I've taken the leap from Reddit
Firstly, I'd like to dismiss any claims of pandering or fishing here. I need to say this and I need to write it out.
I was a reddit user for 8 years. I thought it was 5 but another commenter reminded me what it was. It put me into a bit of a reflective mood. I thought about some of the more meaningful insightful interactions I've had, and some of the more bitterly memorable ones where I was at best annoyed but more recently feeling attacked, shot down, rudely treated. It was profound as a sensitive human being to receive these things, to be made to feel through text, written for you by someone else. These weren't friends, people you held at arms length as you got to know them, they were complete strangers. And these people could be brutal. Make you feel so small. And yet I am a grown man, this environment I spent easily 30% of my waking time on for the best part of a decade was interacting with people and how much I enjoyed it. It was more than a website it was a place that I called home during bouts of depression, social drought and personal hardships. I found myself seeking help and for the most part finding it.
I have learned something valuable that I want to share here and I had to learn it the hard way, through hypocrisy, through mistakes, through mis-spoken words and harsh tongue thrashings both ways. I have realised for the first time that the people reading these things, the people writing them, the sentiments involved and the content/context is important. They are real, they are human, they feel, they are like me.
We are seeking some assembly, some community, some lectern from which to state our case. My whole life I looked for togetherness online and thought I found it in the early days of reddit. That is gone now. Even intelligent well thought out research style posts cannot culminate properly, they do not ascend, the public discourse is dead. I see now first hand the destruction of community the facebook exec spoke about. Our actual confident, open, readily invited opinionated perspectives are being replaced by circle jerks and shallow agree/disagree type statements. Upvotes have become likes. Now I see how it is broken.
Someone saw me having a meltdown and invited me here. I was told it was invite only, and that it was made by someone who had the same feelings as me. I don't want to be surrounded by likeminded people, thats not what I joined reddit for. I joined because open and honest perspectives based on experience were readily available; academics, workers, parents, billionaires, could just shoot-the-shit they didn't need to cite sources or write something popular. But upvotes were reserved for contributors, not jesters or people ridiculing/attacking/berating others. The reddit bandwagon has become savagely toxic in many respects. It is (sorry was) frustrating.
So here I am. Fresh off the boats as a reddit refugee. I hope than I can find my place here and contribute to the discussions, help build the site, build something that hopefully cannot be corrupted by growth, investors and advertisers.
We discussed in the hundred or comments attached to my meltdown that the lowering average age of the site population and possible the general dumbing down of internet users happening the past 10 years was largely responsible. I can imagine previously mentioned factors also drove it over the cliff. What is the current hope for Tildes future? I read the announcement post and it mentioned that a baseline level of activity will ensure that topics cycle regularly and user engagement is high enough to stimulate people coming back. Or that is at least what I think the baseline is for.
I hope this topic starts a discussion and doesn't get moderated away. But the lack of real debate, insight, coupled with a responsive and welcoming attitude is something the whole internet is missing right now, this is where we could make a positive change to the current online environment.
I think Reddit had, and still has, enclaves of actual discussion. One of it's strengths, up until now, is that these enclaves exist. On the other hand, and I've seen it before, with volunteer moderation, you're going to get what you get. Your post makes me think that the hierarchical structure here, much as it might be a little confining to us free spirits, is an asset, as long as its potential for complexity isn't ignored. Otherwise I see someday my favorite Tilde being plowed under for an intergalactic thruway, something that appears imminent with Reddit.
Where?
“u” can even see people not bothering to even capitalize their i's on allegedly scholar subreddits like r/askhistorians or r/geopolitics. Which is why many people don't want to allow fluff on tildes, because the low quality content spills over even to groups where it's not appropriate and attracts users who aren't interested in keeping the quality high.
I don't necessarily think worrying about precise punctuation should be more important than sharing the knowledge you have with someone who wants it. Chances are the degreed people of askhistorians/askscience/etc have better things to do than spend an extra couple minutes making sure their I's are capitalized. I'm sure you could come up with a better argument than that for why you feel reddit doesn't contain discussion.
Going to have to strongly disagree here. The amount of time one puts into one's writing reflects how much one cares about it. If someone can't even take the time to type a few more letters or capitalize things properly, it's going to look like they don't care about what they're saying--regardless of what the actual message is. That may just be a perception, but the perception is there, and whenever I see a comment like that, I skip it. If someone can't make the effort to write properly, I can't make the effort to reparse their statement several times to figure out what they actually meant.
I work with world class physicians all the time and their writing is atrocious. Their time is valuable and they aren't willing to waste it.
I think you will lose out on a lot of valuable content by dismissing language because it is informal. In fact, I think you will unintentionally introduce racism and nationalism because you will, by nature of grammatical exclusion, unintentionally end up ignoring people for whom which English is not their first language or who did not grow up with the same quality of education.
Language is a concrete tool for sharing abstract ideas. By it's very nature it is imperfect. Why draw the line at grammar and presentation? That seems like a silly hill to die on to me.
Maybe, but I'm sure these people aren't the average Reddit user.
Being low quality doesn't equate to being informal nor vice versa.
