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9 votes
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What an economic liberal and conservative learned from their friendship
5 votes -
How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country
15 votes -
Donald Trump is the Howard Stern of the 2016 US election
5 votes -
Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for 'glorifying violence'
20 votes -
"Robodebt" class action to continue, despite the Australian government waiving outstanding debts and promising to repay anybody who paid an unsound debt
Yesterday, the Australian government announced it will pay back $721m as it scraps Robodebt for Centrelink welfare recipients. But the class action lodged against the robodebt scheme will...
Yesterday, the Australian government announced it will pay back $721m as it scraps Robodebt for Centrelink welfare recipients.
But the class action lodged against the robodebt scheme will continue, because "the Government still needs to answer to claims of compensation and claims of damages and inconvenience and distress that this system has caused".
7 votes -
US President Donald Trump signs executive order designed to limit the legal protections that shield social media companies from liability for the content users post on their platforms
31 votes -
US President Donald Trump's executive order isn't only about Twitter; it's also attempting to ensure that Facebook won't change their own approach in the lead-up to the election
10 votes -
US President Donald Trump has accused Twitter of "completely stifling free speech" after the social media company flagged some of his tweets with a fact-check warning
42 votes -
President Donald Trump said he would end Hong Kong’s special relationship with the US and withdraw from the World Health Organization
9 votes -
The Karen in Chief
9 votes -
The decline and fall of the spectacle-commodity economy
5 votes -
Australia's High Court decides 'Palace letters' written during the Whitlam dismissal can be accessed by historian Jenny Hocking
6 votes -
Zuckerberg dismisses fact-checking after bragging about fact-checking
6 votes -
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro could soon be toppled, analysts say, as coronavirus cases surge
9 votes -
What it means to be liberal
8 votes -
Dominic Cummings' statement, a guided tour
6 votes -
Andrew Cuomo gave legal immunity to nursing home execs after big campaign donations. Critics say data proves New York's liability shield is linked to higher nursing home death rates
11 votes -
How accurate are state polls? And what could that mean for the US Presidential election in November?
6 votes -
Victoria did not consult the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade before signing a controversial infrastructure deal with the Chinese government last year
6 votes -
Chinese foreign minister warns US against taking the countries ‘to the brink of a new Cold War’
10 votes -
Boris Johnson's approval rating plunges twenty points in four days amid Dominic Cummings scandal
11 votes -
Trump team killed rule designed to protect health workers from pandemic like COVID-19
10 votes -
Ontario to explore criminal charges against five long-term care homes in scathing military report, says Premier Doug Ford
7 votes -
The crisis within conservatism: Since the 80s, the right has increasingly relied on media bubbles, wedge issues, resistance to social change and making electoral participation harder to hold power
7 votes -
We need to speak honestly about the GOP’s evolution into a conspiracy cult
33 votes -
A trans woman in France has won election to become the country's first openly transgender mayor
16 votes -
New Zealand opposition leader ousted as PM Ardern's popularity soars
12 votes -
Taiwan will provide the people of Hong Kong with “necessary assistance”, after a resurgence in protests against newly proposed national security legislation from Beijing
10 votes -
Bernie Sanders' changing position on immigration explained
6 votes -
The failure of meritocracy (Sam Harris & Daniel Markovits)
6 votes -
Yet another political map simulator
8 votes -
US critics of stay-at-home orders tied to fossil fuel funding
7 votes -
Brazil's Supreme Court releases video of Bolsonaro discussing replacing security officials
9 votes -
Stephen Colbert interviews Joe Biden for fifty minutes
13 votes -
Will the millennial left make peace with the "lesser evil" of Joe Biden? It's complicated
10 votes -
The corruption of the Republican Party: The modern GOP is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start
10 votes -
How the pandemic has silenced the USA's biggest gubernatorial election
7 votes -
Florida's strategy to protect seniors from COVID-19
7 votes -
China drops word 'peaceful' in latest push for Taiwan 'reunification'
10 votes -
Biden asks Amy Klobuchar to undergo vetting as possible running mate
9 votes -
Joe Biden answers the web's most searched questions | WIRED Autocomplete Interview
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