian aggression discussion, different problem actors using different strategies, and are solved by very different types of moderation.
Discussing which language should take precedence in schools, in countries with multiple official languages, needs a wildly different set of rules, moderation, tolerances and even moderator knowledge.
I’m not sure I get what you mean. I don’t see why one community couldn’t cover all these topics under the same set of moderation principles. I’m imagining something like a philosophers’ conference, where you can seriously discuss even seemingly ridiculous topics - like “why can’t we eat unwanted babies?” - and no one would be tempted to accuse the person of actually advocating for such a thing. We’re just playing with ideas.
You make it, and now it’s a somewhat safe place for people to form discussions that validate pedophilia. Several discussions now are adjacent to that topic, via adoption discussion, sneakernet dissemination, countries with lax laws, discussions around age of consent, definitions of nudity, what is considered public spaces for photography…
At some point it is no longer pure philosophical discussions in neutral faith, but a breeding ground for pure shit. How do you determine if that point is reached? How do you decide where the line goes? How do you adjust the rules to adjust for this?
The above is not hypothetical. It specifically has ruined a few online spaces. Other topics like the Trump cult has a different pattern.
Extremely Polite Politics
