OTC Thread Culture

I thought the only posts thumped were... those which went purely into bashing and drifted away from the actual policies? Those would be good to bring up to figure out where a few posts can be salvaged(as at least around 80% weren't overall. And if it happens to be less, we can more identify exactly where the problem starts and how to refine our rules). Only the Moderation can view said posts, so maybe they can help see which ones might be okay(which gives us an idea, again, of where to start a clear method).

That said, to Laculas(or is Iaculas? I forget how it's formatted), we have over 20+ pages of thumps, of which the Mods have made clear a good chunk of them are off-topic. Yes, it's a problem in need of a solution. The thumps did not stop regardless of more rule refining. More rule refining is clearly required to stop the off-topic thumps. The only other solutions besides clear rules are ultimately ban any members who start the off-topic bit(under the assumption it's a tiny amount of people) or ban Twitter as a topic. For understandable reasons, people would like to salvage the topic itself instead of throwing it out. And as noted, we do have a good idea that some posts are salvageable, which means we can't say for sure who said catalysts are, meaning only "Ban Twitter" and "Refines the rules" are really feasible at the moment.

We can't do more than lightly attempt to push them in the right direction of where the off-topic pieces are, but the Moderation has to piece through a lot either way.

I'm not sure the foreshadowing is illogical to talk about, though. If he's talking about how can refine rules itself within said foreshadowing, it's not really off-topic. On the other hand, the panic it sends and craziness in general it creates is quite a problem that it's probably better to not allow it. Combined with solely posting reputable sources(which means it'll only apply to policies enacted or actual official statements, not his own hypotheticals) might completely nip a lot of this in the bud. It's a good solution to the current problem(though again, said foreshadowing is related to the policies anyway, so it's really off-topic in itself. It's arguably a problem, at least compared to the clear off-topic issue).

Edited by Irene on Apr 5th 2023 at 11:07:29 AM

We already looked through the thumps three days ago and none of them had much to do with Twitter. It was either past behavior or other Musk related stuff.

I don't remember thumping anything about relevant social media behavior that casts a shadow on future action. It's been a while since I actually intervened in that thread prior to Monday so I would have to back read to review those thumps. I can only speak on the short I tried to moderate the thread as I didn't handle hollers and problems about it last year.

Edited by MacronNotes on Apr 5th 2023 at 12:11:10 PM

Well, there's the thing I mentioned up the page about how, after all the attitudes Musk has espoused, DM previews of tweets were disabled for LGBT terms but not the bigoted ones. Or that (going by the list order), the latest thing that will be extremely punished by the algorithm for exposure is mentioning the Ukraine crisis (i.e., directly downplaying it). And given Musk's statements on that conflict...

Or the most recent change of Twitter replacing the bird with a doge icon right as the $285 million lawsuit about Musk and dogecoin started to become a big thing.

And these are all things that have come up in the past week. So, that's plenty of retrospective links; is it on-topic to try and work out what an action holds for future platform decisions?

That would be on topic. I don't think that's we were referring to. I said on the thread that discussion on the doge coin is fine and I didn't thump those posts.

It's more a question about speculative future actions based on current stupidity rather than looking at current actions and then back to past stupidity.

I would rather not speculate if we can help it. I think it leads to downward spirals more often than not.

Definitely not.

If it's not blatantly about the how Twitter would change, it's not worth bringing up. It might never even come to pass, and it creates unnecessary turmoil over nothing in the end, which just hurts the topic more.

It's also just easier to use a reputable source as suggested before to post, which avoids all that altogether. They're far more likely to only post actual news than some random stupid thing said.

"Don't link to first-hand sources directly about potential policy changes" is going way too far in the other direction, though. Consider the entire pricing debacle over Twitter Blue; the price for that came from trying to talk at Stephen King.

Seeing as Musk fired the entire communications team, his random tweets are official Twitter statement and marketing, like it or not. It's silly to just wait for a news organisation to literally report the same thing if it's a direct policy-related tweet.

