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  • Showing only topics in ~tildes with the tag "politics". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. How can I unsubscribe from the politics tag?

      I came to Tildes to get away from the endless political talk of reddit. Is there any way to unsubscribe from the political threads here? Most of them seem to be posted in ~misc, but there's other...

      I came to Tildes to get away from the endless political talk of reddit. Is there any way to unsubscribe from the political threads here? Most of them seem to be posted in ~misc, but there's other content there too.

      10 votes
    2. Tildes and identity politics

      As a new Tildes user, one of the biggest cultural differences I've noticed between Tildes and Reddit is the lack of identity-driven argumentative discussion. Instead, discussion is driven by...

      As a new Tildes user, one of the biggest cultural differences I've noticed between Tildes and Reddit is the lack of identity-driven argumentative discussion. Instead, discussion is driven by interests, knowledge seeking, and personal expression.

      Identity politics is an umbrella term
      that encompasses identity groups both laudable and vitriolic. For example, it includes civil rights, gay rights, disability activism, fat acceptance, white supremacy, and nationalism. (wiki)

      It's my opinion that you can't have a rational, cooperative discussion until you set aside identity groups, and I like this aspect of the Tildes culture. I don't want to jinx it, but I believe the lack of identity politics is what people mean when they say they enjoy the high quality, non-divisive discourse here.

      It's worth noting my subs of choice on Reddit were /r/samharris and /r/stupidpol. The former encouraged objective, rational discussion. The latter had lots of news that cut though the identity politics of the mainstream (though with a Marxist bent).

      I would love to hear the thoughts of the older Tildes users before the most recent Reddit exodus (from where I come).

      34 votes
    3. Should we use a megathread for US election news as we get closer to Nov 3?

      I was thinking about how much the quantity of election news is likely to increase as we get closer to Nov 3. And more specifically the likelihood that this election will not be clear cut, will be...

      I was thinking about how much the quantity of election news is likely to increase as we get closer to Nov 3. And more specifically the likelihood that this election will not be clear cut, will be contested, lawsuits filed, etc in the days and weeks after Nov 3.

      With that in mind, do we want to proactively put up a weekly (maybe daily for the actual week of) megathread to consolidate some of it?

      18 votes
    4. The case for an "Escalation" label for political threads

      This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label. As many users identified in that topic, political...

      This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label.

      As many users identified in that topic, political discussion on Tildes has the potential to become very heated, very quickly, and often the standards of discussion on these topics is below what we expect elsewhere on Tildes. In that thread, many suggestions were offered in order to remedy the situation, including banning overt political content entirely, more liberal moderation by @Deimos, more liberal usage by the community of labels, addition of new labels, and more. All of these solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but I want to talk about the one I believe would be the most effective and least disruptive to the site as is: addition of new labels.

      Right now, there are two main tags that might be used on a comment that is seen as falling short of Tildes's standards: noise and malice. Users seem to have some variation in how they interpret how each tag should be used, but it seems like there is at least some agreement on the 'noise' tag being used for comments that are clearly low effort. Users seem to have more hesitation to use the 'Malice' tag, however. While it is sometimes clear when a comment is hostile or malicious, this is not always the case. Argumentative is not always hostile, and sometimes topics are naturally contentious. One takeaway from that thread (for me) is that labeling something as malice confers a judgement on intent, and users are not always comfortable doing this as it can be difficult to tell if someone truly meant to be malicious. But in political threads, the intent matters less than the effect a comment has in a discussion. Someone can not be acting maliciously, but still be clearly making the situation worse. This is the point of an 'Escalation' label.

      An "Escalation" label should be applied to comments that have made the situation worse.

      Furthermore, an "Escalation" label would not only affect the sorting of a comment or thread, but has the potential to halt the discussion if there is too much escalation in a short amount of time. Here is what I envision:

      Define the heat of a comment (as in, "ohhh this conversation is getting heated") as follows:

      H = k*n ∑ Ni / di

      where k is a tuning constant, n is the number of escalation tags given to the comment in question, and the sum ranges over the comment's direct ancestors and descendants in the thread with Ni being the number of "Escalation" labels given to the other comment and di is the distance from the current comment to that other comment. Here is an example thread:

      .
      ├── A
      ├── C0
      │   └── C1 (N=1)
      │      └── C2 (N=0)
      │          └── C3 (N=2)
      │               └── C4 (N=1)
      └── B0
          └── B1
      

      The heat of comment C3 would then be

      H = k*2 (1/2 + 1) = 3k

      Finally, define the heat H(T) of a thread T to be the sum of the heats of its comments. My proposal is that if the heat of a given thread surpasses some threshold value Hc, replies are locked in that thread only. This essentially shuts down extremely heated conversations before they get out of control and cause an entire topic to be locked.

      The above definition can obviously be modified, but it has a few good properties that I think should be retained.

      1. It takes into account the relative positions of comments. A thread that is 20 comments long that has a comment with 1 "Escalation" at the beginning, midpoint, and end is probably a better and more controlled situation than a thread with 3 "Escalation" labels in a row.
      2. One extremely heated comment (n is large) that generates many okay or slightly heated replies (n~1) is oftentimes just as bad as many comments that each escalate a bit (a long chain of comments, each with n~1).
      3. It considers a the whole thread as opposed to on a comment by comment basis. If there is only one person in a thread posting heated comments, even if the replies are measured and reasonable, there is a good chance that thread is not producing a worthwhile discussion. If that one problem user stays problematic too long, eventually the heat of the thread will surpass the threshold and the chain will be locked.