The typical user that ends up his post or comment with “I'm sorry, English isn't my first language” or “excuse my mistakes, I'm trying to improve my English” has far better regard for what they're writing that the people who flat out refuse to take the time to type “y” and “u”.
I don't think we're thinking of the same people.
Yes. Language is a public tool. We need to take care of it when we use it so that we don't destroy it and turn it useless.
Yes. But there are different degrees of imperfection. Some aspire to a language with less imperfections. Some just don't care, and more often than not drive the imperfections way, way up.
I also think this fight between them is part of the nature of languages. You'll always have people doing whatever they want with it, and people trying to set up rules and enforce them. And their equilibrium is what characterizes most modern languages.
You could also ask “why draw the line at all?”.
And I'd answer that “to ensure that language continues to be a tool of communication we can rely on. Least we end up like Latin and the ensuing romance languages with the reduced communication abilities between them”.
And I think it's of utmost importance.
Okay but I'm going with your premise in the original response. You took issue with the following:
"u" vs. "you" and "i" vs "I" is an issue of formality. The content is exactly the same, the presentation is the only thing that differs.
That's a dangerous assumption.
Hard disagree. Language is a tool that adapts over time to meet the needs and wants of society. There are plenty of examples in linguistic history of archaic words which are no longer used, in many cases, because an informal word replaced them.
I understand where you are coming from and I used to think very similarly about grammar and presentation. I missed out on a lot of very important, very valid, and very useful ideas doing this. I also unintentionally was racist, classist, and nationalist/ethnist because of this. I only point all of this out because I wish I hadn't missed out on the wonderful ideas that the world has to offer. Something to consider.
I interpreted “informal” as in using words like “dude”, “bro” and swear words. My bad.
Language has different levels of formality and informality, the use of which varies depending on context. You won't speak the same way to a foreign ambassador in a parlamentary building that you would your girlfriend in bed.
Why must the internet be different? Why is it that scholar subreddits and communities cannot have a higher standard for comment quality?
Unless, you think that it would be perfectly okay for G7 to meet in their underwear. Because it's only presentation that changes and the context is the same.
My language teacher in high school told us, repeatedly, that speaking in a vulgar register isn't inherently wrong nor speaking in a formal register is always right. But rather, they were correct or not depending on the situation. This is the notion I ascribe to.
Dangerous how?
Some people make mistakes even though they're trying not to because their task of not making mistakes is harder based on the circumstance that English is their no their native language. Other people make mistakes not because they cannot avoid making mistakes, but because they just don't care that they're making mistakes. I'm judging these people differently. How is that dangerous?
And its adaptation comes from the tug of war between the careless and the meticulous.
Society doesn't know what it wants. Society is not a person. Society is made out of different people with different opinions towards language. The part of society that wants language to have rules and for these to be followed is not any less important than the part of society that doesn't care about rules or following them.
Yes, we have words like “literally” that lose their meaning and force people to say things like “literally literally” or “literally, as in a literal sense”.
Wouldn't it be a better world if “biweekly” had a clear, non-ambiguous meaning? I mean, with how ambiguous it is, it's essentially useless. You always have to clarify what you mean by it when you use it.
“Fornicating”, which used to mean “having sexual relationships with a 3d person when you're married”, is now increasingly being used to mean plain old “fucking”. Yet another word that we lose to language adaptation.
In exchange, we get words like “yeet” or “friendzone”, which don't even have a clear meaning.
Language more often than not adapts not to be more efficient in communicating ideas, but to make up for the carelessness of its users. Often to be less efficient.
I appreciate the advice, but my elitist views are based on the behavior and attitude of people. Not aspects of their life they haven't had a choice in. Which is I allow myself to have more stern views on the topic. Also, because I've been thinking about it for many, many, many years now, without really changing my views on it (which I cannot say about all topics).
Feel free to expand on
unintentionally was racist, classist, and nationalist/ethnist because of this., though. Maybe there are aspects I'm not seeing.Well, the world has too many ideas for us to know them all. Thus we can only know some of them. It's only fair to have some sort of filter.
They can, but hard and fast rules like "if you use the word 'u' instead of 'you' I will ignore you" are not the right way to approach the fluidity of language and the diversity of humans.
I think that's just the reality of communication being imperfect. It's concrete and ideas are abstract. Not to mention humans are fallible and have limited mental capacity for word storage.
That's the thing, though, their education and upbringing will directly affect how they communicate on a forum like those you mentioned. It's impossible to separate the two.
People respond differently to and are educated to act differently in different social situations based on their upbringing. While it may be inherently obvious to you that there's a specific kind of behavior that you expect people to have in a certain forum, you learned that this was the case at some point. Another person may not have learned it yet, or may simply not want to comport themselves in that manner because they do not feel it is important because they do not share your ideals or upbringing.
An outright dismissal of an idea based on the language alone is a bias. There is an assumption that there is a "correct" and "incorrect" way of doing things here. This assumption is built upon the framework of education and upbringing, which are viewed through the lens of your own experiences. This biased lens is a lens that is inherently biased against differing upbringing, therefore making it necessarily racist, classist, and ethnocentrist.
