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Does/Could Tildes make an effort to recruit minority voices?
I think it's great and a very worthy goal that Tildes wants to be a place for good discussion and not let asshole communities form and fester. I think part of the way to reach this goal is making an effort to include minority voices here, so that we don't fall into the same straight white middle class male echo chamber trap.
Some ideas are posting on subreddits like TwoX, LGBT, and subreddits for specific minority communities.
Getting a diverse group of folks involved now - while we are in the crucial community building phase - will pay off big dividends down the road.
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Black dude here. I read the title and groaned a little. I am here because I came on my own terms, and because Reddit has become chaotic. A left vs right, a minority vs a majority, and blanket rules to surpress someone. I don't want to feel like my skin tone is basis for a recruitment tactic.
I believe that listening to other people, and creating a space where communication based on fact, and education will flourish more than creating a safe space for minority voices.
By recruiting minority voices you are becoming the echo chamber that you are trying to avoid.
I hope that didn't come off rude. Have a good night
It's amazing how consistently I hear this from people who speak from within the very communities posts like this are trying to seek out and encourage. To think that good discussion spaces encourage people of a wide variety of backgrounds to engage and participate in ... good discussions, well that's just crazy talk!
I know that from my own perspective, I hate the idea most of all that someone would make assumptions about me based on one facet of my identity. I hear stuff like this coming from people all the time, whether they're in a minority group or not. In this society, we have a ton of people who like to be treated as our own persons, capable of our own, nuanced thinking. What a radical thought.
So yeah, I'm pretty much entirely with you here. I think too often people tend to approach these sorts of discussions like there has to be an intentional effort to appeal to people of a certain minority in order for them to feel comfortable engaging. If we have our shit in order, that stuff kind of can work itself out as word spreads and people who feel welcome engage this place.
Asking whether we have our shit in order is scary, and likely to shed light on places where we ... really don't have that shit together.
I'm really glad to read this. I share the same opinion as you, but I've always been scared of expressing it in fear of it being understood as racism. Treating minorities differently has always come off as kind of racist in my eyes, even if it is treating them better than everyone else (after all, isn't treating people differently because of their race the very definition of racism?). Treat people like people, regardless of their social/economic background.
I get that but we have a serious demographic bias as of right now and getting our group closer to a representation of the real world should be a goal so that disparate views are naturally part of conversations.
Sorry based on what data?
Last time I checked the census, we had already a much bigger lgbt community than it's usually represented in online communities.
Firstly, comparisons to other online communities are not valid if those communities are the opposite of what we want this site to be, and not what I referred to.
Second, 13% female is not a diverse community (reddit is 33% - still bad), 19% linux users suggests a bunch of IT professionals, and 96% using Reddit means their demographics likely apply which probably means 81% white.
~ census
reddit census
Right now, men are 86% of tildes users. That's the one I'm most concerned with.
The content brings the people. Focus on content that I would want to share with my friends.
Could you explain this more? I'm not sure I understand.
There isn't much to explain. If you make space intentionally for minorities, in an exceedingly way, those minorities will join thinking that this is "their space" and everyone is part of their minority.
When they realise that it's not the case and they will meet other people that could just contest their viewpoint, two possible outcome can happens (most probably):
I personally don't won't minorities to think that this is a space "for them". This should be a space for everyone that want to have an exchange of different opinions, while not falling in personal harassment or childish behaviour.
This is not it.
We don't close ourselves into our own personal "ghetto". That was a really ignorant statement. That does not deserve the votes it received.
We don't bring more people to counterbalance. I am not on a crusade to bring people into this conversation to balance it. I would tell them to avoid this place because of this conversation and this topic.
Do you think you know better than every other user how their votes ought to be allocated?
Well, considering that it was someone else trying to speak for him, and that attempt was rather far off the mark, I think @Dus10 is probably within his rights to be a little miffed about the way it seems to have been received.
Please read it again, I didn't say that "this is it".
I said, in short, "the most common outcome is either this or this" and they are both the most common human behaviour. It's not meant to be read as a statement of fact as of course it cannot possibly include all the possible variation.
You probably didn't intend to do this, but you structurally ended up looking like you were speaking for @Dus10 on a question that was posed directly to one of the things he said. One way to head that potential misreading off is to say out the gate something like, "I can't speak for the person you're asking that question to, but ..." and then state your view.
That can be especially important for a case like this where you seem to suggest that people who identify a certain way necessarily tend to congregate and keep away from larger groups (the reality is probably a bit more complicated and could even include uncomfortable observations that people in those communities might be less likely to be heard in a general audience). That suggestion does run against the grain of the spirit of his comment, which seems more tied to wanting to keep a unique sense of identity outside of the one being assigned to him.
I'm not sure I agree with the other response you got, so I'm gonna try and explain it the way I understood it. It's not about the minorities. Focusing efforts in inviting people from any specific group will lead to an echo chamber.
As an example, if we were to focus on inviting people from gaming forums/communities, we'd suddenly have a bunch of people that probably think alike. Most discussions would be about gaming and possibly gaming related tech. A post about net neutrality would probably be very active and have a high score, but a post like this one I saw on the front page would probably be largely ignored and have a bunch of joke comments. On top of that, you can be sure that every comment on the net neutrality post would be supporting it. That's an echo chamber. Not necessarily a bad one in this very specific example, but one nonetheless. Posts and comments will be made knowing that everyone else will like it/agree with it and the content that differs from the general mentality of the community will be pretty much ignored if it's ever even posted.
In summary, I don't think we should "make an effort" to recruit anyone based on social standing, ethnicity or any other factor that is not their behavior. If the goal is getting discussion and avoiding low-effort spam, that's what we should "focus" on when inviting others, not their social/economic background.
EDIT: I just realized the post I linked is about women and a parallel could be drawn between the gaming/women references. That's not at all what I meant to highlight. It could have been any other topic that is unrelated to gaming communities in general, like this one or maybe this one.
I agree with this sentiment. The issue is that we've already done what you described. Tildes is 86% male according to the demographic data. I think a little correction would be beneficial for discourse.
I don't think it's rude, I think it's a valid viewpoint. I don't want you or anyone to think that I'm saying, let's recruit a bunch of tokens so we can feel good about ourselves.
Rather, like a big organization doing hiring, we should be reaching out to minority groups to find qualified people that we otherwise might not find. It's the same principal as affirmative action. It does NOT mean hiring people only due to their race/gender, it means making a broader effort to recruit these people.
But the problem with this is you're conflating increasing minority views with an automatically better environment for discussion. That's not always true. For example, I present to you /r/askgaybros, and sub for discussion of all things gay. I also present to you a sub filled with harassment and bullying, strong undertones of racism, constant derision and put-downs for trivial things, and a safe haven for various genuinely psychological questionable trolls. About a solid quarter of the people who regularly post in that sub have openly broken multiples of Tilde's rules in the past, and god knows how many have done so under throwaway accounts. If we start inviting people from there, this place would go into an absolute nosedive. And again, I'd point out a similar correlation of politically conservative Americans and /r/the_donald.
So yeah. I'm all for welcoming people from unusual and diverse backgrounds, I would love to see ~lgbt grow from its current tiny community, but honestly, I'm becoming a little concerned this is taking precedence over whether the individual is going to add anything to this website. The point of trying to attract people from different backgrounds is so they can add something to a conversation where maybe we wouldn't know something from before, but that's entirely moot if they're a troll, and if we start trying to mass signup people regardless of what they're like just because they're from a background we have little of, we'll have lost sight of why this community was established in the first place. I really don't want to see Tildes turn into another toxic cesspool like Voat.
I'll say this as a Redditor who was graceously invited by another Redditor: This really makes me hope there is some form of outreach that strays away from Reddit, given we are trying to create an online culture that is distinct from the very user-base we're letting in.
Bring in primarily Reddit users, and they're all going to maintain a portion of their mannerisms and viewpoints they formed from Reddit. On the other hand, if you recruit from other sites as well or extend invitations to irl friends, you have different backgrounds, perspectives and mannerisms to offset the Reddit culture. I joined tildes because I grew tired of Reddit's penchant to downvote opinions that strayed from its prefered position, to repeat the same inside jokes and reply to posts that are non-conforming to the demographic (white, cis, heterosexual, male, metropolitan and high school or college aged) with dismissive and half-baked putdowns. For clarity, I meet Reddit's demographic criteria to a tee, but you absolutely nailed it in pointing out how sophisticated an echo-chamber Reddit can be. It does not encourage users to try understanding different opinions by default. I want to be a part of an online culture where we re-learn how to stand at a cross-roads with others without hating them for being different.
