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    19. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      ~tv Ask (survey)
      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here. Please just try to provide fair warning of...

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      9 votes

    28. How can we betray each other less on the Internet?

      ~talk Text 424 words
      I was thinking about having a general purpose thread about internet drama venting, but that seems like a very bad idea if all the top level threads are different gripes and one in particular gets...

      I was thinking about having a general purpose thread about internet drama venting, but that seems like a very bad idea if all the top level threads are different gripes and one in particular gets out of control, so here's mine and this can be dealt with as needed.

      There was this recent issue in left adjacent Twitter of a notable YouTube person inviting someone else to read a quote for a bigger project. Invitee had controversial views on gender dysphoria, the host defended their decision, and details aren't super important for what I want to talk about.

      I see where Natalie is coming from if she wants to make a point about Tolerance and Outgroups. I think this was the wrong way to do that, #BuckisWrong, but I don't think brigading her on Twitter and asking her social group to disavow her is appropriate, however, I don't have any skin in the game outside of being an anxious cis white male who thinks Twitter enables and thrives off of toxic discourse.

      I get that this is all some of you are willing to talk about but I want to talk about the meta and the behavior here, so please pretend they're all Martians for the time being.

      What I want to talk about is how the internet specifically reacted, asking the creator's circle to walk back any endorsement of them, holding them to a fire and how much it kind of fits in into a pattern of isolation featured earlier in Lindsay Ellis' presentation about being shamed online, and propose that what makes an internet outrage mob is kind of values neutral.

      Obviously, your -ism of choice would factor into an internet hate mob and make it into the Eternal Tire Fire that the internet is known for birthing these days, but the key spark seems to be a betrayal of trust. You thought someone or something was in your corner/was values neutral/shared your politics and when that is not the case, you simply want it gone. It was kind of always in the discussion with "Cancel Culture Concern," but it hasn't really clicked until now for me that it's such a common thread.

      So, assuming we can't nor want to make it impossible to betray one another or make the Internet a safe space for everybody and for all sensibilities, can we cut down on this outcome, is it incentivised through engagement metrics, and/or is it just something that comes with the ability to mass broadcast and mass response?

      9 votes

    50. New search capabilities available: phrases, excluding terms, alternatives ("or")

      ~tildes.official Text 366 words
      On Sunday, I took the site down for a short downtime to upgrade the database from PostgreSQL version 10 to 12. One of the main reasons I wanted to do that upgrade was to get access to a new search...

      On Sunday, I took the site down for a short downtime to upgrade the database from PostgreSQL version 10 to 12. One of the main reasons I wanted to do that upgrade was to get access to a new search function, and I've updated to using it now, so we have multiple nice new search capabilities available.

      These should all be pretty familiar since a lot of other search systems and search engines have similar capabilities with the same syntax:

      • As before, by default, searching for multiple words will be treated as "all of these terms". So if you search ~games for steam play, you'll get all topics that have both "steam" and "play" in them.
      • Phrases can now be searched for by putting double quotes around them. Searching ~games for "steam play" in quotes will only find topics that specifically have "steam play".
      • Excluding terms can be done by putting a minus sign in front of it. For example, if you wanted to try to find ~games posts about Blizzard and exclude the recent China controversy, you could search for blizzard -china.
      • Alternatives can be searched for by using "or". This changes to "any of these terms" instead of "all of these terms". For example, searching for overwatch or diablo will find any topic with either of those terms, instead of both.
      • These capabilities can be combined, so you can exclude phrases, use "or" with phrases, and so on. For example: blizzard -"hong kong" or diablo.

      This all works both through the main site topic search (at the top of the sidebar) as well as the new search for your own topics/comments.

      I'm going to write a page for the Docs with info about these capabilities, but I think I want to try to find a full specification of what's supported first to make sure I cover it properly. The PostgreSQL docs are pretty vague about it, so I'll probably need to take a look in the actual code.

      Please let me know if you notice any issues with it, or if anything's confusing that I should make sure to document.

      And as usual, I've given everyone 10 invites, accessible on the invite page.

      52 votes