I think we agree on this premise, it is perhaps just a difference of how to apply said filter. It needs to be a lot more nuanced than "u" instead of "you" leading to an outright dismissal of an idea.
The only thing I'm asking for is basic spelling and not too atrocious grammar. The people that bother me are not people who cannot do better, but rather people who choose not to.
Yes. When I first started to communicate with people online. I didn't need to go for university to learn that. The only people I could be discriminating against unfairly could maybe be people with Asperger's, who are unable to read social cues and react accordingly to context. However, in the subreddits I mentioned (r/askhistorians and r/geopolitics) it's very clear from reading the sidebar that informal low quality discussion is discouraged. Thus, not even “Aspies” get a pass.
Okay. Then we're back to me being elitist based on people's choice. I believe that's okay. If they're allowed to not capitalize their i's and shortcut their you's, then I'm allowed to complain about it.
I have never implied I go that far. Because I don't.
I mean, the reason this bothers me alone is because I take the time to read their comment to find the faults (or what I believe are faults) in it. If I dismissed it entirely at the first sight of such occurrences, then I wouldn't know how prevalent they are, nor would I have correlated them with lackluster comments.
I'm not white. I'm not American. I am an immigrant, in one of the shittiest yet-somehow-developed economies. I come from a working class environment. My mother is a flat out anti-intellectual that pushes back and occasionally even insults me whenever I write things in any style that isn't of utmost mediocrity. The people I have to work with in menial jobs to pay for my studies also consider me weird because I don't engage in their smalltalk Sports talk with them. The people I study with consider me weird because I know about “intellectual” topics outside of the “intellectual” topics we study (it's like somehow you're not allowed to know about demographic trends if you're not an economist, much less cite a quote from a writer if you're not a literature major). All of this is to tell you, you can't play the “oh, you're a white, university educated upper class American male, so you can't understand” card.
If people were nothing but class and upbringing, I'd be whitetrash as fuck (without the white part). The only person who has sided with me in my affinity for knowledge was my grandmother, who grew up below the poverty line in a dictatorial communist regime in te 40s. And who didn't even finish high school and was forced to raise two kids from the age of 20. Who, by all accounts of
This assumption is built upon the framework of education and upbringing, which are viewed through the lens of your own experiencesshould also be anti-intellectual and as trashy as they come. But she isn't.So when someone makes a conscious decision to type “im literally dyiiiing rite now [insert emojis]”, I don't believe their class or their upbringing excuses it. I believe they just don't care about something which I care about deeply. And I don't think there's anything wrong with me disagreeing with them in such situation.
Also, again, the people typing this “im literally dyiiiing rite now [insert emojis]”, it's just everyone. Regardless of culture, upbringing or education. It's a behavior and a choice, not a biological imperative.
I mean, going by your logic, then if someone is a white supremacist from Alabama, then we shouldn't judge them harshly because “they're poor Alabama people, they don't know any better, it's in their DNA”.
Sure, background plays a role, but my sister got the same background as me, and had the same grandmother. And she can't type for shit, but I can. It's not our background that has determined that, it's our personality and our personal choice to either care about capitalization or not to. The same goes for my father and his brother, both the sons of my grandmother.
At some point, you have to draw the line. People aren't just a portrait of their background. They have free will and the ability to choose. Maybe not in what state to live or whether to drive a lamborghini or a maserati, but whether to capitalize their i's or not? Yeah, I'm pretty sure they do have a choice over the last one.
Most of the people I study with are upple middle class. And they do the same shit.
I judge people on their choices and opinions, not their background.
You're making people out to be a caricature of whatever social groups they're a part of. Completely disregarding their ability to make certain choices.
I never claimed that.
And I think my moderately long list of very long comments are nuanced enough to deduct from them that I have no issue with nuance.
Note that I'm not particularly fond of sharing my personal life online. Least of all my family situation or history. But I thought I'd make a point of it. Far too often are my opinions dismissed or their value diminished on the assumption that I am the much despised “white upper middle class American English native male” and thus I'm unable to understand the poor or the working class immigrants, which I happen to be a part of.
Not to repeat myself, but, people are more than just their background.
Not at all. I'm simply acknowledging contributing forces and the effects they have on people. You cannot simply dismiss history.
First you accuse people of having aspergers, then you say you're immune to the racism, classism, etc. because you came from an immigrant poor background. Being racist, classist, or ethnocentrist has absolutely nothing to do with background. I wasn't stating this because I thought you were "a white, university educated upper class American male" and I never meant to imply that you "couldn't understand."
I stated what I did because you were coming off as extremely exclusionary. I have a better idea now that you've given me insight into your background and motivations and I'm not sure I can continue this conversation in good faith. I'm happy that you were able to overcome diversity but deeply saddened by your inability to empathize with others and your unwillingness to accept other viewpoints on life. If there's one thing that I've learned with age, it's that people are diverse and this diversity is a huge boon to society. We should not be looking to exclude simply because we do not understand or share the viewpoint or ideology.
I think you're overstating their importance in this particular situation. If it was something more complicated, like access to higher education, or jobs, or a more healthy relationship with food or excercise, or the ability to have a more stable marriage... I'd give you the point in all of that.