I joined Tildes from a post on hackernews but to be honest we're kinda elitist assholes over there. A lot of the posts range from predatory capitalism to condescending paternalistic views and I say that as someone whose most likely contributed to that culture.
I want to find a place that gets past the hive minds and toxicity of Reddit and hackernews, but the problem is that I don't know where those kinds of people are or I would have already joined.
My current tactic is joining this new community the has an ostensible goal of being a better digital square and just trying to police my own actions to keep this a good place
We need to run this site like a private tracker if we want to have the right culture. New users should only enter in one of two ways:
IMO we have enough users right now to be the seed userbase to start this site.
We also need users to be able to moderate the site before it can function as intended. I know this is a planned feature - but I don't believe ~ will have any hope of succeeding until the reputation system is at least partially implemented.
I was assuming any sort of "recruitment" though different subreddits would work the same way invites have been so far-- seeing who is interested, giving invites to people who don't have red flags in their posting history, and banning any trolls that slip through. (Not sure how one would do step one without spamming, though...)
I think reaching out to mod teams is a good start. If you get their buy-in, it shows that you are sincere.
The one group ~ needs to reach out to the least are Reddit mods.
That's a shitty low-effort response. Reddit's mods are as varied as its users. I mod the Florida Man subreddit. Maybe try focusing on the substance of what is being discussed instead of just being salty you got banned from r/pics or whatever.
If I may interject here.
What vakieh may have been alluding to was the fact that out of all possible groups, reddit mods maybe the single most overrepresented group of any type here on Tildes. Many of the very early adopters and invites were reddit mods. Your response seems to indicate you may not know that fact.
This is correct. Before tildes was even a site, it was an idea being hashed over and over by a large group of reddit's ex-admins and current moderators. The common theme with that group was frustration at reddit's inability to evolve and improve, and that's where the non-profit goals and most of the system brainstorming was focused.
Once it was in alpha, invites went out to large numbers of reddit's mod teams - and, frankly, nearly everyone was excited and on-board with this, so knowledge of tildes spread through a lot of reddit mod communities very quickly (mostly outside of reddit, through slack/discord/irc). I'd wager we've got mods from every major sub on the site represented here. That was the goal - every one of those teams brings their unique experiences and knowledge of how to moderate various topic areas, which is precisely what you need if you plan to do a better job at this than reddit when designing the systems for self-governance. It was very much intentional.
It was only recently we started inviting regular users - because we can't build this place in a vacuum. I'd wager as much as 1/4 of tildes users have been or are moderators on reddit in some capacity.
That... makes me worried, considering Reddit mods are, to me, notorious for randomly closing heated threads and shutting down controversial discussions for no good reason. I know the common justification is that the threads just get too out of control for the mod team to handle, but then I'd ask why the mod team feels like they need to put their hands on every discussion.
In short, I really hope that habit doesn't carry over to Tildes.
It won't. The reason that happens is because reddit's mod tools suck - they give us two blunt force instruments, bans (which don't work) and removals. We can't merge threads, move threads, spin off topics into subgroups when they take over a place, can't conduct democratic polls to find out what users want, can't cross-promote content between subreddits, can't track user behaviors to help them reform, can't tell who the best community members are so we can get them on the mod teams helping run things, can't edit titles or links, can't tag, can't promote quality, can't get rules and community guidelines in front of new users... reddit's forum tech is objectively much worse and more primitive than vbulletin and phpbb were in 2001.
All these mod teams bring us their ideas. Every team has a backroom full of threads that go something like "What we really need is a tool that does x" - to the tune of dozens of those threads over years across hundreds of major subreddits. Tildes needs to build all of those tools - not as bots and hacks that barely work as a bolt-on, but as core site functionality. We do that and removals should become a thing of the past, reserved only for outright hostile behavior.
I see. It's a pitty (and quite confusing) how bad Reddit's functionality is, but now I'm excited to see Tildes do it that much better.
I can understand Vekieh's point. A lot of alternatives ended up being visited by the same Reddit mods who quickly rounded up the same Subreddits they already owned. Making the change in community pointless to some people. Of course ~ isn't exactly going to work that way so @Vakieh I don't think you have anything to worry about.
It's like domain squatting, in a way. That's not (imo) good behavior that should be encouraged. The growth has to be slow, patient, and organic - starting with general communities that branch out naturally into smaller feeder communities with more specific focus. That's the only way it's ever worked. Imzy's failure with rapid fragmentation shows what happens when you don't control for the growth.
Could you explain a bit about what happened to Imzy? I read a couple articles, but they only mentioned a lack of financial support.
With the way some people have been talking on here, I can definitely see this happening - just being authoritarian and socialist rather than libertarian.
Twox is kind of toxic isn't it?
I didn't think so?
Yeah, I've never had that impression either. Also, we'd probably only be adding 10s of users at a time, so hopefully, it would be easy to catch any abusive users.
Yeah, I'm honestly not sure what @acrid is talking about. I've read the occasional TwoX post and looked at their feed a few times and I've never seen anything particularly toxic. It's just women who share their experiences in what, from what I can tell, is a generally supportive space.
Maybe it's a cherry picking bias of some kind? Possibly never reading anything from TwoX except in cases where someone points out one bad apple and that bad apple is falsely being propped up as the poster child for TwoX?
If there is genuine toxicity, I'd be interested in actually seeing it, because I've never observed anything like that in the past.
I definitely notice toxicity from TwoX. It got to the point where I unsubscribed, which is something I rarely do.
It might be that the OP only saw it when threads reached the front page. I've read the subreddit directly and it seemed like an average subreddit in terms of userbase and toxicity levels but the threads that reached the front page we're significantly more divisive
I haven't gone back to twoX in a long time. In my previous experience TwoX slided down from being a subreddit about Women's issues to being a subreddit where the motto was "We are Women, woe betide us. Everything is suffering". That and once it reached default status people would continuously pour in to tell them why they were wrong for believing misogyny was a thing.
TrollX became a more upbeat and more fun version of TwoX after a while, but even then it started to default to a subreddit almost exclusively devoted to posting the lowest common denominator gender politics, I suppose everyone needs a place to vent but both TwoX and TrollX just became uninteresting if you didn't care to hear the same arguments or complaints repeated ad infinitum.
I don't think as a whole, but there's a lot of "this happened to me" which while it's good people have a place to vent and share, it's just taking some strangers anecdote as truth in a default subreddit with 11 million users.
That and things like auto-banning of mens rights and other subreddits, anti-scientific myths persisting like the 75c/$1 wage gap.
I mean I generally expect major default subreddits to turn to crap so that considered it could be worse.
Off topic, but because you brought it up first....
The wage gap is a real thing that exists, but people sometimes misrepresent what it means. In the US, the average woman who works full time earns ~80¢ for every dollar the average man who works full time earns. This doesn't mean that a man and a woman in the same position earn different salaries. It's relatively rare for companies for a company to do this, since, among other reasons, it's illegal. According to the Wikipedia article, "after adjusting for choices made by male and female workers in college major, occupation, working hours, and parental leave, multiple studies find that pay rates between males and females varied by 5–6.6% or, females earning 94 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts." So that leaves only 6% at most that can be accorded to sexism, right? Well....
All those choices that were adjusted for? They were made in the context of a society that has very different ideas for how males should behave vs how females should behave. These ideas can have a large effect on the choices people make. (Note that I'm not saying why society is like this. Whether it's biology or socialization or the Patriarchy or whatever the points I'm making still apply.)
Sexism isn't just stuff like a misogynist boss giving promotions to men but not women. Seemingly benevolent ideas like "men should provide for their family" or "women make good caregivers" are going to effect things like whether a person takes time off to spend with their kids or puts in overtime to advance their careers.
So, to conclude, I think calling the wage gap an "anti-scientific myth" betrays a myopic viewpoint.
You're right.
I could have phrased it better and I did over-simply, people often misrepresent the wage gap as though females are somehow paid less for their time, where the disparity is further up the line, as you pointed out, things that affect career choices etc.. account for the differences in the wages, and yes sure society and prevailing attitudes affect what career choices we make.
