Why The Push For More Academically Correct Threads?
It seems to me that in the past year or so, there's been a more aggressive push from the mods to move intermediate level as well as theistic threads, as well as unorthodox and sometimes mystical (yet complex) threads to the Lounge, which is the graveyard of the forum, as we all know. So it's essentially a way to delete threads that aren't at a high academic level in a polite way, yeah? Correct me if I'm wrong.
I find this unacceptable, and the reason being that this is a philosophy forum for anyone interested in philosophy, if I'm not mistaken. So laypeople like myself should be able to come and ask honest questions, even if we're not as learned nor as eloquent as the academics; but what I've learned is that idiots like myself can ask just as profound questions as the great talking heads can. But when my questions get sent to the dumpyard, I get less interested in asking them here.
So why the censorship of us laypeople?
I find this unacceptable, and the reason being that this is a philosophy forum for anyone interested in philosophy, if I'm not mistaken. So laypeople like myself should be able to come and ask honest questions, even if we're not as learned nor as eloquent as the academics; but what I've learned is that idiots like myself can ask just as profound questions as the great talking heads can. But when my questions get sent to the dumpyard, I get less interested in asking them here.
So why the censorship of us laypeople?
Comments (81)
I agree. I don’t mind being brought up by mods over quality but I want the chance to go head to toe with all posters, whether they like it or not.
Edit: oops; toe to toe.
There should be a section on this site somewhat independent of the forums yet connected. Somehow. Like the Articles page.
People submit questions and if either they are rated enough or answered not to the satisfaction of the Inquirer they are at the top. Sounds like a bit too much work when people could just check the Lounge more often. I don't like saying (believe me I'm up in the middle of the night checking this place) but this isn't the most active site on the internet. And I for one would like to change that.
This from you on another OP.
“ After all, a society is judged by how they treat the least of them.”
I'm looking for a place where I can have a casual conversation with people who are interested in philosophy, preferably with plenty of people who are intelligent and well-educated, but it doesn't have to be exclusively thus. The standards I found many other places demanding seemed like they were all places to submit a rigorous formal argument for critique and rebuttal. Or else a place to meekly submit your questions for the supposed experts to answer. Not a place to just have an easygoing chat about the topic.
This place has its weaknesses, but it's certainly a lot more welcoming than others I've seen.
Yes, it’s not like anyone’s going to come up with something profound, or never said or thought of before.
Yeah, sure. If I owned this site I'd do things differently. I mean. Not by much. Not really. Just add more. I am no esteemed philosopher or scientist and I would be denying myself knowledge, experience, and discovery by not allowing them to post in an environment that is suitable to them that I'm allowed to observe.
But really, what’s the underlying problem with these requests about quality? The mods step in; we generally agree with them,
I read the first few pages here but not all 21. I see it's closed; the end comments seem heated but not bad, but then I'm not sure about the Baden quote of someone else without comment:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8608/god-almost-certainly-exists
This is a mediocre OP, but the topic I find to be worthy of the main forum. Has it been asked a thousand times? Yes, and that indicates something about the question. Anyways:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8503/know-thyself-is-it-the-beginning-of-all-wisdom
This is MASSIVE (I don't know if I agree, and I would have approached the topic with more nuance myself, but)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8541/philosophy-is-mainly-about-style-not-substance
Controversial, and I don't condone it, but this one stayed main page for a good while if I'm not mistaken
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8481/the-wldm-movement-white-lives-dont-matter
A quick scan of this one seems a little nutty but I like the topic, and it's a topic I'm interested in
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8424/is-the-evolution-of-technology-infinite
That's just a quick cursory glance; there have been others over the past year or more. And this has all been just off the top of my head as I browse through.
That's an informative perspective; thanks. Maybe we're lucky here!
That's true, but there's also an unintended (or perhaps intended) consequence to a mod deleting your thread, it makes you more reluctant to create another one. Usually the mod will say "low post quality", and that's it. Many users are thinking"I don't know what it means to improve my post quality", I guess I'll just won't post anymore.
Correction: I wrote that one in the lounge. :rofl:
I’ve questioned Baden about removals of my OPs and generally got helpful feedback.
It doesn’t make me reluctant to post again. It’s other posters who sometimes do that, but in the end I want to try again. “School of hard knocks” I guess, which isn’t so bad.
You didn't write that OP...?