I don't really care about some pricing debacle either. That's neither here nor there. I'll be clear I don't consider any of these comparisons to ultimately matter in fixing this issue. They aren't worth considering to me. They don't apply to the context of this issue either.

This is the reality of the situation; people will not adhere to the current rules and only post any random thing he says, including hypotheticals. We say people can tell the difference, but that's not as true as you make it. Those things loosely relate to the policy, which is why people post them, but we know they aren't guaranteed to happen, which means they more cause turmoil than are actual news.

Expecting people to be patient and only post news sources isn't "going too far". It's a basic evolution of the rules to guarantee a better quality post about said news and to remove as much turmoil as possible. It's literally the next step up, as people have proven they won't separate them nor do they want to. For whatever reason, people like to bash on Musk instead of just criticizing or even solely discussing how it affects Twitter. This is why any hypothetical posts don't work. If they don't happen? All that happens is people just turn it purely about Musk and not really keep it about Twitter(which is a volatile subject henceforth).

As a volatile subject regardless, the only real solution is going harder on the rules. Why is it so hard to wait a bit to post something? What makes that so difficult that people cannot take the time to be patient and wait for a better news article? Why is that a legitimate problem in any way? I refer to the term "problem". Keeping in mind people really can't tell apart stupid shit and news quite consistently, it was obvious stronger rules were required to fix that.

Wouldn't say it's unprecedented either: the Ukraine thread has additional no-speculation-only-post-from-reputable-sources-and-please-cite-them after gossip and fake news sent it into a tizzy every couple of hours.

Because it doesn't solve the problem, at all. It just moves it slightly later, because news articles will inevitably report on it, because the media has an incestuous relationship with these sort of tweets. 'Only talk about policy-related tweets that get news articles' is identical to 'only talk about policy-related tweets'.

The main difference being that the news on potential twitter policies is going to be identical to the tweets from Musk about potential Twitter policies. It's not like we're talking about a huge invested state media apparatus over a regional conflict, here; it's the policy of one company.

Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 5th 2023 at 6:39:26 PM

I'm affirming the need for tighter guidelines, not necessarily the need for news reporting. I thought the question was about speculation about future actions, not whether Musk's tweets counted as announcements.

Like, if he tweeted every Twitter user's avatar would be changed into clown, this tweet would be ok to report as it pertains to how the site is run, but not something like "will he change every username too?!". That is what leads into derails and doom-spiralin'.

(edit to add the last clause to clarify my viewpoint)

Edited by Synchronicity on Apr 5th 2023 at 12:52:05 PM

Personally, I'm happy to prematurely write Twitter off as no longer useful or newsworthy, but I acknowledge I'm in the minority.

I'm okay with the space and electric vehicles and social media threads all having some topical overlap when they involve each other. I think it's disruptive to revisit past events when they have no immediate relevance; and while anything Musk says or does related to Twitter can be relevant, my opinion is that things he said isn't worth mentioning unless they can be related to things he did, and the onus is on the poster to make that connection. It seems like a fairly minimal standard that if he doesn't change or reveal anything about Twitter management policies, attract legal attention, prompt an official statement from another organisation, or have any other kind of effect on the actual state of the website - none of which is actually unusual - then there isn't really anything substantial to talk about.

...the sooner people stop treating dangerous public figures like media to hatewatch, the better.

Ah, I was more addressing Irene's point—the thing is, a lot of the things that define a policy that's probably going to be happening are tweets to start with. Waiting for a news article to report on them won't change anything, and ignoring the news article until the policy is actually implemented would just be... strange. We'd have a social media thread that couldn't talk about social media news.

My thought is that by only posting news sources in general(which also goes into enough detail it's easier to tell if they are referring to "this is my thought" and "this is a change I'll make") has a lot of good effect on the thread. It guarantees people must be patient, as fast-posting consistently leads to problematic misreadings of articles and this encourages far more mature discussion.

That, and we do see people cannot really tell the two apart consistently enough, meaning the problem does exist. In addition, we apply this rule to every thread(reputable news articles only), so it's nothing new. It might not be needed, and fair enough, but it does have a very good increase in good posting as the result by design. It's hardly going "too far" as it directly just coincides with normal posting rules(banning Twitter is going too far, but only cause we aren't at the point where it's a necessity).