It's obvious at least some of the choices we make are manipulated to create a larger gap than there needs to be, but we're not blank slates, we're not robots, we don't just program ourselves to be anything, we're affected by our biological nature as well, so there's always going to be some "gap" (though I'm sure it will close significantly) because we are different from each other.
Yeah, I mean I understand if they want to ban men's rights (given that many men's rights activists outside of /r/menslib are, or typically are, pretty anti-feminist/misogynistic)
Banning people from that sub by default is rather pathetic, to be honest. It shows they're more interested in their narrative than actual discourse.
Didn't know it was autobanning users from a sub, thought it was just links to the sub
I mean I could say the same about twox, but banning the entire userbase of a subreddit is highly questionable.
I was apparently banned from there despite never participating there. I asked why and their response was “We apologise that you were not informed when you were banned originally.”
Wut. Lol Damn
It's all kinds of toxic. When it became a default (lol what a joke) it turned into 2 very vocal camps - the troll men who 'invaded', aka 'signed up by default without being asked', who talk shit, and the radfems who try to recruit from what they see as a fertile base.
Those 2 groups don't get along, but to be fair they only clash on posts that rise up high enough, so there's probably some decent quiet people in the lowbie posts?
Then again, look at TrollX. Dumpster fire.
I don't really subscribe to it, my impression has always just been it's a subreddit for women to have ladytalk
Those suggestions for creating tildes for minority groups might bring in a greater number of minority voices to the website, but doesn't guarantee that those voices will become more prominent on the website as a whole.
That is, you might very well just create a bunch of miniature echo-chambers, much like what has happened on Reddit. You end up with a 'ghettoized' website where each subgroup ends up being a 'safe-space' for its members. Once this occurs, groups can become intimidated by other groups and we end up with the tribalism that we were trying to avoid in the first place.
I think the better method for recruitment and inclusion of minorities might be found in the administration and moderation of the website. We want minorities to feel welcomed to the main tildes, not just their own smaller tildes. To do this, it might mean that the bigger tildes need to host discussion days that are geared towards minorities. For instance, maybe ~talk would have a thread for discussing sexual rights on Tuesdays where LGBT members are encouraged to speak with everyone about how these issues affect them.
Just for context, I've posted multiple times in 'thoughtful' subreddits like foodforthought and indepthstories, as well as default subreddits and even my local subreddit, with well-thought out and even sourced posts about things like redlining, or racial wealth disparities, or defending victims of sexual assault and been attacked or downvoted. These aren't ghettoized minority communities, they're the whole spectrum of subreddits. And it's no real surprise, because so many redditors are uncritical cis het white men. They can't see past their biases, so they feel perfectly comfortable downvoting posts that cause cognitive dissonance.
I'm not necessarily advocating creating Tildes for minorities. Right now I'd even say there's not much point. However, I learned about Tildes from a Reddit post. I'm sure most all of us did. Why not specifically target often-overlooked voices for inclusion?
Do I understand correctly that you believe reddit is not presently biased enough against cis het white men, and that maybe tildes can do better?
No you do not understand correctly.
A person's identity shapes their experiences in life, especially in the US where race, gender, and sexual identity carry all kinds of social implications.
People of all identities have shared cultural experiences within their group, and may not share cultural experiences of other groups. For example as a white guy, I've never been followed around a store by an employee who thinks I might be shoplifting because I'm black.
It's entirely possible to be a cis het white male and understand these things, but it's more frequent that people are dismissive of unshared cultural experiences and the viewpoints they create.
that's a pretty cheap target
It's true, look at any demographic survey from reddit.
I think what you said was perfectly fair; we're all a product of our experiences. Add into the mix that so many Redditors are young and have so much to experience in the world and of course the result is a larger number of uncritical users. Some people cringe at hearing "cis het white men" because it's often used as the proverbial punching bag by unreasonable and angry people/communities online or irl (I've been harassed by both, and I was surprised by how afflictive and longlasting that experience can be). I've used the terms a couple times as well recently, and I wish there was something that didn't sound so ridiculous. I have the same response to it as I do when the creepy dude refers to women as "females." ugh.
I agree, it's awkward and cumbersome language but at the same time, words have meaning and in this context they're important. I wanted to make sure to include the word uncritical because there's nothing wrong with being a cis het white dude, as long as you're not part of the problem. I'm a cis het white dude.
While I can certainly understand it's annoying to feel like a punching bag, it's important to remember that for most of our history everyone else was the punching bag for cis het white men. If I feel like I'm being ignored because of my identity, I try to remember that this actually just makes me like everyone else and not particularly oppressed.
Just to be clear--and it seems from your comment that you understood this--I'm not suggesting cisgendered heterosexual white men are oppressed lol. Realistically, there's nothing wrong with the words themselves--they just now have an image problem with those they ought to reach. I just wanted to point out that, should someone be wondering about the occasional pushback one gets in making a relatively reasonable argument as you have, that often a portion of the responses you'll encounter when using the language are reactive to the way it's been abused by some who use it as a putdown. I'm also not suggesting you avoid the terms--that would be problematic as well.
In my case it wasn't a matter of being ignored; I prefer to listen than to interject on matters that are not mine to commandeer. Unfortunately, my case was just plain ol' harassment. But yeah, I did the same and thought: There are militant idiots in all camps. It doesn't validate their hatred, and it doesn't make them representative of a cause.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood.
Sure, why not. Granted, I still think you need to give them a reason to come to Tildes beyond, "it's new, help build the platform."
Tildes just needs to become a platform that maintains a standard of decency. Basically if Tildes upheld a rule of tolerance and didn't tolerate intolerance (thinking about Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance here) then it could be a much better platform than Reddit for discussing these issues.
So I have to admit that after the last venture I went on where I did something somewhat like what you're suggesting within the framework I had been making other threads, I found myself much less inclined to want to do anything like this agian. That's largely because of the frustrating experience I had here. There, another user was upset that they saw a topic that they believed should be limited to ~lgbt, because they weren't subscribed to ~lgbt and were similarly disinterested in that thread, and that resulted in them voicing their annoyance in a way that got under my skin, especially with how they ended up ignoring the reasons I actually stated in the OP and explained in their comment chain in favor of some other user's explanation (which was quite distinct and different rationale).
The most important thing I see in the thread you linked is yourself using the accusation of "posting in bad faith" as an attempt to swing the hammer of an authority you don't really have. Then you do it again, and again, all the while asserting that your opinion on where the thread should be featured is more valid than @tyil's.
This site is about discussion. And it's very new, so discussions about where to put threads is perfectly reasonable. @tyil's viewpoint is just as valid as your own, and your reaction to his criticism (as well as @DtheS's assertion that @tyil is somehow intolerant) was quite inappropriate.
It's not bad to be upset. It is bad to order someone else out of a thread just because you don't like their opinion.
EDIT: Coming back to this comment, I realize it sounds more angry than was perhaps appropriate. For the sake of posterity I'll leave it as-is, but I hope you don't take it too harshly, @BuckeyeSundae. Also note that @DtheS made this reply prior to this edit.
Since you are calling me out on this, I would say that the sentiment expressed by @tyil here:
isn't particularly welcoming. It is true that it doesn't outright call for the admonishment of LGBT people, but it certainly insinuates that talking about LGBT issues in ~talk should not be tolerated.
Coming back to my comment a few minutes later, I realize I may have come off a bit strongly, first of all, so I appreciate your understanding.
Secondly, I really don't read that statement that way. I see it more as a confusion regarding the purpose of the group rather than as a declaration that that particular thread should be kept there.
I get where you're coming from and in retrospect I was pretty harsh on the guy (like, I shouldn't have told him to "get out"). But also note:
I still don't think I was unjustified in suspecting bad faith on his part, but I probably should have held off until I pointed out the most obvious course of action you can take when something doesn't interest you: to move on. It's fair to worry that I was a bit trigger happy on that accusation in this particular exchange. It's not fair to think I had no reason to suspect bad faith. I've said regularly and often that I don't like making that accusation, and I hope that it's clear that I believe that. If someone seems to be proving to act beyond reasonable doubt, and that is a tactics-focused judgment, not a political stance or belief, then I will call them out for seeming to act in bad faith. How else will a standard form?