School of hard knocks is what shaped any measly ability I may or may not have in debating, but it wouldn't exist if my intermediate-level lack luster threads from 4 years ago had been moved to the lounge. No one would have read them, I wouldn't have received my hard knocks, and no one would have benefited in any way, including lurkers (which is huge, btw).
What you quoted was from this OP by ernestm:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8481/the-wldm-movement-white-lives-dont-matter/p1
I agree.
Yes, and I should have added this, but feels too late to edit: I was a lurker on the old PF for years before I posted on it. I gained so much from reading all sorts of perspectives; high level, mid level, even some beautiful "low" level perspectives.
You're kind of right because I didn't think the moderators wanted that in the main forum.
I guess I'm just an oddball.
Why’s that?
Edit: oh, because of your reluctance.
(1) Know Thyself is barely a thread. Frankly it ought to have been deleted if it were up to me.
(2) 'Style': Again, barely a thread. Contains no argument, just an assertion, based on anecdote. That it was moved to the lounge and not deleted is again generous.
(3) WLDM: this is almost entirely anecdote and personal story. It's not philosophy. It really does belong in the lounge.
(4) Evolution of Tech: this seems like a borderline case. The opening line that "Absolutely all the inventions so far, no matter how sophisticated, serve directly or indirectly to ancient desires, almost instinctive" is prima facie strange, if not highly contestable, but the thread just takes it as a given and tries to roll from there. The OPs responses in the thread were weirdly dogmatic as well. I'll grant that this is neither here nor there.
I already admired that this site is not the best match for me.
Understood, but I would like to know why it was moved (btw I'm not like demanding a reason for any thread being moved or anything). I don't have to know, I would just like to, in this case. But I'm aware of making extra work for you mods, which I don't want to do. It's water under the bridge, as far as I'm concerned.
Quoting StreetlightX
I won't try to engage in a debate about these topics; i'll just mention that 1) Know thyself is a classic topic, albeit maybe annoying. Fine, whatever.
2) Metaphilosophy about style is indeed VERY MUCH a thread, rather than barely. This is self evident.
3) WLDM being anecdotal is certainly true (I read alot but not all of the thread) but it was highly prescient to the time which to me makes it as philosophical as any other political thread (and how appropriate political threads are to the main forum is another can of worms, in my view). But sure, it can go either way.
And at the end of the day, @StreetlightX, as I mentioned, I just scrolled through page 1 of the Lounge to compile that. Your rebuttal of what you think about those threads certainly doesn't stand as a satisfactory response to the overarching issue I'm highlighting here. It's a good start for sure, though. But not the end of the topic. And I'd love any and all MOD's comments about the nature and use of The Lounge. Comments that are honest and not politically pandering to us poor plebs... (I'm smiling, ok? It's a fucking joke that's also not a joke! Role with it; laugh!)
Dude, come on. StreetlightX already ripped my thread, I don’t need him to do it again. :cry:
I mean, unless the guy is loaded or something that fact really is quite cool. I may have a slight complex but basically ads do distract me.
Awesome site. :up:
Again, much of this has been dealt with before, and is linked to in the site guidelines. @Baden's https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op is an excellent reference point.
This is incredible textbook stuff, but if a layman wants to vomit up some thoughts, which might be pretty interesting, but don't conform to such a useful model, can't he do it? If he does, and it's profound, but too woo-woo, he'll be smashed into the trash compactor of the dreaded Lounge, will he not?
Yes. No vomit thoughts here, and no woo-woo. I don't know why anyone would even want that sort of stuff here.
All I do is vomit up woo-woo thoughts. 24/7. Even on Christmas.
I think the idea behind the forum moderation is that we have basically some of the worst posters on the forum given moderator status. I feel quite confident that if something doesn't meet their standards that it must be quite awful and fully support that thread getting closed.
I don’t think @StreetlightX wants to be your friend.
But to be real here, I'm not accusing you mods of not going by the rules that you go by. I'm just questioning the rubric of what makes something worthy of the trash bin, and maybe more importantly, I'm annoyed that The Lounge is essentially the trash bin. Can you comment on that? Am I missing something?
There are a lot of really shit posts on this forum. And a few gems. I would like to see more folk get the boot for being shite, but that's why i won't do the moderator's job.
If you don't like the forum, bugger off. Something I indeed do, periodically, but for some reason I find myself back here, periodically.
And if you don't like that, go watch The Cain Mutiny.
So should the majority of threads be in The Lounge then? Not readable on the main page? Since most of them are shit, per you.