There's no evidence it'd be a problem to do so, or why it would not make it a better place, but that said, I won't continue further. We can revisit it if the issue pops up again(that people can't tell them apart), but a slightly lesser version of the rules is fine too. I legit hope it works. I don't really trust it will(due to an overwhelming amount of evidence of its failure), but I'm fine with giving it at least one more try.

The only thing that happens is the topic doesn't get posted in as fast. As you said, nothing technically changes, but the speed of it does. So you still get to post it, but you need to wait a bit longer. Though do note I am dropping the idea at this time anyway.

Edited by Irene on Apr 5th 2023 at 1:02:28 PM

On the subject of sources and Twitter linking, my preference would be that we just make it so that posts have to be able to stand on their own. So much of our ‘sourcing’ now is just people doing a quote link to a Twitter account saying that a thing happened or a person said a thing. So rather than someone linking to Musk tweeting out a new deranged policy, we get a game of telephone where someone links to someone on Twitter giving their interpretation of what Musk meant when he made a particular tweet.

We’re not linking/sourcing news, we’re linking/sourcing takes.

There’s a reason that when I source things the actual link is small and out of the way. The focus for readers of my posts should be on the words I’ve written and the point I’m making, not on a link somebody else’s words and their point.

It was recently brought to my attention that's already a rule. We're already not supposed to link to random Twitter posts for our discussions.

Which I already knew, but when I went to copy it to remind some folks about their bad habits I couldn't find it. I ended up thinking I had imagined it! Turns out it's at the very bottom of the Self Moderation thread for some reason.

In fact, Mods, can we get that post copied into the locked Debate Guidelines thread?

Mind you, that was written a long time ago and wouldn't apply to an official rules post by someone like Musk. But it should be pretty easy to tell the difference between the original tweet and a random person replying to it.

I think at most we might've had more naked links(with a bare description instead of directly quoting the passage or at least some of it) than any other issues at best. I don't remember people linking to bad sources as is. I remember lots of stuff that wouldn't belong regardless(random stuff he says, for instance), but not a bad source in itself.

It would be good to include that bit in the Guidelines thread still. The Ukraine thread needed that reminder when people were breathlessly posting unverified/gossipy/panicked social media links.

I do think an exception can be made in some instances. Like when a reputable journalist is covering an event live since that's essentially the text version of a live news broadcast.

Maybe, but random tweets from Musk shouldn't get that exception. He is not a news source, much as he'd like to be one.

Well, we're only referring to posting when he actually enacts a straight-out guideline, as in an official rules tweet as being okay.

Random thoughts by him are not news, yes. But official rule changes are. Unless there's some "Official Twitter Rules" account I am unaware of that should be posted instead? If not, he has legitimate posts for the thread's purpose. As said before, waiting for a news outlet doesn't change anything in itself of the information presented.

Honestly though, with the changes to the Twitter verification system I don’t think any individual account should be considered a valid source. Anyone can purchase verification now and put in their bio that they’re a journalist, that’s before we get to all the non-verified Twitter accounts that people link to as news sources. If anyone tried linking to a Facebook or Reddit post as a source we’d laugh them out of the thread.

So personally. I’d thump every post that says a thing has happened but just links to a Tweet claiming a thing has happened, with the exception of posts saying “X has Tweeted saying Y” and linking to the tweet. I’d rather no source than “Some person on Twitter told me” at this point.

However I do have a bias to declare here, I’m very anti-Twitter.

Edited by Silasw on Apr 5th 2023 at 11:02:31 AM

Thinking about it, I'm not sure there's a good way to word the old version of the post anymore.

That said, I don't think there's an issue whatsoever to link an official Twitter post as a source, but if it's a ton of posts back to back, a news source may make it far easier to read consistently by a user(though we still want to quote a minor passage, perhaps).

Edited by Irene on Apr 6th 2023 at 12:06:41 PM