Ultimately, know this: I'm never posting anything like that in ~talk again. @tyil is going to have their way. Maybe a little of that is my fault in being offended over something they didn't intend. Maybe some of that is actually their fault in how they approached discussion. I mean, how often did that person respond to someone who pointed out the lack of alternative space for general political discussion? It would have been a show of good faith for them to even try to address that. I am overwhelmingly tactics-focused when I look at discussions, not ideological. I think that distinction is crucial to understanding my rage there. My background is in rhetoric and I'm ideologically basically a centrist. I genuinely do not mind where people fall ideologically if they seem willing to engage debate with an open mind.
No one likes talking to walls. That applies everywhere to everyone. @tyil made me feel like they just wanted to rant, not to listen, and that made me feel like engaging them was akin to wall-talking. And because they made me that angry, I will never post any ~lgbt topic in a non ~lgbt place again. I don't want to feel like that again.
Hi, it's me, @tyil, the guy you're referring to. I've read this thread in so far as it exists, but I want to reply to this post specifically to make my viewpoint clear.
No, what I was saying was that LGBT stuff should go into LGBT, because I'm not interested in LGBT stuff every day. Your thread was not the only LGBT related thread in ~talk. And like I said before, if I wanted to talk about that all the time, I'd be in ~lgbt.
I mostly don't care for LGBT discussion every day because I don't think they're suffering as bad as most in that community want me to believe. I know over a dozen people who fit in the LGBT category, and I talk about LGBT issues with them often when I see them. Their biggest issue, generally, is the LGBT community that is perpetually acting like a victim. They're making their lives much harder, generally for personal gratification.
They want to be seen as regular people, and constantly trying to portray them as special humans goes directly against that.
Maybe I misread it, but I also don't know the entire course of the previous thread anymore. I might've just refused out of spite because you're calling my actions to be in bad faith, which is a common argument on Tildes made by people who don't really want to have a discussion. It feels like this is mostly common with people who say something, but can't bring any arguments, so they resort to calling bad faith. It's similar to certain groups just calling everyone a nazi and refusing to enter into discussion, in my opinion.
That said, I probably should've ignored you, or respond to your points, not continue and have it spiral into a bigger shitshow than needed.
This makes it sound like you're going around, keeping track of me to make sure I'm a "good boy", as defined by your personal standards. It's highly toxic behaviour, and doesn't contribute to a healthy discussion, ever.
But assuming you did not have wrong intentions, I made that thread because I grew tired of seeing LGBT stuff every time I visited Tildes, when I made very sure I did not subscribe to ~lgbt. We have no downvoting here. Instead, you're incentivized to comment if you want to say something, so I did. And yes, I do that more often. You might notice I disagree with people often, sometimes even just to start a discussion (though not in this particular case).
What "tactic" would you prefer next time there's a thread that doesn't belong in a certain category?
I was already confirmed to be in bad faith, so I don't think anything I would've done at that time would've made a difference. But there's a clear distinction between the contexts of the thread, and this particular one you're presenting here. LGBT does have an alternative space for discussion, ~lgbt. Politics does not, unless I missed the ~pol creation.
We have filtered tags now anyway, so I can filter out certain topics that I think don't bring any worthwhile discussion (and I've added some tags already for that reason). Let's hope that will solve the issues we have between one another.
Ultimately on any online discussion board there're going to be topics you're interested in and not interested in. Personally, I find commenting on someone's topic just to argue about whether or not it should exist to be rude and off topic. Additionally, when you say something like "I don't want to see topics about X group of people and you shouldn't post about X group," it's hard not to interpret that as "I think X group of people should keep to themselves and not bother me."
You can report it to @Deimos, since he has the power to move topics between groups. Other than that ignore it and move on. If you must discuss it publicly, make a new topic in ~tildes.
That applies to everything and not just groups of people though. I'm not subscribed to ~Sports and if ~Talk were to suddenly get a bunch of topics about Sports I'd have the same issue. Don't assume the worst of people.
You're missing a part of @elf's point, a crucial part, I think.
Which would also be true for that reaction to people who are fatigued by Sports topics showing up outside of ~sports. Yet, if there were a genuine overlap between the two (say, a political discussion about corruption within FIFA), it would still be a bit rude to comment in those sports topics directly to ask "why didn't you post this to ~sports," especially if the OP already explained they wanted to have a better conversation than this other thread that was poorly structured to talk about the political dimensions.
I mean its all about the framing. If I saw a thread in ~talk about a corrupt FIFA official while we had ~sports I would be confused because that clearly belong in sports. But, a thread about corruption with that as an example? Sure. It's all about framing and what the primary topic is.
I really did not want to rehash old ground, so I was deeply dreading something like this response getting us to that point (that dread was most of why I didn't want to say anything at all). I'm glad you didn't really go there though.
This definitely makes it seem like you were just "throwing your view out there" with no real intention of participating in the thread. @elf talked about how people can see that as rude behavior, and I definitely did. It is that perceived rudeness that got us on the wrong foot.
I definitely get having fatigue with a certain topic. I am fatigued when it comes to a lot of those survey-style questions. "What is your favorite best friend's dog" or something. I don't really need to read those threads. I go back and forth between being fatigued on topics that relate to Trump, even occasionally exasperated with people who seem to love focusing on Trump-related stories because of the shock value. So I get this impulse, but at the same time, it's rude to get too far off topic.
And if you read between the lines, even in the initial exchange, it's the willingness to go off-topic for days that had me the most riled.
The order of events makes that not the first thought I would have had. Let me walk you through my emotional journey a bit when seeing that comment thread. Maybe it'll make it more easy for you to see where things went off the deep end for me.
At first, when you commented, I did a double take. "Did I not directly address this concern in the OP? Was it not clear?" So I made the short-and-simple statement and acknowledged to another user that there was grey area between the two communities and I came down on the side of political discussion (which has been housed in ~talk). Thought that'd be fine, so I went about my thing.
Then I come back and there still is conversation going back and forth between you and Panda about how this content should be walled off in some fortress named ~lgbt, because you're bemused about seeing topics that relate to that community outside of that community. Neither of you seemed to wrestle with what I thought was a valid reason for not walling the content off in the fortress. And then @NamelessThirteen comments on a potential other reason, saying that my motivations were "probably" because of this potential reason.
So now I'm thinking, "Okay, another user doesn't seem to get why I chose ~talk besides these two. So I must not have been clear again. Alright. I'll try again. This is getting a little exhausting." But this time shortly after I post that comment, I see you basically accepting that alternative explanation for my alleged motivations. That combined with the silence on the explanations I gave implied that you accepted that explanation instead of mine.
It's that rudeness in not acknowledging my explicitly given explanation that sent me from "okay, this guy's off topic but annoyed," to "okay, this guy's actively avoiding my justification to rile up shit about this topic." And it's that second interpretation that I saw as bad faith. Until that point I did not interpret you to be acting in bad faith. After that point, I absolutely did.
I mean since you mentioned me I'm just going to point out that I said I saw how this could fit into both categories. I said it somewhere here too it's all context and framing when posting these threads. Clearly a topic primarily about ~lgbt belong there, same with ~sports and ~television. I feel like there should be some order and expectation to where content is in the site. But if these things are used for a bigger ~talk discussion then I see how it could belong in that Tilde.
Yep, that's fair. The tone of your comment two initial made me think I wasn't clear, not the content.
But I've derailed this thread about recruiting "minority" voices enough to talk about this exchange. I have become what I loathed.
It's funny how lost you get responding to those damn orange inbox replies, you forget the scope of the thread. Haha.
First off, I see you posted this before I edited my earlier comment. As I say in the edit, I also came off more strongly than I should have.
Secondly, and I'm trying specifically to be more gentle this time, I'd like to ask your purpose in posting this segment:
Perhaps I'm wrong, but that segment reads as if you're trying to get one last jab in at him.
First, I didn't think you were upset with me. I think you were expressing a sentiment similar to a couple of other reactions in that thread (which you probably also read and likely sympathized with).
I'd hope that second section you're inquiring about is pretty straight-forward. I mentioned this all in this first place because that experience, all facets of it, has produced the result that runs opposite to what the OP of this ~thread~ Edit: comment chain appears to want. The entire reason that thread came up is because of my planned course of action to avoid ever repeating that experience.
