I’ve seen plenty of posts around here lately about how we should explain things patiently to the liberals. But it’s hard to be patient when they come into our communities uninvited and start an argument over something that’s so obvious to us, over and over again, especially when they’re also full of american chauvinism (I recall one guy a while ago who didn’t believe the occupation of south Korea was real). It’s plain frustrating and not conducive to a meaningful discussion. Besides, can’t speak for others, but personally I sometimes want to enjoy fellow communists’ posts without having some lib causing a mess in the comment section.

I think isolating them into a particular community (maybe call it something like /c/debatecommunism) could be helpful for the following reasons:

  • We can engage on our own terms. When I feel like debating, I could go there and do it. When not, enjoy the rest of the site without being bothered by them. That’d also make it easier to be patient with them.
  • Have past questions in one place. If someone is genuinely there to ask questions in good faith, they could read a previous thread if the question was already recently asked.
  • Could make a sidebar or a stickied post with links to resources.
  • If some experienced people are willing to moderate such a community, it would have more effective moderation than the current state of moderation falling on whoever happens to be the mods of the community the argument started in, or on the site admins if something is reported. There is a line between debating and just insulting us or being racist towards whoever is liberals’ designated enemy right now.

With “isolate”, I mean, creating the “debate communism” (or whatever other name we’d choose) community, and a policy of reporting/removing liberal-attempting-to-debate-us comments everywhere else on this instance.

Thoughts? Are there any downsides to this that I have failed to see? Are the obnoxious posters from other instances not a big deal for everyone else and I’m the only one who is bothered?

(I’m sorry if I phrased something badly. I’m really not good at words…)

  • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
    61·
    1 year ago

    I heartily agree with your overall sentiment and I have some thoughts.

    It’s hit and miss for me. Sometimes I’m bored by the sheer tedium of liberals; I get enough of it elsewhere and I love having this place to escape it. Other times, I learn a lot from the back and forth between the hapless lib and a comrade. I really limit my time spent sorting by ‘all’ – the big news comms on the ‘general purpose’ instances, especially, are just too much for me most of the time; I don’t mind looking at posts after a day or two, once other comrades have participated but if it’s just libs debating among themselves… jfc.

    One problem that we’ll face here, which isn’t so much an issue on Reddit is that every comm on lemmygrad is Marxist. Many reactionaries don’t understand or care what that means. They see ‘memes’ or ‘news’ or whatever and think they can bring their liberal-over-boiled-soggy-cabbage-of-an-opinion. While we could direct libs to a debate comm, it might mean deliberately sending them off after an engagement in another comm. I’m unsure how that’ll play out.

    I’m unsure how I feel about a general debate comm. I don’t think it will be very fruitful because it will mostly be asinine libs turning up looking for a debate and the most commonly appropriate response will be to present them with a debate pervert stamp. I’m not sure that we should welcome liberal brain rot in a dedicated sub. It will create a space for libs to spout liberalism and by the rules of engagement we’ll be more-or-less obliged to leave it up. It might attract every lib in the fediverse to our space to re-hash the same ‘debates’. To mix a few metaphors, that may be the thin end of a cheese wedge that might spill out the debate pan into the fire of the rest of the instance.

    The instance-wide rules cover some of what you’re saying, so we may need to develop the instinct to report and move on. Or we may need to discuss further between ourselves what kinds of liberalism we’re willing to tolerate for the sake of discussion and what types of liberalism we just want to shut down. The latter may turn out to be an ongoing thing.

    I quite like federation but the influx of random libs has increased of late. I’ve started blocking people who argue in bad faith and who refuse to try to understand what I or others say. My experience has improved dramatically. These might be the obnoxious posters. If that’s the case and they’re a bother (the flaw with personal blocks is that I won’t see if they’re still poking around), report them and they’ll likely receive and instance-wide ban for breaking the general rules.

    The question of education of and response to libs has come up a few times recently (here and on Hexbear, which is facing similar issues). I agree that we could be doing something about storing FAQs somewhere, as suggested. Maybe cross-posting educational posts into GenZhou and turning longer, educational comments into posts there as well would create a repository that we could point people to? To that end, well, we’ll see how those conversations about education develop. I’m leaning towards (IIRC)@kig_v2@lemmygrad.ml’s line of cleaning libs’ brains. I’m unsure on whether a debate comm will achieve that.

    In the meantime, I’ll pose two questions: if we dismiss all libs and (try to) confine them to a debate comm, do we (a) encourage only a particular kind of lib to come and to stick around and (b) increase or decrease our chances of educating someone?

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      I think storing a FAQ, storing good arguments, or multiple arguments etc., would be a great idea! These libs use the same copy-and-paste propagands quips, it makes no sense to waste unnecessary energy crafting a new reply each time.

      No opinion on a debate sub, but I think having a repository of easily searchable and linkable arguments and educational resources would be invaluable.