4

Some issues that are very current and very hot, come up here on occasion — fortunately much less often than on politics-SE but still it does happen.

Is it of any use? To anyone or cause?

Repeating here the comments I shared with Phil Klöcking:

Do questions like this help? In more detail: Do they help

  1. this site?
  2. Philosophy?
  3. The questioner?
  4. The answerer
  5. The people on one side of the clash?
  6. Or the other?

Do they illumine anything? Enlighten anybody? Any philosophy happens?

I have long held that controversial questions that cross a certain heat-to-light ratio are best closed. But for some reason there seems to be (an informal?) decision by mods to not use the Controversial Question feature.

The answer by fattie gave me a new word "agit-prop". I guess agit-prop questions are ok on politics-SE. I don't see their use here. On the contrary I see the general quality of discourse deteriorates with these and such and everyone with their views just gets more stuck with those views.

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  • 2
    IMO an agit-prop tag, specifically, is a great idea. A post on this site could certainly be controversial, but it could be an actual question actually about philosophy or philosophers or philosophical works. (Say, Neitzsche, often controversial.) But agit-prop is agit-prop - - in a word, propaganda; dog-whistling; the launching of a debate, event, or here "a question page", under the guise of supposed academic discussion or debate on a question - but really nothing more than creating a fracas, publicity as it were, about a political issue.
    – Fattie
    Commented Jun 10 at 12:28
  • 1
    I guess agit-prop questions are ok on politics-SE On the extreme contrary! agit-prop is wholly banned on politicsSE, and indeed, the whole politicsSE site is in danger of collapse as it borders on being dominated by agitprop "questions".
    – Fattie
    Commented Jun 10 at 12:29
  • 2
    What questions, in specific, are we saying are agit-prop? this feels like the classic "we can all agree that somebody in the room is a traitor to the cause, but nobody agrees on who it is". Possibly I'm just missing context, but I suspect you'd find that "red hot subjects" are hard to define
    – Kaia
    Commented Jun 17 at 17:49
  • @Kaia When I wrote the question I expected that people would broadly agree. I am interested in having more find-grained VTC reasons. See my earlier questions like VTC reasons Bee in the bonnet etc. I am not interested in wading in controversies. Agit-prop was a term I was reminded by an answer. As you can see the question to which that term was used was 1st marked controversial and then closed (1/2)
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 18 at 7:24
  • @Kaia Evidently though the very fact of stating: There are controversies is itself controversial!! So I would withdraw the question if I could. Since I guess its not possible... well whatever... I gave a fairly straightforward metric for "controversial" in my answer — hi + votes AND hi - votes. Evidently even my answer below is now at +4, -4. So deleted it just now. As I said I am not interested if others are not (2/2)
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 18 at 7:34
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    Are there any non-controversial questions in philosophy?
    – JimmyJames
    Commented Jul 1 at 19:32
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    @JimmyJames Is that a rhetorical question?
    – Rushi
    Commented Jul 2 at 0:48
  • @Rushi It was a poor attempt at light humor that didn't land, I think. Obviously, what a given philosopher argued isn't typically controversial but that's really just history. It seems to me that any philosophical idea can (and probably has been) questioned. Some ideas that are more controversial than others but if we are being serious, I'm not sure exactly what the tag means in this context.
    – JimmyJames
    Commented Jul 2 at 14:12
  • @JimmyJames Well sadly (sometimes funnily) we dont get facial cues etc on this medium. Some things get ppl so hot under the collar it's hard to make our which is which. A longer form of my question-comment above would be Is that rhetoric? Protest? Or joke?
    – Rushi
    Commented Jul 2 at 14:16
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    Hey @Rushi, what happened when the philosopher tried ten puns out to see if any would stick?
    – JimmyJames
    Commented Jul 5 at 21:01
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    @JimmyJames no pun in ten did.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Jul 31 at 17:55

3 Answers 3

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My policy on this is as follows:

  1. I see the question and think "Oh my gosh this is gonna attract discussion and unqualified opinions like a torch in the woods attracts moths".
  2. I make a mental note to keep an eye on it, as I prefer hands-off moderation where the community could, in theory, handle the matter themselves. This is especially true for close-votes since my vote is binding.
  3. As soon as things turn out as feared, I add the controversial post notice to the question to make clear that we won't allow bs to pile up.
  4. I keep a close look and occasionally run through, deleting where necessary.