Quoting Banno
Trust me, I mostly bugger off.
Roughly half.
Tell that to @StreetlightX, I guess. If you mean it.
That's helpful to hear that aspect of the old experience (saying that honestly). I do feel as if a push for heavier moderation has come in the past year or so, but maybe that's my own perception. But, along with that perception, is the sense on my end that some decent threads have gotten pushed aside that could have yielded beneficial discussion otherwise. Again, I think of my own early threads a few years ago that I'd be embarrassed to even re-read, but yet they still stand, not in the lounge; and I learned something from them, and I don't doubt others learned something not from me by reading them. So it's not just a question of how smart the thread or the OP is, but also a question of the quality of the discussion that follows the OP.
Should roughly half of threads be moved to The Abyss (er sorry) The Lounge?
That’s an anecdote!
Low post quality. Too few words.
So are you saying that mods aren't able to read all replies to all threads? That seems totally reasonable, but then the question becomes "how does a thread get relegated to either The Lounge or to deletion?" Surely all comments should be read in the thread before it's tossed somewhere? No?
I could be wrong, but I think that would be...a phrase categorized properly as a...joake? ghoke? jaoc?
Good job !!
@Noble Dust In my view, Baden's post on how to write an OP lays out an ideal, and casual discussion topics are sometimes all right so long as they're not stupid. Banno divides opinion, but I think his topics are examples of OPs that haven't taken a lot of effort but which are not stupid.
There hasn't really been a concerted push for heavier moderation of low-quality posts. Every so often one of the staff might say to the others, "let's get rid of all this X crap", or "can we stop X from posting all this Y", but very often we don't see it through strictly, and we've been doing that from the start anyway.
What has changed is that we've become less tolerant of racism and sexism, but that doesn't apply to most of your examples.
When I first read this I actually thought you were joking. I can't believe you seriously think that current discussions are the result of an excessive amount of pruning. We still have one about whether bandanas are scary!
I agree with the other posters here that even more pruning is required, but unfortunately, it would be mostly pruning of posts, not topics and that's just too monumental a task for the size of moderation team we have, so we have to live with it.
As to your other point, I think you need to look at the self-fulfilling nature of your judgement. Why is The Lounge "the graveyard of the forum", "the trash compactor" if it's full of all the posts you're suggesting should be on the front page? Shouldn't it be a lively place for learning and discussion if all these threads were such good openers?
There is always going to be a top and bottom to the quality of what is posted, and always some dispute at the margins. I prefer stupidity to rudeness, personally. Other arrangements could be tried, though.
Perhaps the most academic, high brow topics could be marked in some way, and more strictly controlled. Perhaps we could make a separate section of text discussions, with a link to an article or book as the op.
One of the best ways to raise quality is by not responding to rubbish. This is very hard these days, but worth trying. Ops that get no answers, drop out of sight quite quickly. This could even happen to the Trump thread if we all made an effort.
I suggested that a while back. The response, I think, was that it would best be done by the OP, as in "please keep responses related to the text", but I'm still broadly in favour of a more academic section, and I think using a text or paper would be a relatively impartial way of distinguishing such a section.
Quoting unenlightened
Absolutely. I think a lot of engagement with the low quality posts starts out as an attempt to correct mistakes, but once one is hooked its difficult to let go even though it's become obvious the guy is a kook.
I was a participant in one of those threads with you, a couple of months back, when it got bumped to the Lounge, and you complained about it at the time. I remember thinking at the time, 'this thread is going to get shut down'; it might have been about theories of rebirth. I think your OP is probably a response to that.
Overall, I find your philosophical perspective congenial to my own, more so than almost any other contributor, and I really do understand your objection. But you have to allow for context, as this is a public forum in a secular culture. It's not going to be predisposed to explorations of the kinds of questions that occur to (let's say) spiritual practitioners (and in fairness to the mods, there's a lot of uninformed musings - as you say, 'word vomit' - about these various topics, as contributors confront the various samskaras their unconscious is throwing up.)
I have had my fair share of bruising encounters on this forum, and have often promised myself never to return, yet here I am. I'm currently trying to regard the moderation standards and general attitudes you find on fora such as these, as like the poles on a slalom course, and to try ski between them, going as fast as possible, but trying not to run over them. Sometimes it's rewarding, often times it's frustrating, and often it's simply force of habit. But learning what does and doesn't cross the boundaries is part of the art. That's my two cents.
