-
11 votes
-
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has instructed civil servants to make plans to end UK's reliance on China for vital medical supplies and other strategic imports
8 votes -
The case for an "Escalation" label for political threads
This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label. As many users identified in that topic, political...
This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label.
As many users identified in that topic, political discussion on Tildes has the potential to become very heated, very quickly, and often the standards of discussion on these topics is below what we expect elsewhere on Tildes. In that thread, many suggestions were offered in order to remedy the situation, including banning overt political content entirely, more liberal moderation by @Deimos, more liberal usage by the community of labels, addition of new labels, and more. All of these solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but I want to talk about the one I believe would be the most effective and least disruptive to the site as is: addition of new labels.
Right now, there are two main tags that might be used on a comment that is seen as falling short of Tildes's standards: noise and malice. Users seem to have some variation in how they interpret how each tag should be used, but it seems like there is at least some agreement on the 'noise' tag being used for comments that are clearly low effort. Users seem to have more hesitation to use the 'Malice' tag, however. While it is sometimes clear when a comment is hostile or malicious, this is not always the case. Argumentative is not always hostile, and sometimes topics are naturally contentious. One takeaway from that thread (for me) is that labeling something as malice confers a judgement on intent, and users are not always comfortable doing this as it can be difficult to tell if someone truly meant to be malicious. But in political threads, the intent matters less than the effect a comment has in a discussion. Someone can not be acting maliciously, but still be clearly making the situation worse. This is the point of an 'Escalation' label.
An "Escalation" label should be applied to comments that have made the situation worse.
Furthermore, an "Escalation" label would not only affect the sorting of a comment or thread, but has the potential to halt the discussion if there is too much escalation in a short amount of time. Here is what I envision:
Define the heat of a comment (as in, "ohhh this conversation is getting heated") as follows:
H = k*n ∑ Ni / di
where k is a tuning constant, n is the number of escalation tags given to the comment in question, and the sum ranges over the comment's direct ancestors and descendants in the thread with Ni being the number of "Escalation" labels given to the other comment and di is the distance from the current comment to that other comment. Here is an example thread:
. ├── A ├── C0 │ └── C1 (N=1) │ └── C2 (N=0) │ └── C3 (N=2) │ └── C4 (N=1) └── B0 └── B1
The heat of comment C3 would then be
H = k*2 (1/2 + 1) = 3k
Finally, define the heat H(T) of a thread T to be the sum of the heats of its comments. My proposal is that if the heat of a given thread surpasses some threshold value Hc, replies are locked in that thread only. This essentially shuts down extremely heated conversations before they get out of control and cause an entire topic to be locked.
The above definition can obviously be modified, but it has a few good properties that I think should be retained.
- It takes into account the relative positions of comments. A thread that is 20 comments long that has a comment with 1 "Escalation" at the beginning, midpoint, and end is probably a better and more controlled situation than a thread with 3 "Escalation" labels in a row.
- One extremely heated comment (n is large) that generates many okay or slightly heated replies (n~1) is oftentimes just as bad as many comments that each escalate a bit (a long chain of comments, each with n~1).
- It considers a the whole thread as opposed to on a comment by comment basis. If there is only one person in a thread posting heated comments, even if the replies are measured and reasonable, there is a good chance that thread is not producing a worthwhile discussion. If that one problem user stays problematic too long, eventually the heat of the thread will surpass the threshold and the chain will be locked.
I am sure there are disadvantages that I am not thinking of right now, but I truly think a system like this could be beneficial if implemented and used by Tildes. Furthermore, if two people are genuinely interested in the discussion and want it to continue, it is in their interest to avoid posting comments that get generate a high heat score so that the thread doesn't become locked. If they are not interested and keep escalating anyway, that conversation probably shouldn't continue.
I am interested in your thoughts on this idea. However, I don't intend for this topic to become a repeat of many of the suggestions and comments in the thread linked at the beginning - I don't mean to reignite that discussion.
31 votes -
EU ambassador says Australia played 'bad cop' to Europe's 'good cop' to get coronavirus motion up
5 votes -
Why conservative intellectuals like Viktor Orbán
6 votes -
Hungary votes to end legal recognition of transgender people
21 votes -
The system failed the test of Trump: The story of the recent years is of institutions that were unable to constrain the presidency
8 votes -
During Michigan's COVID-19 response, anti-social distancing protests were promoted by a small set of activists linked to the 2012-era, anti-union so-called "right-to-work" movement
8 votes -
How white backlash controls American progress: Backlash dynamics are one of the defining patterns of the country’s history
8 votes -
How America is victim-blaming the coronavirus dead: As racism warps the US pandemic response, a health crisis has escalated into a culture war
5 votes -
The pandemic has pushed Biden to the left. How far will he go?
10 votes -
GOP builds massive voter suppression machine for 2020 election
4 votes -
Federal judge rules that all Texas voters can apply to vote by mail amid coronavirus pandemic: "the Grim Reaper's scepter of death" is "far more serious than an unsupported fear of voter fraud"
7 votes -
Donald Trump’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): Assault on US labor in the pandemic era
5 votes -
Colombia's FARC rebels agreed to peace — but they're still being killed: “The peace process is just a facade.”