Essentially, because I believe repetition (in different ways) is good form to help people more easily grapple with the main point, you should read those two lines as repetition of the earlier parent comment here:
Edit: apparently I can't strikethrough.
Ah, okay. Hard to tell over text, and all that.
Gotcha. Fair enough, I'd say. I really am sorry you had such a negative experience in that thread you referenced.
Hey you didn't cause it and it's clearly not stopping me from posting discussion topics I'm interested in. At least, so long as they don't seem likely to inspire that sort of "get this to a different place that I won't see" reaction. Nothing to apologize for, in my book.
And really, I wouldn't have even brought it up but-for the suggestion to do something similar what I had already done. So many of these types of exchanges get suffered in silence, which is a lot of why addressing them is so hard for most online communities. I get that. How do we talk about these emotional skeletons in our closet without making it seem like we want to revisit old wounds just to fight them all over again? My entire point here is that I don't want to fight like that again. It's unpleasant. Yet so often it's hard to resist the urge just by talking about it. (And that is why my personal impulse is to not talk about it.)
Yikes! That thread did not go well. Although, despite this, it does show part of the problem I am trying to allude to. Since ~lgbt exists, intolerant users can now point to that tilde and say, "No, you belong over there, get out of our space." Which causes the 'ghetto-ization' of the website.
Granted, that doesn't mean we shouldn't have an lgbt tilde. In fact, if there is enough demand for it, it is essential that it does exist. I'm just saying that we shouldn't think of a tilde as a 'walled fortress,' there should be some overlap between communities and we should encourage that overlap to happen.
This is super important.
Every single thing about LGBT doesn't have to go in ~lgbt. It's essential that it doesn't.
Similarly, not every single thing about computers should be in ~comp and not everything about gaming in ~games. Life is a tapestry that touches on a lot of things. There are lgbt issues in gaming and game issues in comp sci, and politics relates to everything...
I think it's really important that we make sure our taxonomies are descriptive and not prescriptive.
Uhh, that last sentence needs to get into the docs asap
I don't really think diversity for its own sake is a good idea. Like @mkida said, the important thing is diverse viewpoints, not diverse people.
That is, of course, not to imply that I dislike diversity. I just don't care about it one way or the other.
But that's kind if the key point about diversity. Diverse people are more likely to have diverse opinions and experiences. I agree that to go all in and strive for diversity purely for the sake of it seems a little reckless, but pursuing diverse people is likely an effective means of getting people with diverse opinions.
Diverse people foster diverse viewpoints and are an innoculation against intolerant viewpoints.
Let's take an example from a recent Reddit discussion I had in foodforthought.
This guy posts that rap music and 70% single motherhood are what's keeping black people in the US oppressed. I did call him an ignorant twat, which wasn't nice, but also pointed out that there is a long history of excluding black people from opportunity. Red Lining happened until the 60s and in some ways still happens, it's just more sophisticated. The war on drugs imprisons black men at disproportionate rates, which makes them less eligible fathers. There are external influences, is what I'm getting at.
My post was downvoted, his was upvoted, and someone chimed in that Asian people couldn't live in white neighborhoods briefly.
If there were a more diverse readership, the thread would have gone completely differently.
I think that's a very unwise assumption.
Well you know what they say about opinions.
If you want more "diverse" and "minority" views you can't only limit it woman and sexual orientation. You'll have to also advocate for a more diverse political spectrum too then right? As of now the majority of ~ is Left-Leaning. So logically we should also try to welcome and recruit more Centrists and Right leaning folks too right?
I hate echo chambers too but you shouldn't discriminate people based solely off their skin color. Just because someone is heterosexual and white doesn't make them any less valuable of a user than a minority. Reddit's echo chamber issue doesn't only stem from the issues you've mentioned.
I was in that thread you're referring to and nobody said anything remotely like that. All some users said was topics pertaining to LGBT belongs on LGBT, as do topics of tech belong to tech. Obviously there are some exceptions to this and once the voting mechanics get tweaked a bit better I'm sure it'll sort itself out better.
Why not specifically target users who are interested in high quality discussion?
Oh, thanks for saying that.
Quite often in these days, I get the feeling that I should be ashamed to be "white cis het" because even if you are not an homophobic asshole, just because you belong to that group, people automatically assume that you are.
I did not choose to be born like I am and yes, I've been lucky I suppose.
But it's not like my life is just margarita on the beach and 365 days of holidays because of that. I'm sorry and probably will get some shit for this but I consider those kind of users on par with the worst harass trolls out there, no matter their minority. And unfortunately they're quite a lot of the lgbt community online belong to that group.
"Us vs Them" is never a justifiable approach. No matter if you're in the part that is a minority.
When I read something like this, it used to really resonate with me. And I could never really wrap my mind around how to feel about all of this. Someone explained the following to me, and it made a lot of things click into place.
Everyone experiences hardships, whether you're white, Hispanic, gay, female, etc. But when you're a straight, white male, you almost never experience hardships because of those identities. And now, perhaps increasingly so, your opinion is dismissed because you've a male or your hardships are belittled because you're straight. You're experiencing a taste of what it's like to be discriminated against for a fundamental aspect of you that you can't change. Whenever I feel that way, I try to use it as a reminder that almost everyone experiences that feeling sometimes, and I'm lucky to not have to feel it more.
Yes I see, and honestly more than once I can't fail to think that the most vocal/extremist representative of those minorities actually do more harm than good because they turn people like me that basically have nothing against them and instead see the problem, experience their discrimination in a way that doesn't really bring me closer to them.
it's the same principle that applies when a worker class is on strike. How often you hear "Oh well, those flight operators really are showing those bad companies that they're important and deserve respect along with better benefits" and how often "For god sake, I'm stuck here since 12 hours ago now and I just had three days off work to visit my [insert relatives]"?
The aggression path is never, never going to bring people closer to your cause.
When I rationalise about it, I tell myself that I'm friend with plenty of people in the LGBT world and my partner as well is bi, so it's not like they're all a bunch of pricks. But when you get harassed, even if you are not in a minority, it's hard to be that calm.
Part of my intolerance against this behaviour is definitely due to my background. As an italian, the "fascism" ideology (not political but societal) is something that is being teached as a very black spot on our history and this behaviour is a prime example unfortunately.
We often overlook the origin to just remember the political and governing form of fascism but the basic origin is quite more scary and widespread today than it was 60 years ago.
So just because other people experience hardships that makes it okay for them to dismiss the opinions and thoughts of others who haven't? Just because white cis blah blah people haven't experienced hardships doesn't mean they should be dismissed. Two wrongs don''t make a right especially if that's invoking punishment on a group that had nothing to do with the repression and now will want to distance themselves from your cause.
I didn't say that, nor do I believe it. Please don't put words in my mouth.
That doesn't mean they can't experience hardships. Everyone period experiences hardships. It's not a contest of who suffers more. The suffering of someone else doesn't invalidate the suffering of others. I really don't like this mindset.
I agree. If you go back and read the sentence before the one you quoted, you'll see that I acknowledge that everyone experiences hardships. I was trying to point out a shared experience--the disrespect that straight, white men are experiencing now is similar to that of what minority groups have dealt with for decades or centuries. At the ene of the day, all these forms of disrespect and discrimination are harmful and damaging to discourse. My hope is that by pointing out a shared experience, it would be easier to garner sympathy which would make for a more understanding dialogue.
I think it's racist and bigoted to actively try to recruit people to participate based off of demographics like this, no matter how well-intentioned.
But, just for laughs, what's your ideal mixture? What sort of general quota would be good enough on a site-wide demographic survey? What percentage of bi people, what percentage of latina, what percentage of women, what percentage of plumbers or homemakers or businessmen or IT, what percentage of english speakers, what percentage of communists or fascists or libertarians or catholic theocrats? When would it be good enough that we can stop worrying about all this crap and just enjoy the company of the people who are here?
That is a fair argument. I suppose I should say that it is not inherently bigoted to have some concern about demographics - but something about the way these posts (and there have been a lot of them) about wanting more gay, more trans people, more women, more non-white people, etc. etc. strikes me as bigoted. I've even seen posts saying there are too many conservatives on here, and we need more radical fringe leftists, which strikes me as wrong on at least a couple of different levels.