But it's the most basic spelling I am asking for. Not even grammar, really.
Earlier today, I saw a comment on r/geopolitics. Awful grammar. They were using present continuous forms where they weren't the ones that belonged. BUT they had capitalized the I, I had 0 problems with it. They had the basic courtesy of capitalizing the I. They were someone that cared. I don't ask for more.
And if there's anyone in this world, with enough knowledge of the English language, to end up on Reddit, particularly on r/geopolitics of all places, and understand that subreddit enough to comment on it, but they somehow don't know that the i's are capitalized and that “u” is not a standard form of the second person; then I am deeply sorry from the bottom of my heart that I am excluding this 2-3 extraordinary people from participating in this community (not that I can't prevent them from doing anything, I'm not a mod).
But history is not always relevant on 100% of the situations. It sometimes doesn't matter. Because, again, people are more than their background. And of all the things that you could argue are conditioned by background, spelling would be one of the easiest ones to change. But again, I'm not asking for people to know the difference between affect and effect or the meaning of sesquipedalian, just merely asking some little, tiny, itty, bity efort; that literally everyone fluent enough to end up on r/geopolitics is capable of. So I seriously doubt I am excluding anyone.
I didn't accuse anyone of being Asperger's. I said that I wasn't discriminating against anyone that wasn't Asperger's. It's a pretty big jump you did there.
I'm not saying I'm immune to anything. I am saying I have plenty of experience with people from poor, working class and immigrant backgrounds and know that they're fully 100% capable of having basic spelling. So they don't really deserve an exception. And making them folllow the same rules as everyone else isn't excluding them.
I'm just telling you that poor people aren't animals. They can learn extremely basic things like capitalizing i's even if they didn't go past high school. And not requiring them to abide by the same extremely basic rules as everyone else, means you think they are less than everyone else, and thus incapable of the most basic things.
I haven't overcome anything. I just know how to capitalize i's and write “you”. It's seriously not that hard. Poor people can do it too. That was my point with that whole tangent.
As a matter of fact, I am very much capable of empathy, I have deep feelings and deep thoughts and can be moved to tears by warm sunlight on my face..
I can also empathize with neo-nazis. But being able to doesn't mean that I should nor that I would want to.
Everyone has always an excuse for everything. But everyone also has the ability to make choices. Sure, there is a place for compassion and comprehension of different life circumstances that would move different people into different paths of life but at some point, you have to start judging people as executors of their free will.
If you wanted to, you could think how reasonable it is for someone who was born in a racist family in a racist town in a racist state, that was never in contact with a person from the race he considers inferior, that didn't have enough introspection to question his views on this group of people, that was taught biased versions of history and is influenced by biased, unfair news... to be racist, and thus conclude that they're not in the wrong, or that they get a pass because of this and that circumstance.
But does it make their racism acceptable?
However, this is all unnecessary. It's not a very complex subject we're dealing with here. It's the i's and the u's. I really don't think it's as conditioned by background as you think it is.
It seems to me a rather big jump going from “cant accept one different viewpoint” to “can't accept viewpoints”. Also, one thing is accepting, and another different one is agreeing with. Not agreeing doesn't mean not accepting. I can accept unconventional grammar if it comes from someone trying to make a point, following an idea, a personal philosophy. Not if it's just mere carelessness on a place where it's precisely stated that carelessness is discouraged. Because, again, I'm not talking about YouTube comments here, but “scholar” subreddits.
Couldn't the same be said about you not accepting my viewpoint?
Sure. But not everything that deviates from the standard is a positive addition. E.g. alt-right, anti-vaxxers.
You keep accusing me of wanting to exclude, but I really don't think that's what I'm trying to do.
Just like you don't go to someone else's house and insist on leaving your shoes on when they're a household that takes their outside shoes off when they're inside; you don't go to a subreddit and do whatever you please without following the rules. And I'm not talking about unfair rules or discriminatory ones, they're very reasonable, and very essential to the health of the community. It's in poor taste, inconsiderate, and rude. Like going to a party and blasting your music without asking for permission or having any regard for the well-being and tastes of the people in there, it's just selfish.
And we should not be looking into imposing our viewpoints on other people.
Disagreeing with other people's viewpoints is perfectly acceptable. It's not morally wrong by any means to disagree with other people. Not are we forced in any way to accept all viewpoints and ideologies.
Again, I'm not discriminating anyone on bases they didn't have a choice on. I'm merely disapproving of certain behaviors in certain places. It is behavior no one is forced to have, it's not a thing they cannot change about themselves. And it's not places they need to be in. So, if they don't want to follow that very minimum set of rules, they can just not go into these communities. These communities aren't anything they need, so a basic right isn't being denied to them. So, we're neither preventing them entry for things they cannot change, nor are we depriving them of things they need.
It's basically like a restaurant requiring you to enter clothed. Not well-dressed, not an expensive entry fee, not a certain height, a certain sexuality, a certain race, a certain education... Merely asking you to enter with some clothes on. I feel like this is a very fair analogy for the requirement I'm asking people respect. If you feel like that's excluding, then, well; I can't come up with anything against that.