      I am sure there are disadvantages that I am not thinking of right now, but I truly think a system like this could be beneficial if implemented and used by Tildes. Furthermore, if two people are genuinely interested in the discussion and want it to continue, it is in their interest to avoid posting comments that get generate a high heat score so that the thread doesn't become locked. If they are not interested and keep escalating anyway, that conversation probably shouldn't continue.

      I am interested in your thoughts on this idea. However, I don't intend for this topic to become a repeat of many of the suggestions and comments in the thread linked at the beginning - I don't mean to reignite that discussion.

      31 votes
    5. Would it be beneficial to ban certain topics of political discourse?

      I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite...

      I've noticed that there are certain topics (specifically political ones) that reoccur frequently on this site, which almost never contribute anything of value. These can derail threads, incite hostility between users, push away new users, etc. IMO it is rare that anything new is said, and even rarer that any opinions are changed. Examples include: socialism vs capitalism; should real leftists vote for Biden?; is Biden a rapist?; are Bernie supporters toxic?; etc. I'm not saying these aren't important things to discuss (I've done so myself), but is it really necessary for us to have the exact same arguments basically every day? I personally feel the site would be nicer to use and less toxic overall if these discussions didn't happen. Would there be any downside to simply banning them, at least temporarily? Perhaps until after the US presidential election?

      22 votes
    6. will we see a ~politics?

      the reason why reddit feels so fractured is because all sides of the political compass are so split. id like to see one single ~politics channel and see how it works out, if everyone can keep it...

      the reason why reddit feels so fractured is because all sides of the political compass are so split. id like to see one single ~politics channel and see how it works out, if everyone can keep it civil.

      32 votes
    7. Thoughts on handling political content on Tildes

      (0) Background This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on...

      (0) Background

      This is coming off a discussion in today's thread on forming new groups around whether or not to add a group for politics. I expressed there that, given my moderator experience on /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, I opposed making such a group given how Tildes currently stands.

      (1) Political discussion is nearly always garbage.

      I don't think anyone needs reminding of this, but political discussion almost uniformly fails to achieve anything positive in almost any social media platform. Your uncle's facebook rants? Garbage. Political sniping on Twitter? Garbage. The endless repetitive point scoring and outrage fest on most political subreddits? Garbage.

      So, we have to ask, why is this content garbage?

      (2) People want to be heard, but nobody wants to hear.

      I do not think political discussion is garbage because of bad faith trolling. That certainly exists and does not help, but usually it's not hard to ID the trolls, and excepting egregious stuff like doxxing or threats, to ignore obvious bad faith absurdity.

      The much bigger issue is that what people want to do is to be heard and validated in their political views. This is not merely that they want to proselytize or to win converts, but that they're seeking validation and a sense of rightness or righteousness in their statements.

      This desire is toxic to a neutral forum, because invariably on any divisive issue, you will not merely be heard and validated, but will be challenged and denigrated. Indeed, often the challenges and denigrations themselves are the same performance in reverse. Members of each team trying to dunk on the other and earn validation for how hard they owned the other side.

      (3) To overcome this, a successful political forum must have a purpose other than mere commentary.

      On /r/ChangeMyView and /r/NeutralPolitics, we have been able to build forums which have large amounts of productive and non-hostile political discussion. The key to this is that neither forum allows for being heard, or general discussion, as its reason for being.

      On /r/ChangeMyView we limit posts to views people genuinely hold, and are open to changing (CMV rule B). This requires that OPs cannot come to troll or soapbox. It is by far the most frequently used rule of ours in terms of removing submissions, almost always on the soapboxing side.

      On /r/NeutralPolitics, we limit posts to neutrally framed questions about political subjects, which can be answered with facts. By doing this, we narrow the scope of discussion away from soliciting feelings (which is an invitation to people posting just to be heard) and towards bringing forth factual information, where people might learn something.

      I don't know what purpose a political forum on Tildes might have, but to succeed it must have a clear purpose, and that purpose must be one which excludes people posting merely to be heard.

      (4) In addition to a purpose beyond being heard, a political forum must have extreme civility rules.

      Both CMV and NP have extremely similar rules in this regard, and they are absolutely crucial to the success of the fora.

      In general, any comment or post which in any way denigrates another user should be removed. This is an extremely broad civility rule that is well past what most subreddits do. Calling another user a liar, or accusing them of bad faith posting is banned on both CMV and NP for example, even when such accusations are true.

      The prohibition on what even may be seen as justified rudeness is I think the key to a civility rule. It immediately removes from the moderation process any discretion around the substance of the politics, and makes it a neutral rule which can be applied evenly to all parties.

      It is also necessary because nothing productive ever happens after bad faith is accused. Almost uniformly, once someone is rude, if there is a response back to them, the response will be rude in kind, usually more severely. People love to try to get the last word in, and a clear, objective rule banning "they started it" spats is also an important component. CMV's wiki has a really good overview of how we enforce this rule there.

      (5) Conclusion/TL;DR

      I don't know exactly what political content should exist on Tildes. I do know that a general politics group will not work, and that rather a politics channel should be focused on a discrete purpose other than just discussion.

      I would almost certainly ban link posts from any politics group, since inherently they're going to act as just headlines for people to pontificate on, without guiding discussion towards a particular goal. I would also obviously enforce civility, and have much stricter moderation of it than I might on a non-politics forum.

      Edited for formatting

      27 votes