Like, with the political demographic thing, or even a religious demographic thing, I could see that being meaningful to have at least some diversity of thought present on those fields. But if I am 3rd generation vietnamese-american, and my friend is 4th generation german-american, how is our ancestry going to play any significant role in how we use tildes, what content we contribute, what opinions we express except in a very narrow range of race relation discussions (which probably will never happen on here because everyone is so fucking weird about race anyway these days)?
I don't think we should have a quota, but if we had to then your proposal is far less offensive or absurd than trying to have equal representation of all demographics - or worse, a progressive representation, where whatever is a majority in non-tildes society should become a minority and vice versa. It all reeks of racializing and judging people by their chromosomes and skin pigment and what they do in their bedrooms, rather than the content of their character.
I'm not sure you're using the terms "racist" and "bigoted" fairly.
Bigoted: having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others
Racist: showing or feeling discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or believing that a particular race is superior to another
It seems that the OP is doing the opposite of both of these.
I don't think you know what racist and bigoted means, frankly.
What you've proposed is literally discrimination based on immutable attributes that people have been born with.
I think you're using the word "discrimination" unfairly.
Discrimination: the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
While the second half of the definition is obviously relevant, I don't think the first half is. Recruitment of diverse people for the purpose of inclusion is equitable, not unjust.
Hurr Durr diversity is the real racism, amiright?
Don't think this is beneficial to the conversation or in line with the values of tildes.
That seems a bit needlessly inflammatory. Instead of mocking @Mumberthrax, why not argue your own point?
What is there to argue? I'm not advocating denying admission to white people. I'm advocating an intentional recruitment process to try and create a diverse community. @Mumberthrax thinks this is some discrimination against white people. That is not a point that a serious, thinking individual would arrive at.
I think his point is that arbitrarily shooting for diversity means giving preferential treatment to people based on their demographics. Going to an all-woman forum to advertise because you want women, for example, is exclusionary in a way that going to a forum at random is not. In the latter, you're targeting them based on gender.
It's not very cool of you, also, to assert that he's not being serious or thoughtful, as if anyone who disagrees with you automatically must be trolling.
A forum, at random, that is 80% men.
Can we please not? I left reddit for a reason and I'd appreciate it if people would stop trying to make this reddit 2.0.
As for the idea, I don't mind if minorities want to join. This is an anonymous internet forum. I frankly don't give a fuck about your skin color, sexual preferences, ethnic background etc. All I care about is your ability to come provide interesting content and talk whithout being a jerk. Frankly, I think that "recruiting" based on physical characteristics is dumb for an internet forum. I care far more about diversity of ideas.
I would really, really prefer not to have this happen. A big draw to Tildes for me was to get away from the echo chamber communities on Reddit like TwoX (btw, I am a woman). If it were to happen organically over several years, I mean whatever, but to actively recruit puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's extremely pandering. If we do that then Tildes will be as bad of an echo chamber as some subreddits have become. Let's not start that kind of bs before Tildes goes public.
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. It seems that tildes has been most successful in attracting LGBT users as far as underrepresented groups go. I think we are in dire need of female voices, and having women here early could really help this community flourish.
Personally, I don't care if the voice is male or female as long as they have something worth saying. What matters is the quality. I think we should be cautious when deciding to listen to someone purely based on their race, sex, etc. Obviously it's vital when making major decisions to have large amounts of diversity, but if I'm asking a question about books or recent news, I want who is most informed - no matter who that may be.
to preface: i basically tick most of the boxes that certain crowds would call privileged.
That being said I've been reading a bit more into why diversity could be a good thing, and trying to understand it more (because I started out with a viewpoint much like yours, I think—not a bad viewpoint at all!). I think it might be easiest to respond directly to things you've said; I don't want to assume or misinterpret anything. so:
I think this is definitely something worth striving for, but let's compare it to something like art. You could make this argument for rock music (don't care if it's a female or male lead singer), but you could diversify from there into different genres, different art forms even, or blending it with others (like musicals/operas). Was the starting point (rock music) high in quality? Sure! It was good, pleasant, etc. But adding other genres, or blending art-barriers gives us more. In what way? Hard to say in the metaphor, but I think it ends up being a different voice, highlighting different issues or experiences (e.g. someone who points out set design in a musical, which you don't really know because you've only listened to rock; or irl: someone who talks about family dynamics because they come from a culture where the assumptions there lie differently). Which ties in to:
Again, very noble, and I think that is high on our priority list collectively here at tildes—or at least I hope so—because we want discussions that lead somewhere, not just a rehash of old discussions where you could literally copy-paste comments from old threads. And I think the argument is much the same: it could be that either someone from another background than you (or the general norm) has a different focus, or it could be that they bring in completely unconsidered things.
I think 'diversity' gets a bad rep because it's associated with loud & angry voices, because our algorithms are made to make those rise to the top. Those voices that are only saying "x is offensive to me and you should burn in hell for thinking/doing it". I think in a better, more forgiving/charitable, diverse group, it could lead to a broadening of viewpoints, sharing of experiences, and leave all parties wiser & happier at the end.
I don't think I'm advocating for inviting people "purely based on their race, sex, etc." That could obviously be unproductive if the wrong people are chosen. I think underrepresented people should be recruited so that we have unique perspectives on more topics.
I think it's especially important on more subjective things because our opinions on these sorts of topics, like music and TV shows and books, are really shaped by our personal experiences. The average experience of a white woman or black man or a queer person are all different in some ways.
And I'm 100% for recruiting people based on their differing opinions. Diversity of ideology is the most important thing for me! I want to hear what other women think, or what a minority man believes - but I want them to be knowledgeable on the topic. But when it comes to an anonymous forum, unless someone specifies their sex or orientation no one knows. I'm wanting intellectual diversity, not diversity purely based on outward appearance that I will never know unless told. I'm definitely all for more unique perspectives though!
The nice thing is that there are 7 billion + people out there, so there are people with expert knowledge from all sorts of identities. It's definitely possible to recruit diversely and selectively. What's also great is that you don't need to know someone's identity for that indentity to influence a conversation. I don't think people often consciously think all of their thoughts in the lense of their identity. They do it subconsciously.
Heh, do I spot a single sentence that's sexist and racist by someone promoting "diversity" again? How unsurprising. If you want to be a "welcoming environment" to anyone, not just minorities, you could start with improving the way you describe other groups and people.
I'd also consider the reason why some groups are considered "minorities", it's because they're a minority compared to the larger group. You cannot have minorities represented equally in numbers compared to the larger group, that's the point of them being a minority. Trying to achieve this regardless is always done by either bullying the larger group away, or punishing them for being born in that group by disallowing them to achieve certain things (like joining Tildes). I don't agree with either of these points.
As far as I'm aware, nobody is actively stopping any specific group from joining Tildes. You have invites just like the rest of us. If you care so much about "being diverse", step up and throw your invites into those communities. I'm not going to invite random people just because they say they're diverse on the Internet. I'd rather spend them on people I know that can improve Tildes as a community, regardless of their skin color or income or number of penises attached to their body at the present time.
Why is it that these threads asking for diversity so often feel like they're saying "there's too many white and straight people"? Now I feel unwelcome!
I'm all for diversity if it's organic, but I'm not going to go out of my way to set quotas. If we want to stop people from seeing color we have to stop seeking it out.
I think diversity would be a good thing for all parties involved. Hearing differing opinions, views, stories, and everything like that could really help the site grow, and continue to grow into a wonderful place for people to discuss any and everything.
What's more, before we get too deep in the weeds of culture wars not worth fighting, I would affirm that part of this diversity that is a good thing is ideological diversity too. We benefit from meaningful, civil disagreement, and background forms part of that backdrop. Ideological differences do too.
I honestly didn't even think about it that way, totally agreed. Good point.
I'd like to see idealogical diversity too. Having a bunch of people who all view the world the same way (despite outward physical differences) is frankly kind of boring. In particular I'd like to see more women, older people, political independents and conservatives, and non-North Americans on here. It seems like right now 90% of the people here are 18-35 y/o liberal male gamers who live in the US or Canada.
So this is pretty ironic, considering that I am 18-35 y/o, liberal, male, a gamer, and live in the US near Canada (a double whammy!), but I saw that demographics readout the other day and you can make the case that we are separately 90% each of those things (or close), but the statistical cross section of people who are all of those things is a lot smaller.