People in glass houses should not throw stones. If you're going to complain about other people's bad grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you'd better make sure your own grammar, spelling, and punctuation is flawless - and it's not.
I'm bored and want distraction, so I read through all your comments in this thread. Here are some of the obvious mistakes you've made:
This is a strawman argument.
First, the point you're making about doctors doesn't apply to an online platform like reddit. Further, the people I was referring to are the archetypal lazy redditor, not someone who is so busy that they can't take a few extra moments to write properly on a site like reddit (which is pretty much never going to be part of an academic's job, and could be considered a waste of time; this makes your argument invalid on its face).
Others have already made good points about non-native speakers, and I'll bolster the point by saying that those who apologize about their English are usually better writers than many natives.
I already explained why in my previous comment: if someone can't make the effort to write properly, why should I make the effort to spend additional time on their comment because I need to work otu what they actually meant?
Doctors aren't on Reddit? This is news to me and the doctors I know who use Reddit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You don't have to. I'm just pointing out that outright dismissing a post because they use "u" instead of "you" is a good way to isolate yourself unintentionally.
I write for a living. I take pride in how I take care of my speech, written or oral, how I strive to maintain an ever-broader vocabulary, how I can use the melody of the language to convey feelings. This matters to me a great deal.
I play a lot of Dota 2. It's a fast-paced, team-based game, where communication is important – verbally or otherwise. You could, if you wanted to, spend a whole match (30~60 mins) not saying a word while still communicating your intentions clearly. You could, if you wanted to, spend the same match not emoting a thing – and still communicate your intentions with a certain clarity.
Whenever I'm feeling chatty in Dota 2, I type out capitalized, properly-syntaxed sentences, which raises people's eyebrows. I've been called "Shakespeare", "English teacher", and "librarian" (all of which I take with endearment).
Whenever I'm feeling chatty and the enemies are around, I type out
shorter strings of textthat look like disi even sprinkl sum shorter forms injust to type fasterAND OF COURSE I ALLCAPS AT THEMIF I WANT TO CONVEY CERTAIN FEELINGSACROSS THIS IMPERFECT MEDIUM...and then I revert to my usual, well-composed written speech. I may switch between the two within the same sentence, just to make the effect I want: surprise, emphasize, clarify...
If there's anything I'd learned, it's that speed is sometimes paramount. I'd gladly trade the beauty of a well-presented message for speed if so is required. I'm not a hurrisome man; perhaps it is because I'm starting to recognize how fleeting time is as I get older, and the things I gave a shit about earlier are not important enough for me to hold up for.
If there's one more thing I'd learned, it's that one's speech is a very personal, self-important thing. We are so very likely to rise offended when the way we speak is questioned, let alone assaulted. It's one of those things that are likely to infuriate all the parties involved in the discussion – like politics, or religion, or sports: the things that we take very, very personally, regardless of how much we actually care about them. It takes a strong, educated person to resist the temptation to lash out at the offender.
So before you go about thinking excellent written speech online is of high importance, consider that it may not matter that much in the long run. Consider that maybe you care about it so much because you worry yours isn't up to the high standard – or maybe it perfectly is, and your worry is for nothing. Because it's not about other people – it never is. Things like these are merely projections of our own desires and dissatisfactions.
Telling people how they should speak, well... Try to convince someone that your football team is better.
l'm perfectly capable of using legible speech when typing out posts, but there's some shortcuts l take to make the typing a 'lil quicker to type and less stiff/formal to read. Regarding stiff/formal language, l think this is something that limits me in participating in a discussion because l don't speak the language just quite well enough to be able to read fluently without having to pull up a dictionary every three words.
One of those shortcuts l use is a lowercase "L" instead of an uppercase "i" for whenever it's needed.
lt's totally possible to care about something you type, while also not really caring about how grammatically correct it is(or just not knowing how to spell properly like dyslexic people or something. lt's the thought that counts,
not the count that thoughtsnot how well some dude can type.But what has one got to do with the other? Capitalising letters and providing detailed answers in a response are two separate things. It's like reading a resume and saying the candidate isn't a good electrician because they list a hobby of "camping". Sure camping doesn't use electricity, but there is such a thing as reading to far into something.
Sometimes a comment might be providing or requesting advice, or discussing technical concepts, or giving some insight into a philosophical matter, but none of these topics directly require correct capitalisation to provide their meanings. In fact, it would be quite rare that a fully uncapitalised post would provide any additional ambiguity to a correctly formatted one.
You can read into a reddit post to the same level as you would a thesis on a great classic, and probably find many different levels of message and meaning, but that doesn't make them true or valid to the conversation at hand. For example, you can probably read between the lines and figure out I don't capitalise all my i's in every post I write. Does that make this message less valid? Where do you draw the line? How many salient points are you willing to ignore because you want to read messages that were never intended?
Supposes it is acceptable behavior in the writer's social circles? Does your assumption of "look like they don't care about what they're saying" still hold? Now you've missed out on a valid post for no valid reason. Yes they can still be right or wrong, but that isn't because of their grammar.