5 votes -
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5 million to build the case for a universal basic income
13 votes -
China has imposed a massive eighty per cent tariff on Australian barley imports from today, saying the product has been imported against trade rules
11 votes -
What recent special elections can tell us about November's US election: They may throw cold water on the idea that 2020 will be another “blue wave”
10 votes -
We’re not polarized enough: Ezra Klein’s flawed diagnosis of the divisions in American politics
5 votes -
Poll: More voters trust Biden to contain coronavirus spread
6 votes -
America’s only public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, is number one in saving small businesses
10 votes -
Roe of “Roe v. Wade” says Christian right paid her to be anti-choice mouthpiece
17 votes -
Let's be comrades: In her book "Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging", American political theorist Jodi Dean wants us to give the word "comrade" another try
3 votes -
Huey Long, the dictator of Louisiana
3 votes -
A series of articles on the state of American democracy from early 2015 by Vox
American democracy is doomed ('constitutional hardball' is a great way to describe the 'modus operandi' of the Trump-McConnell GOP.) This is how the American system of government will die I found...
American democracy is doomed ('constitutional hardball' is a great way to describe the 'modus operandi' of the Trump-McConnell GOP.)
This is how the American system of government will die
I found their predictions to be kinda interesting (and clearly minimal)
The best-case scenario is that we wind up with an elective dictator but retain peaceful transitions of power. This is where I'd place my bet. Pure parliamentary systems, especially unicameral ones, give high levels of power to the prime minister and his cabinet, and manage to have peaceful transitions nonetheless. The same is true in Brazil, where the presidency is considerably more powerful than it is in the US.
But parliamentary systems also feature parties that are stronger than their leaders, which serve to prevent single individuals from garnering too much power. America's parties are getting more polarized, but they still aren't as strong as those of most other developed nations.
The worst-case scenario is if the presidency attains these powers and someone elected to the office decides to use them to punish political enemies, interfere with elections, suppress dissent, and so forth. Retaining an independent enough judiciary is a guard against this, but only if norms around obeying its rulings are strong. And, unusually, America allows for true independents, undisciplined by their parties, to become heads of government.
The US political system is not gonna collapse. It's gonna muddle though (A pretty interesting take. There are problems but people won't try to fix them but instead become disengaged and kinda forget about it.)
I think one of the things the authors missed while writing these this is how news became partidarized in the same manner, thus allowing outlets like Fox News to just consume the Republican electorate. They also missed how voting has been targeted too, and underestimated how willing the public was to act and how would the public react to this, which was by electing someone who didn't care about said broken Congress (or any sort of constitutionality), which is what became of Trump.
3 votes -
Do we really want a new Cold War with China? Corporate media is laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check
20 votes -
Why anger against Trump might not be enough for Biden to win
6 votes -
US President Donald Trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine to protect against coronavirus, dismissing safety concerns
21 votes -
We’ve updated our pollster ratings ahead of the 2020 General Election
8 votes -
As Putin ages, he seems to want to decentralize the Russian government
2 votes -
Explosive whistleblower complaint by ousted HHS official says he was pressured to give contract to Trump-friendly pharma firm
11 votes -
Did the coronavirus kill ideology in Australia? How a government both sectarian and divisive learned (briefly) to become inclusive
5 votes -
Hospitals in Brazil's São Paulo 'near collapse'
9 votes -
Imperialism is using up the resources that could fight Covid-19
4 votes -
Are older voters turning away from Trump?
10 votes -
Lesotho's prime minster wants to stay in power to avoid being charged for his wife’s murder
4 votes -
Grading the electoral college: C for chaos
4 votes -
The president’s job is to manage risk. But Donald Trump is the risk: Donald Trump was a gamble. It’s not paying off.
4 votes -
Does “The Case Against Socialism” hold up? It does not. A brief look at Rand Paul’s new book
9 votes -
The GOP is the problem. Is ‘human identity politics’ the solution? (Book review of Ezra Klein’s 'Why We’re Polarized')
9 votes -
The coronavirus crisis has highlighted exploitative global trade regimes
9 votes -
The prophecies of Q: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase
6 votes -
The paranoid style in American politics: It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it (1964)
5 votes -
The coronavirus in capitalist Russia: The Russian government has not only failed to effectively battle the emergency but has attempted to actively ignore it and the plight of its citizens
5 votes -
In defense of hellfire: The rhetoric of damnation has been lost. But how else can we adequately condemn injustice?
8 votes -
Rep. Justin Amash ends his third-party White House bid: Amash said the timing wasn’t right, in large part because of the coronavirus pandemic
6 votes -
Never Trumpers will host their own ‘Republican convention’ during the RNC
12 votes -
Would it be beneficial to ban certain topics of political discourse?
I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite...
I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite hostility between users, push away new users, etc. IMO it is rare that anything new is said, and even rarer that any opinions are changed. Examples include: socialism vs capitalism; should real leftists vote for Biden?; is Biden a rapist?; are Bernie supporters toxic?; etc. I'm not saying these aren't important things to discuss (I've done so myself), but is it really necessary for us to have the exact same arguments basically every day? I personally feel the site would be nicer to use and less toxic overall if these discussions didn't happen. Would there be any downside to simply banning them, at least temporarily? Perhaps until after the US presidential election?
22 votes -
Rep. Justin Amash “looking closely” at third-party run in US presidential election
14 votes -
US State Department Inspector General fired after investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Democrats decry ‘dangerous pattern of retaliation’
9 votes