Lately we’ve had a few discussions about the practice of splitting off hijacks into new threads. (I tend to prefer aggregate threads rather than splitting, but I’m not a mod.)
In P&E right now, the issue of whether mics will be muted or not is pretty much the current topic in (I believe) at least 3 threads. Just wondering how that reflects on the current mod philosophy and whether folk in those threads ought to have the discussion of mics moved to a separate thread (or the existing thread on the debates.)
Could you link to the 3 threads? I suspect one is trump campaign, one is kamala-harris campaign and one is on the Debates themselves? If so that sounds fine to me.
Pretty sure those are the 3. Just thought, if someone was interested in reading/posting something about the mics being muted, should they have to check all 3? Should they post in all 3?
Just struck me as a tad inconsistent with the trend I perceive being towards unnecessary and excessive splitting of threads, and warnings that certain side issues are better discussed elsewhere.
I’ve seen it where a particular news item, article, fact, and so on is cross-posted to multiple threads where it’s relevant (not always by the same person) and I don’t see a problem with that, because as said it is helpful to multiple topics.
Another example would be Trump’s multiple threads for different court cases, where three of them were impacted by the SCOTUS immunity ruling (and that ruling itself had its own thread, and there was yet another thread about the SCOTUS itself too). And that was helpful to include in all of them.
Cool. As previous posts of mine make clear, I don’t really grasp the need for or the subtleties of some of the more aggressive recent modding actions. But I guess I don’t really need to.
It just sorta caught my attention when I was reading multiple threads in P&E, and saw identical links, and very similar if not identical posts. It seemed to me as tho the discussion of microphones during the debate might be most appropriate for the debate thread, and a potential hijack for the candidate threads. At least as much of a hijack as I’ve perceived some of the previous modded posts. But perhaps there is some distinction which I do not grok.
I thought P&E was one of the forums in which mods ran a tighter ship, such that this might be of their interest. Apparently I was mistaken.
It seemed to me that, if a candidate’s thread seemed to have morphed into a discussion of microphones during debates, that a response might extrapolate upon that, thinking it just a normal conversational dynamic. But I could imagine a mod coming in and saying my comment is a hijack that deserves its own thread.
I also questioned whether effective communication is best served by having very similar discussions going simultaneously in 3 different threads.
So again, I was just trying to figure out why mods made some choices rather than others.
Simple one, the Debates are not a hijack of the two Campaign threads. And the Open Mike Strategy is therefore germane. Obviously it is fair game for the Debates thread.
The Ven diagram of these 3 threads is far from a complete overlap. I know I’ve barely glanced at the debate thread and only read the Trump Campaign thread pretty lightly.
As always we try to avoid any bright lines and judging hijacks is quite honestly a we know it when we see one and we often don’t see them. If we think it is borderline, we often flag the post(s) ourselves to check with the other two P&E mods and invite comment from the entire staff.
That’s cool. But really, how it comes across to me is that the mods perceive/proclaim a bunch of distinctions between the forums, what is and isn’t a hijack, and what must be done to protect a thread’s purity. But in reality, you are just human volunteers, so the supposed rules and distinctions may tend to get applied inconsistently.
I’m fine with that. “Know it if you see it” is very understandable. But definitely something not everyone will “see” the same.