HAVING said all that however, I still agree with you in principle (though to a lesser degree). Someone should make their message easy to read as to show respect to their readers' time. Occasional spelling/autocorrect mistakes I can accept, as long as I can figure out the intended word. However if they have spelling that distorts the meaning of sentences, or the user doesn't fix autocorrect mistakes multiple times every sentence, then I can't be sure the words I'm correcting to are the actual intended words, and more importantly, it'll take me longer to read (wasting my time).
Long-winded and probably foolish text follows:
For what it’s worth, I agree with both of you. I feel that your writing should be as important as your appearance in terms of expressing yourself. But sometimes we want to communicate quickly and we don't have the luxury and time of being able to editorialize ourselves. Mobile devices I feel are the devil in this regard with their contributions to fat-fingering and autocorrections from hell.
Yes, we should strive to make the time to communicate properly and effectively. However, I have personally noticed that with the way my life has evolved in the past 20 years, with the barrage of information and tasks being performed and processed daily - that if I don't take a second to at least interject a thought or an additional task to what I am seeing or doing, what I had on my mind will quickly be forgotten and my chance to contribute to something I might feel would be meaningful will be lost. On a site like Tildes or Reddit; that chain of communication will likely scroll off the front page and long be forgotten by the time I actually have the free time to write a proper passage.
To me this shortness and carelessness its akin to making a note by putting pen to paper ala a post-it-note to communicate. Except we hardly use those tools anymore, as we are increasingly communicating as a society like this but in the short form of instant messages and tweets. It's a horrible way to communicate effectively, but the masses are getting used to it.
A way to look at this differently might be to devise a new system of submission or reaction to submissions (to posts or replies). Perhaps with the reluctance of a downvote, we have a 'revision request' button that hides a post or reply until OP fixes it. :-D Yes, ridiculous to an extent, but it would allow people to contribute their thought and hopefully fix it later after they get notified of the request. A post or reply gets rejected without it being destroyed or OP demoralized by downvotes and can continue and elaborate on or fix that posted thought when they again have a free moment to look at their inbox and respond to and hopefully fix their mediocrity.
This hides the offending post so no one brigades complaining about, and it simply gets hidden until they fix it. Make it expire in say 24 hours if it hasn't been fixed, and be done with it. Make it auditable so abusers of the system can be held accountable.
And then again sometimes there is no solution to imperfect people for imperfect people in an imperfect world.
The degreed people of r/askhistorians aren't the people who were making the comments I'm complaining about.
If they can't spend an extra minute making sure their spelling isn't atrocious, then I doubt they have the time at all to make insightful comments.
Regardless, it's not the spell-check I'm complaining about. If you write “u” and “ur” and “im”, it's not the spell-check that failed here, it's your complete lack of interest with regards to typing “you”, “you're” and “I am”.
The occasional typo is okay. The complete disregard for a well presented, punctuated, and spell-checked comment is what I'm referring to.
It's like when you're buying any product and you make sure to check the quality of the exterior material. Does cheap plastic and chipped edges mean that the technology inside is low quality? Well, technically, no. But more often than not, it does correlate to it. If they cheap out on the presentation, they probably cheap out on the interior.
I have never seen a well thought-out and insightful comment that was as careless with spelling and punctuation as the average low quality comment on the site is trending towards lately.
In-depth discussion requires a bit of effort, if the person typing the comment can't even bother to type “you” instead of “u” because they want to save the tiny effort of moving their fingers a wee bit to the left and right in the same key row, then I honestly don't think they're going to bother putting in the effort it takes to type up an insightful comment
Maybe. But this is the argument I wanted to use in this particular ocasion. I wasn't trying to give a complete list of reasons.
I wasn't referring to correct grammar, much less correct spelling. On r/books and r/literature and others you find people actually interested in the back and forth of ideas, much like most of Tildes.
Spelling isn't even a thing any more in the major news. Maybe a thong, or a thang. Quality has many guises. The word makes me think of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, where the author taught Quality in his college courses. As a degree of excellence, I would suggest that many modern classic novels, such as Finnegan's Wake, were seen as fluff and low quality when they were first published. I imagine many still see it as such.
The problem with the necessary evil of filtering, moderating, curating, is that a lot of good material, even significant material, is left out of the mix. I think it should put any moderator in a stance of humility, erring on the lenient side.
But again, I was speaking of actual discussion, the back and forth of thoughts and information and opinion.
/r/leftcommunism, /r/criticaltheory, /r/askphilosophy. Generally most of the leftist factional subreddits or niche philosophic subreddits will be good, if only because they're small enough that only people really into it are going to hang out on them. Subreddits focused on trades or crafts are also usually pretty good, as long as they're not too big. Those are less discussion and more of a community resource though.
The only political sub I have ever commented on was r/laststagecapitalism and I got banned the very first time I commented there because I had posted once to r/cringe_anarchy several years ago. Neither my comment not my post were in any way whatsoever in the slightest bit political, offensive or controversial. My post in the other sub only had got 3 upvotes, so it wasn't even right for that subreddit by most accounts. And I hadn't participated in that sub outside of that instance before or after.
I'm not part of any other political or drama ridden sub, but I've read this type of behavior is common among all of them.
I also like to challenge people's views even when I agree with those views, and would rather not join a subreddit where they'll ban me just for not agreeing with them.