The defining factor here for me is the presence of effort. Having strict standards philosophically could be considered exclusionary but requiring effort isn't. And if you haven't been banned, you can take it we consider you smart and able enough to participate in all aspects of the site, including writing OPs, and we only want to see evidence you respect the place enough to put some work in while contributing. Those who don't effectively exclude themselves. Where we might be culpable is not always being helpful enough in identifying how posters can improve. We may then unintentionally discourage them from trying to progress. But we don't set out to hurt posters' feelings or put them off posting further, it's more that we give priority to maintaining that minimum level of quality that we figure gives the place its intellectual character.
Also, there is this poll from a while back, which suggests to me that the mod team and the community as a whole are pretty much in lockstep in terms of the standards they want to see here.
Ah, yeah, not sure we'll run the poll again, but point taken.
This was a thread that was going nowhere of the OP's own volition. The point of forwarding a proof of anything is surely to invite exploration of its potential shortcomings if only to satisfy yourself of its robustness. Merely reasserting the conclusion as a defense and inventing one's own mathematics has morbid curiosity value and nothing else. Given the rules, it seems a solid mod call to me.
If you're interested in a subject and the existing thread fails to meet community standards, surely you can start a better thread on the same subject?
I agree with this too. What makes a forum high-quality to me is not so much the intelligence or education of its posters, but things like charity, patience, and other stripper names. People like that new user @DoppyTheElv are a great example: by his own admission he knows very little about the topics he’s interested in, but he’s humble about that and open-minded and eager to learn.
I’m looking for a place where people like that can come to chat and learn and field their thoughts for discussion, to find out when their ideas aren’t new and who has said what in the same topics before, and to build up any genuinely new ideas they might have in a friendly collaborative way (but still critical of course), not to be harshly shot down for being an idiot who makes mistakes.
I came here thinking of myself as such a learner, expecting a place full of people at least as well educated as me who would hopefully treat me in such a way. I have lots of philosophical thoughts that I think might be new, but I’m not at all confident enough in them to go try to publish a paper or something without even talking to someone about them first. I just want to casually chat with some philosophical people about them.
For the most part, people here usually seem less educated than I at first hoped, but that’s fine: I’m happy being on the other side instead, helping them learn and sort out their thoughts. On the other hand, most of the people who seem possibly more educated seem either silent or unfriendly, with some notable exceptions. So I imagine for those many users even lower down the totem pole, the experience is even worse.
Neither do I want to exclude people without any philosophical education. It's about the attitude.
It is to a degree, but it's been 4 or so years in the making.
Quoting Wayfarer
I appreciate that you find a connection, which I do as well. Thank you. Sure, the spiritual isn't as accepted here. Maybe that's my problem.
That makes sense in theory, but my problem is that the lounge is not viewable on the main forum. So if you mods relegate a thread to the lounge, well, you might as well just delete it. No? Am I missing something? (And as you know, this only happened in the past year or so (or two years? my memory sucks)). Hence my complaint about the past year.
Very wise information, thank you. I'm guilty of responding to rubbish, out of pride. No good. It just sends me back to square one, ya know?
I think it might be. I've stormed off from this forum on several occasions but (obviously) have returned. But I've learned to become somewhat more detached about it (although I must admit, still have the urge to throw the odd grenade.) But it’s still overall a very good forum.
(Incidentally - on the subject of the role of spiritual philosophy in the context of secular culture, Charles Taylor's A Secular Age is the go-to book. It's a real door-stopper, but this blog has quite a good summary and analysis of his concept of the 'immanent frame' which helps to make sense, or frame, a lot of the meta-discussions around this topic.)
I appreciate your directness. You're probably right.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm all for it; thanks! This looks excellent.
I think this is also very good advice. I skip even reading most of the threads here; ain't nobody got time for that. I sometimes reply to "stupid" things just to give a simple answer to an obvious question, or sometimes persist for a while in arguing with intractable people when the exercise seems like it could be informative to onlookers, but if it drags on beyond that point I give up and let the thread die -- or hope it does, or else hope someone else continues some kind of useful work beyond the limits of my patience. But if it's just lowbrow theism vs atheism or something else that's been beaten to death a million times? No comment, let it wither on the vine.
It's an excellent principle to write for the reader more than the interlocutor. I wonder what is the longest thread anyone would be bothered to read all through. I think I might stretch to 5 or 6 pages if it was a good one. Certainly by the time one gets to page 20, one is having a chat and not much more.