But I hear you. More people outside the beltway, as it were. That'd be nice. If we have our shit together as a good place for discussions to happen, I'm pretty sure it can happen too.
To be honest, I sign up tildes to listen to people talking about movies, music, news, science, sports and tech. I don't expect gay people talking about gays or something like that.
I am not against "minority" people, but I think it's better to categorize people by content of interest, rather than the quantity, sex or sex orientation.
I agree. I think inviting people solely based on minority status is an awful idea. I personally just don't care about that stuff. If you like The Dave Matthews Band and RPG games we're practically best friends I couldn't care less what your ethnic background or sexual preference is.
I never understood why we want to treat everyone equally and then lump everyone into buckets to treat them unequally. I think we have a number of diverse opinions (we have a ~lgbt) and by giving out more invites we will inherently grow a more diverse populace.
Trying to meet quotas will just make us no better than the other sites like Reddit.
I really do understand your point of view and I think it's perfectly reasonable, and perhaps helpful, for you to throw your invites at various minority subreddits if that's what you feel is best. I just ask that you try to reciprocate and understand the feelings of many others on the site.
I can only speak for myself when I say this, but I left reddit due to a lack of intellectual diversity and an overabundance of echo chambers. I dont think many people would argue that reddit is lacking in physical diversity. Some of the largest subs on the site are dedicated to women and minorities (TwoX, LGBT, BPT, WholesomeBPT). However, it is largely lacking in ideological diversity. Many people on reddit are extremely left leaning with a tendency to downvote, belittle, mock, and joke about any idea that doesn't conform to their ideology. I'm sure a lot of people feel similar and dont want another reddit where ideas cant flourish because they dont conform to the overall worldview of the userbase. The only way to create that environment is to focus less on physical diversity (while still ensuring that minorities are welcomed with open arms and treated with respect of course) and creating an environment where ideological diversity can thrive.
Porque no los dos?
Put another way: I think visibility of a community should not be confused with how represented that community is in the broader make up of the parent community. Reddit might have large subs dedicated to women and minorities, but it also has large subs dedicated to different ideological points of view, and the dirty little trick they used with "defaults" for people who signed up inflated all those associated communities' subscriber counts. And, frustratingly, reddit recently retired how they displayed subreddit traffic stats after years of failure to integrate mobile users into those monthly-tallied summaries, so it isn't like we can really get at that information anymore.
My point is, the most recent survey I've seen that tries to get at the demographics of the "typical redditor" shows that the most recent population is pretty close to the facebook population except (1) younger (by a lot), (2) noticeably more male, (3) quite a bit poorer, and (4) quite a bit more educated. I would add a (5th) trait to that mix, even though it was really explicitly covered: into the "nerdier" things such as games, anime, excruciatingly detailed discussions about obscure Stars Wars lore, etc. That is NOT to say that the entire population is one way or another, just that the overall population is a little bit less diverse than the nation as a whole.
But these subs frequently make it to the front page so subscriber counts are irrelevant. Someone has to be upvoting these posts and I highly doubt it's anyone who harbors any ill will towards minorities. I dont care about subscriber numbers or the minutiae of the demographic makeup of reddit. I think the talk of reddit demographic issues is distracting from my main point. Reddit, as a whole, isn't openly hostile towards women or minority groups. But it is hostile towards dissenting opinions. Maybe tildes as a site should work on the diversity of ideas bit too.
Yeah I think that point is distinct and I'm sorry for making it seem like I wasn't sympathetic toward it (because I am).
I think the main pressure with reddit is that all content has to be FAST to rise, not inclusive in any meaningful sense. But another user in another thread (I think @Jenn) commented about how you need to have a community seeming to move to keep users interested and engaged, so you can't have things at a snail's pace either. I would think there has to be a balance that allows for people to come for meaningful content, a mental break for some fast/less thought-intense content, and then go back to something meaningful again.
No worries, not trying to point fingers and say you weren't. I just didnt wanna get caught up on a hill I wasnt prepared to die on as I couldn't less if everyone on the site was some sort of minority as long as I can have constructive conversations like this one. Thats all I was trying to say.
I see this as a major issue with reddits content. It's typically anything that is quick and easy to digest without much substance. Oftentimes that type of content is low brow, and as you mentioned, not inclusive. I would be all for more diverse topics with more substance geared towards minorities on tildes. As long as theres time to discuss things and no one is being hostile towards anyone. But as it is on reddit right now, theres no time to discuss topics when they're only relevant for a short time. With the focus towards more content at a quicker pace anything that isnt posted within the first 2 hours or so tends to get pushed to the bottom and people do their talking with the voting system instead which leaves one highly rated comment and a bunch of other comments below it agreeing in various ways which isnt conducive to an intellectually diverse ecosystem.
This seems to be the issue. Finding a middle ground between bringing in content at a pace that lets users discuss things for an adequate amount of time but still bringing in content quickly enough for things to not get redundant and stale.
Can you explain, then, why having diversity in and of itself would make a community better?
Just for the simple fact that diversity can bring more opinions and experiences to the table than we would otherwise have. If we don't have that diversity, it leaves us with blind spots.
As I say to someone above, that's a pretty huge assumption on your part. Just because someone is a different race than me, for example, doesn't necessarily mean their life is hugely different in any meaningful way.
Not in first-world countries, anyway.
People are always going to be limited in their ability to observe and understand the world, if you grow up in one country you may never come to understand what it means to live another country. Diversity helps bring these different points of view together so we can better see where our blind spots and biases lie. In scientific terms you could compare it to the notion of pluridisciplinality, or bringing in other people with different perspectives to look for possible confounds in your research.
I have to admit the way this went made me go "well, maybe Tildes isn't the answer"
But
There's still time.
Would you honestly decide to leave a community simply because a racial quota isn't filled to your satisfaction?
Alright, this thread certainly isn't getting better, and I'm not really interested in having to watch it continue to deteriorate for days. So I'm locking it. I'll post a daily discussion later to discuss me starting to take some moderation actions like this.
I have to say that the only reason I saw this discussion at all was because another user linked me to it. And truly, I kind of wish I still hadn't seen it.
But since I am doing the wait and see thing on whether ~Tildes will develop into a place I want to be, it's interesting to see the consensus on this thread.
I see a lot of people taking a US political left stance. I see a lot of people taking a US political right stance. I see a lot of people saying echo chamber. All of this makes me say "..."
I suppose I count as a minority. I am female. I am not 100% white. I come from a place where there is no "majority" race or culture, unless you wanted to put all "mixed" people in the same category. (This would be entirely rejected by the people involved though.)
So I end up taking the OP question in the literal sense of the word diverse. Yes. I want to talk about all sorts of things. With all sorts of people. Politely, understanding that polite may look different to different people.
The person who invited me is very, very different from me across all spectrums. The people I am considering inviting are also very different. I think the one commonality is that we all like to express ideas through text, and enjoy thoughtful response.
I don't really get responses to many of my non ~creative posts. So I don't post much outside ~ceative unless someone links me. I don't know if that will be viewed as a problem with me, a lack of diversity in ideas, a misunderstanding of culture or what all else.
To the people posting in this topic:
Some of you seem to be equating "diversity" with "left wing echo chamber." I know the people who are big on diversity and inclusiveness are usually left wing, but just because you associate those two things together doesn't mean one implies the other. I'm part of some subreddits that some of you might call left wing echo chambers that are also whiter and maler than the standard reddit demographics. And, as far as I know, there's no gender or race or class or sexuality that isn't ideologically diverse.
I don't think anyone in this thread is conflating those two, actually.
I'm conflicted on this.
I couldn't care less about any kind of diversity other than the ideas people put forth.
On one hand, I think it's quite reasonable that a diversity of identities will lead to a diversity of views, since after all, most people aren't thinking in a vacuum of logic but rather in whatever environmental circumstances they come from.
On the other, practically, I doubt it will, since the 'white middle class' ideas prevalent on Reddit (and I'd argue, to a lesser extent but quite clearly on Tildes) are not especially varying from the ones you'd get on twox or lgbt.
I guess it depends on just how wrapped up in race or their gender or sexual orientation etc. etc. someone is. We decided in my country somewhere around after the 1940s that racial identitarianism is a dangerous thing.