Are those subs any different?
latestagecapitalism is a bad meme sub, I hate it even if I'm nominally aligned with them ideologically.
Well that would depend on what exactly you mean. In general I don't think many of them would consider themselves "debate subs", in that they're not interested in people coming in to argue against their ideology. Which, I think, is fair, debate has its place but so does discussion, and the internet being what it is means that if, for example, /r/leftcommunism were to allow open debate it would quickly be flooded with people who are not left-coms and their discussion space would be destroyed.
I think, in general, it is inordinately hard to have consistent "high quality" debates like you want, especially online. A good debate requires the participants to have some shared foundation to argue from, otherwise you're just talking past each other. How do you form a shared foundation with a stranger online? It's incredibly difficult and very few people are actually going to care enough to make it happen. In my opinion it's better to "passively" debate by sharing things you support (articles, books, whatever) and allowing people to form their own judgements on them. I know I was drawn to left-wing politics far more by reading analysis of capitalism than I ever was arguing against socialists on reddit.
Grammar and capitalization are not, in themselves, markers of "high quality" discussion. I know several published scholars with tenure track positions at well regarded universities who either don't capitalize or capitalize very inconsistently in casual discussion. I wouldn't discount my friend who is an actual historian when she's talking about history just because she doesn't care about prescriptivist formalism in an online discussion.
There are also plenty of people for whom English is not a first language and come from cultural backgrounds where texting shorthand is common even in business communication. Grammatical prescriptivism is, largely, a matter of aesthetic preference.
I never said they were. What I do believe they are is often a mark of lower quality. Not always, but more often than not.
I'm not complaining about people not keeping proper grammar in a chat room. And I don't believe r/askhistorians or r/geopolitics are places for casual discussion. It merely takes one reading the sidebar rules for knowing that, because it is clearly said so in there.
I'm not complaining about people in r/memes or r/casualuk being blasé about grammar and spelling. I'm complaining about the lack of effort in “scholar” subreddits. They're very different communities.
But I'm sure that when she wants to be taken seriously she puts in the effort to abide by prescriptivist rules.
So? If you're in a place that's meant to house in-depth discussion, you should try to put in some effort in your comments. Regardless of your culture.
It's not typos and grammar mistakes I'm complaining about. It's the complete disregard of rules and spelling. Typing “u” instead of “you” and “im” instead of “I'm” is not something that an L2 speaker would do because they don't know any better. It's something that you do when you just couldn't care less about typing “you” and “I'm”. It's a conscious decision to take a shortcut. A shortcut that is known by anyone who's not very deep in the Asperger's syndrome to be informal and casual. In a subreddit that is clearly stated to not be meant to be informal and casual. It's a disregard for the context. So L2 speakers don't get a pass. Because it's not L2 rules that make the mistakes I'm complaining about. People make these mistakes regardless of their knowledge of the language.
So is wearing a suit to a presidential debate. You could also go in a diaper. But then don't expect people to take you seriously.
There are also very good reasons for prescriptivism to exist. And I hope the trend of dismissing it that's so common online doesn't translate into real life in meaningful ways, though that ship has probably already sailed.
/r/fantasy is fantastic, literally the best forum for fantasy discussion on the internet. In terms of scholastic discussion like you are referring to, I wouldn't know.
Reddit is still my go to for news and updates on things, however Tildes is definitely my preferred location if I want to have an actual real conversation with people on a certain topic (even if I may not visit super often)
I hope that tildes is able to continue to grow but I'm okay with it never being a direct competitor with Reddit in terms of users since I think you'll run in to the same problem that they currently have with a userbase.
Yeah, Tildes isn't really meant to be a direct competitor. While the interfaces are definitely similar and Tildes is fairly "reddit-like" in a lot of ways, the actual purposes of the two websites are far different, otherwise we would likely already be overtaken by an abundance of fluff content. That stark difference in purpose is the entire appeal of Tildes.
Just like you, I'll head to reddit for news and updates because they'll usually have important things rise to the top before those things get posted on Tildes (after all, a larger user base means more opportunities for a contributing user to notice a piece of news and submit it), but when I actually want to discuss that news, I'll wait for it to be posted here (or I'll post it myself!).
Sports are a large part of my continued involvement on reddit too.
I agree. The sad thing is that Reddit seems to deteriorate each day. At some point it will have surpassed it's usefulness, and that will be sad indeed.
I've been going on reddit nearly every day for 6 years, and I feel like the posts on there are becoming more and more of the same kind of crap I can find on Facebook (and sometimes are things reposted from Facebook). I'd say less than 10% of the posts are original nowadays. The only thing reddit is useful for nowadays is the ability to find real reviews and feedback on consumer products, or help with specific things like hobbies or work-related topics.
The problem is that the wider majority of people are okay with "Facebook-quality" content, and given that reddit's audience is taking in people from other social media platforms, they have to pander to that audience now and are very likely planning on fully monetizing the website, head to toe.
At this point I mostly just check on Reddit if I'm curious as to "What are the worst people on the internet saying about this right now?" It can be illustrative if you approach it with the right mindset of specifically looking for the least well considered takes without any sense of proportion. It's also usually sage to guess that at least 20% of any actual, substantive discussion about the topic is going to be conveying exactly that sentiment, so it helps to know what it is ahead of time.
