There wasn’t nearly as much news to break in the apartment building collapse as I expect there will be in the Israeli/Hamas war. My intention isn’t to squash every comment about the why. But I am trying to keep it limited, so people who want to check if there’s any new news can do so.
I am thrilled that we have a companion discussion thread, and I hope the two are cross-linked heavily. Cross-links work pretty well on this platform. (And if there isn’t a pit thread yet, I’m pretty sure at least one will pop up.)
I don’t expect to be issuing a lot of warnings. I think most of the digressions have been posters in good faith getting lost in a topic. In those cases, I expect to be moving posts or issuing notes, not swinging around the ban-hammer. God knows I’ve gotten carried away by digressions in plenty of threads.
To me that thread has been just what we want in a situation like this, and I have barely noticed your moderation - which means it has been good moderation.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
In a fast-moving situation I don’t see how moderation can realistically be based on precise calibration of whether its “fair” to allow one comment but not another. The sensible metric is the probability of digression into dozens of non-news opinion posts on controversial underlying issues. No point of view is being suppressed, it’s just a question of whether something is moved to a separate thread.
I hope that both leaving a post where it is, and moving a batch of similar posts, are seen as “equitable”. Both are easy for everyone to see. But my goal isn’t “poster equity”, it’s “thread clarity”. So any single post is unlikely to be moderated unless it’s grossly off-topic or otherwise problematic. But when a group of posts pop up that aren’t about current news, i will try to either direct the discussion elsewhere or actually move the group to its own thread if substantive discussion appears to be taking place.
As a commentary in general about Breaking News threads. These have a vulnerability in that by their very nature these threads will be up high and up front in the “latest threads” view most of us use and in the post count, and the tendency will be for people to go to the most immediately visible thread, and then if they feel the need react or ask questions the inpulse will be to do so right there, rather than search around for whether there is already a “general related issues” or “political consequences” thread on the same subject.
At the same time it should not be necessary either to go so granular as to create 20 threads addressing every conceivable thing that pops into our heads. Especially if someone just asks a question that can be answered and it’s up to the rest of us to resist spinning it into a pet subject argument.
Now, the way I see it, it should not be necessary for the Mods to have to explicitly tell us “open another thread for that” or to point and link to the other threads every single time. We should be able to figure it out. IMO “this is not in the scope of a Breaking News thread” is not an instruction to not talk about it at all anywhere, I trust the Mods to say so when/if that’s what they mean.
In this case, I’m expecting that the generic “discussion about” thread will also stay high in the “latest threads” view. And my intention is not to exclude every quick question, but to move hijacky groups of threads there. Let’s try this and see how it works.
It really seems like big stories need both Breaking-News that is just news updates and a discussion thread. General Purpose, able to meander and entertain the random thoughts of posters related to the news items.
(Just for an example of what I mentioned: right before I started typing this, the BN thread was one of the 5 “latest posts”. The General Discussion thread was like 60 down.)
Regardless of the bouncing locations of the threads, if you sort by threads you are following (and are following both threads), they will both always be near the top. See the link below.
I’m baffled that you mods have decided on a course of action that makes more work for you and more confusion for posters. I hope I didn’t cause that. With that settled, I ask that you close this thread.
I’m not confused, FWIW. And if their course of action means fewer digressions in the breaking-news thread, it’ll make less work for them, not more; plus seems like it would reduce arguments about ‘you’re trying to stop me from talking about this!’ or ‘where should I talk about this, then?’
I honestly think this will be less extra work and create less poster aggravation than the Russian war thread that didn’t have an all-purpose general discussion companion.
As the mod who pushed for this rule I had a bunch of comments swirling in my head. Then I realized I’ve said them over and over in previous threads. Bottom line: there was a problem that other posters complained about. This was the best fix. Going back isn’t the answer.
Some posters want a thread where they can get the news aggregated from multiple sources and viewpoints along with personal accounts. They should be able to have that without wading through a debate. Those that want a debate or deeper discussion about underlying issues can also have that. I don’t see where the downside is. If the discussion thread has fewer replies and drops down that’s not a bug.
In the life of most events the breaking news aspect goes away in a day or two. Obviously the Gaza issue is different.
My intention isn’t to squash every comment about the why. But I am trying to keep it limited, so people who want to check if there’s any new news can do so.