I’m ignorant when it comes minority issues, and am consequently unsure whether to support such a move, though I find its intent admirable and would like to learn more. Are there any academic or otherwise persuasive studies or findings that indicate that such a move would be likely to have the desired effect here on ~? I can see making the move on the merits of viewpoint diversity alone, and I’m sure such voices would be held to the same standards as everyone else, so again, no objection here, just hoping to learn.
Also, is it really the case that ~ is currently predominantly “straight white middle class male” (though this aptly describes yours truly, mostly ;) or likely to become so over time?
Yes, there are a lot of studies about the positive effects of diversity on organizations. You should fire up Google scholar if you're interested.
Yeah, it's almost entirely male, mostly white, and mostly straight. That describes me too fwiw, but I see value in pursuing diversity.
Organizations yes, community forums no. Google scholar returns no relevant results for "diversity community forums" - hence why I asked.
Why would a community forum be different?
Also: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=diversity+online+discussion&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
A community forum is inherently different than an organization like a business, club, or government, all of which exist to accomplish defined goals that, to my knowledge, don't include high-quality discussion for its own sake.
Thanks for the improved search query. None of the results in the first page are applicable, and the closest in topic or theme among those were all from 2003/2004 and talked about the potential of community on the internet. As we're well beyond that point now, I filtered to 2014 and later, and in the first few pages of results, this is the only applicable one:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444817714790
Which indicates that context collapse, which occurs when users are aware of a diverse audience for their posts/comments, is positively correlated with both sharing and reading news. Possible conclusions one might draw are that a community should promote context collapse by increasing diversity of viewpoints, and should avoid creating minority-focused groups/sub-communities where context collapse is mediated or eliminated all together - if the goal is to increase the sharing and reading of news, which is admittedly a limited goal.
So far my takeaway is that there's not enough academic insight to support this move. Nor is there any that would indicate opposition is warranted, except perhaps (a very slim, unreliable perhaps) that it's warranted to oppose to identity-focused groups.
On the subject of support vs opposition, I'll again emphasize that I choose neither at this junction, instead choosing to stand aside, neither supporting nor opposing, while encouraging additional research, discover, and discussion. One consideration for research is that specific, measurable goals should be set for such inclusion, for example:
So we need a starting point, a goal, and a way to say whether it's working if we do it.
Do you have any peer reviewed studies to back this up?
The quote you're referencing makes sense. A forum has no goals or quotas to meet, just discussion for the sake of discussion. I don't think we need peer reviewed studies to prove that.
It's a common tactic on Reddit to sideline discussion by demanding sources, without doing any of the legwork one's self. I would be sad to see that come to Tildes too.
If you're making a the assertion that I've attempted to sideline this discussion by admitting my own ignorance and asking for information so that I can be better informed, despite the fact that I've gone out of my way to be clear that I don't oppose your idea, I really wish you'd just come out and just say so.
As it is, this comes off very much backhanded, and I don't appreciate it at all.
No, there's a dearth of studies in this area, as highlighted by our present exchange.
There are also a dearth of studies showing flossing your teeth is beneficial. Are you going to stop doing that?
Joke's on you, I already don't floss, just ask my dentist!
Kidding aside, I've never thought about it before, and a quick search does indeed indicate that self-flossing is ineffective. I probably won't stop, because food in-between my teeth is annoying.
That said, I don't really understand the comparison here and I'm confused, as by introducing a situation where evidence-based studies are used to suggest that a behavior should be discontinued, you appear to be making the argument (though I'm unclear on your motivations for introducing this flossing line of argument) that we should choose our behaviors / systems regardless of the available evidence.
Yeah, there was a demographic survey done a few days ago. Something like 80% of tildes is straight cis men (though I can't remember if it touched on race or class at all).
Not quite. Strictly speaking, that survey showed that:
87% of respondents are male.
96% of respondents are cisgender.
77% of respondents are heterosexual.
This means the maximum possible portion of straight cis men is 77%. At the other end, the minimum possible portion of straight cis men is about 64%. So, straight cis men make up between 64% and 77% of the population of people who responded to the survey.
Which is still a significant majority.
Ah, thanks for the correction lol, I was going off the top of my head there. Yeah, it's still a lot.
@Deimorz - when you have a chance, could you weigh in here? I think Tildes is great and would love to see it grow, especially in an intentional way. Do you think creating a more diverse space would foster the kind of Tildes you want this website to be?
Yep—I wasn't around last night while this thread was mostly active, so I've just been reading through it now and was going to reply. It's a bit of a tough topic, because (as this thread demonstrates a bit) people tend to treat the whole topic as somewhat controversial, even though I really don't think it should be.
My general feeling is that there's a distinction between specifically recruiting particular demographics and just being welcoming, and you have to be a bit careful with it or you might end up with different effects than you're hoping for. I think it's easiest to explain this way: I've had a lot of women send me messages saying that they're interested in Tildes because other platforms have been allowed to become environments where people will just casually be hostile towards them. The key aspect is that their interest isn't based on the site being framed as something like "a community for women", and something like that probably wouldn't be what they want. They're interested in a general site that they won't feel like they're being pushed out of, not one that's specifically "for" them, if that makes sense.
And I think that's how we're going to end up with the best result: as a site where minority voices come of their own accord because they feel like it's a place they're comfortable participating. Don't get me wrong—some recruiting can help get us to that point by bringing in people that will help create that kind of environment, but I think it needs to be done carefully. Like I mentioned, you'll get a very different group of people if it's framed as "a community for women" vs. "a community for everyone (except assholes)".
I'm not sure that I explained that very well, but hopefully it helps describe my general mindset a bit.
I think that's a good starting point. I'd just point out that Reddit is"welcoming to all" but has a big racist and misogynist problem. Part of the problem with many online platforms is that they didn't intentionally develop their user base. Tildes has the opportunity to correct that, especially now while the community is forming its norms. Look no further than some of the really cringey comments here for why we need more diverse voices.
I like the idea of Tildes being for everyone, but if you're only recruiting from places that are 70 - 90% white men, it's kind of a hollow assertion, right?
Sure, but that problem is because they don't take any action to stop racists and misogynists, not because they were welcoming to all.
I'm recruiting from places that I have a personal connection and some name-recognition with. I can't go sign up for random women's forums and post Tildes there, that's just spamming. If you (or any others) have a personal connection with a community and you'd like to introduce Tildes to them and see if they're interested, please feel free. They can email me for invites, or I can give you codes to invite them on your own.
Exactly what ratio of white/minority and men/women would convince you that it isn't a hollow assertion?
I think making an effort to reach out to other communities that come from different backgrounds than us would convince me it isn't a hollow assertion.
I do believe it's unfortunate that there's so much disagreement on this matter, but in the end I hope it's clear that all of us are pursuing the same goal. I replied above to your derogatory reply to another user, but I think it needs to be made clear that those of us (myself included) that don't believe diversity is necessarily important aren't out to sabotage Tildes. We want fun, insightful, and productive discussions, just like you. We just disagree on how to go about getting them.
So I implore you to react to our points with less derision.
I dunno, at what ratio do I stop seeing the kind of responses I'm seeing in this thread?
Roughly that ratio.
So wouldn't it also satisfy your requirements if we get a bunch of people like yourself? I assume you fit into the white/male majority here, so a bunch of like-minded white males would also fulfill that requirement.
I know this may seem pedantic, but my position isn't the one that seems to want specific numbers.
I'm totally white and male, but also got told in this thread that I'm totally just exaggerating the hardships of being gay.
So, yeah, a few more people like me here probably wouldn't hurt.
But also, it's really weird to me that you think this is about sides, or that I want specific numbers. I don't want numbers, I want results. Outreach is a way to the results, but you could have a forum of nothing but minorities and I'd still be unhappy with it, I just would have a different suggestion for how to fix it.
But the number of posts on display in this thread that are either hostile or microagressions towards marginalised people is staggering for a community that ostensibly wants to be inclusive.
So yeah, until threads like this stop being this toxic, I do think a little outreach to marginalised folks wouldn't hurt.
Can you provide any examples? Because I genuinely haven't seen a single comment that is hostile toward minorities.
Then I really can't help you there, mate. If you see nothing here that would make someone in a marginalised community think "hmmm, maybe this isn't a place I want to spend my time", there's really not much more that can be said.