I've given up on trying to get anything out of participating in it anymore though. It's basically just anthropological study at this point.
Don't worry too much about perceptions of pandering or fishing here. While you might deal with that problem outside of this website (e.g. someone discussing this post outside of Tildes), many (most?) of us are in a similar boat with regards to our reasons for coming here. I've mentioned it on a few different occasions, even less than 12 hours ago, but the inability to find quality responses and the toxic behavior on reddit are precisely the reasons I left as well. I couldn't possibly count the number of times someone on reddit has asked a genuine question and not a single reply to the question (even after several hours!) was a non-joke answer.
You're in good company here!
I 'discovered' Reddit last April, and immediately noticed the racism, sexism, homophobia, and general nastiness of many Redditors. I even engaged in a bit of internet sparring with some of these individuals before I decided, why bother? I'm not going to change anyone's mind by giving as good as I got. I made a new account and tried to avoid the more 'toxic' subs, yet that became impossible because even subs that I thought were 'serious' started attracting more of the ignorant element. I tried in vain to find an alternative but the only one that came close was Voat, and we all know how that platform is. I despaired of ever finding a better use of my time than Reddit, and than I heard of Tildes - on Reddit - and I emailed for an invite. I just got it, and now I am here and I am already happier. This is going to be a long & satisfying relationship!
One thing I noticed with recent users is a focus on r/all and the default subs. A lot of new users of reddit didn't seem to be familiar with the process or function of curating the r/frontpage setup outside the default subs.
As a newer user to reddit, how did that aspect of reddit come to you? I have just a few personal anecdotes from friends that joined recently and they definitely seem to focus on r/all and the defaults subs of r/frontpage - had no real knowledge of the difference or customizing subscriptions. They aren't very savvy though so I'm curious about your experience in that regard.
Oof.. I've never been part of a community that direct about it, but in some ways that makes it easier to identify them. Being ghosted or steamrolled by people on the regular can be almost as bad, but you never actually get the pointed feedback and just kind of wonder if it's all in your head or not.. which it could be, or it could not be.
I fucking hate ambiguity like that. :P But I've been trying to take a step back when I can.. comes in cycles. Human social need dynamics are such a fucking beast.
There was a sub r/zen which hilariously was full of infighting and accusations of trolling. There was even a demi-buddha (my take) who was the supposed arbiter of quality. Toxic indeed.
Nothing. It has a lot to do with toxicity. Which is why I unsubscribed.
LOL. Reading the wikipedia article on Zen I'm not surprised. Evidently my knowledge of Zen is purely popsci/new age bs. If the alternative is serious study implied by that article, I quite content with my ignorance.
Aside: I personally don't consider it to be a good discussion unless people are citing sources, simply because that is where people look to find more info, and to ensure that the shit that's being shot is good shit rather than bull.
That said, I don't really get the whole personal investment in an online discussion board myself. Participate, sure, get something out of, absolutely, but invest emotion? That inevitably leads to exactly the toxicity you're talking about. Pick any board throughout the ages with a discernable 'culture' - from 4chan, to BB.com, to SA, to various niche forums like anime and whatever else - emotion begets drama.
If you go way, way back, to when Usenet was king, there was far less drama because emotion mostly stayed out of it (there were other reasons like a smaller more integrated and incrementally educated community, and the fact everybody could find out who everybody else was, but the lack of emotional investment also played a part). I find the whole 'remember the human' side of things to be working against the antitoxicity goal - people can be downright cunts to other people face to face, and treat them far worse than they treat NPCs in a video game.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure everybody here is a great person - I just don't really care. I read text, I write text, I click on links, and where sources exist I go and learn stuff. But it could honestly all be written by an AI chatbot and it wouldn't bother me in the slightest.
With all due respect, I think you're being a bit hyperbolic. Public discourse has not magically died, and I think you may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. I, too, have been on Reddit for around 8 years and things don't seem too different. I definitely remember many posts that were stupid and reached the front page. It's how it's always been.
As a community becomes larger, the posts that appeal to the general public will be what's popular. That's just how it is and there's nothing you can do about it. If you're looking for serious discourse, you're going to need to look to something a bit more specialized than Reddit.
I really share your feelings. I found myself sadly unsubscribing from subreddits I used to love and share with my friends. Hopefully this platform can stay in the sweet spot of having lots of users and conversations without sacrificing quality of discussion.
"They are real, they are human, they feel, they are like me."
Kudos to you Kavalier - One is never too late and never too old to learn THAT, and I learned it the hard way too. Give yourself several points - I do (I mean figuratively, I'm not hacking the up-vote code LOL).
I'm thrilled to be here, and look forward to reading your thoughts in the future.
PS: Hope things have eased up for you mate.
I don't think the issue with Reddit was the site age trending younger. I think the issue is that Reddit became too popular without mechanisms in place to keep it from devolving into low quality posts. With a small community, that could probably be helped (look at high quality subs like r/emulation) but any community too large, even with the demographics similar to old Reddit, trends to low quality content (check out r/linux).