Yes, it is much more tedious than just closing and be done with it but 1) bipartisan controversies tend to produce "abuse of power" calls due to the nature of those attracted to them and 2) it allows the community to self-regulate (even if that does not work well atm, it's how it should be done IMHO).

I'm happy to get a meta vote I can refer to next time and close the question right away, though 😁

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  • Yeah... Your 'superpower' paradoxically makes you less powerful. It would be swell if you could 'set aside your diamond temporarily' and cast a normal VTC
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 10 at 9:50
  • It would be nice to be able to choose between binding and normal VTC, yes
    – Philip Klöcking Mod
    Commented Jun 10 at 9:52
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    I only downvoted this to indicate that, whilst everything said here is absolutely exemplary process, to be more specific about the more specific issue at hand, the existence of an agit-prop tag would more clearly bring to the fore the issue of questions that have no connection to philosophy and are simply, well, agit-prop. (Note that in the QA at hand, all of the answers - while well-written and heartfelt - have nothing to do with philosophy and are just the usual (trivial, obvious) two sides from the (totally commonplace in the US) political axe "so the left co-opted word X, we want it back".
    – Fattie
    Commented Jun 10 at 12:35
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    Just to add to @Fattie -1 explanation: As an individual your (Phil) action cannot be faulted. My -1 is to register that I dont like the status quo
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 10 at 17:00
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    This is the only reasonable way of handling the situation given the reality of moderation. It isn’t a perfect solution but that’s because there just isn’t one in the first place.
    – Not_Here
    Commented Jun 13 at 22:57
  • If it really was like a torch in the woods, that would be a great way to get rid of unwanted moths.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Jul 31 at 17:58
-1

Opening on a philosophical note, the use of the term agitprop is absolutely inapplicable. Agitprop refers to government propaganda cloaked in popular entertainment. For the term agitprop to apply, there would have to be a government body of doctrines that were promoted through drama, literature, and music. Whatever the flaws of this site, it is not the mouthpiece of a socialist regime hellbent on inculcating a willingness to submit to tyranny and absolutist thinking.

From time to time, emotionally inspired philosophical conflicts of worldview, like those often branded with the term culture wars, emerge in questions. Questions about Zionism, intelligent design, and sexuality are the typical topics, with vocal parties from religiously fundamental and secular and atheistic voices often falling at odds over topics like political philosophy, evolutionary theory, and homosexuality. Sometimes heated comments are exchanged.

The site's moderators gravitate towards mildly restricted speech typical of the social democracies of Europe more than the more permissive Anglo-American nations who tend to allow hate speech, religious fundamentalism, and pseudoscience equal voice. All three moderators consistently allow the community to sort out such conflicts for itself. This is why the site has a vibrant collection of contributors who often disagree, not only in what constitutes an appropriate question, but what constitutes an appropriate answer.

Since PhilSE is an international community, there is a range of what is "acceptable" and it would be difficult to impose acceptable on these edge cases top down. In Germany, Nazism gets you arrested. In Illinois, it gets you free representation from the ACLU and a parody in a comedy like the Blues Brothers. The moderators are volunteers from three separate European countries, and even the cultures of those nations differ in subtle ways.

Lastly, there is always a way of specifying your reason for closure. Why add a bunch of mechanisms when the mechanism in place already allows you to explain why you vote for closure? To quote a wise man, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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  • 2
    I agree with many points brought forward in this answer but I can hardly reconcile the bold text of your third paragraph with what you write in the rest of your answer, our practice, or the (actually rather restrictive) Terms of Service that bind us moderators above personal taste (and are written in the US based company central)
    – Philip Klöcking Mod
    Commented Jun 11 at 18:27
  • 1
    @PhilipKlöcking The comment was uttered in defense of the limits provided by moderators. Your comment presumes that US corporations, in this age of political correctness and government pressure, somehow observe the same folkways and mores of free speech that typical US citizens support and observe. That distance from the general US population is a matter of political debate and criticism. As for transcending personal taste, I'm sure all moderators here strive for...
    – J D
    Commented Jun 11 at 18:54
  • impartiality and rising above personal taste. But I'd be curious what you claim to be the objective means of evaluating and determining being entirely outside of personal taste and preference anymore than it's possible to draw a hard line between "doing philosophy" and editorializing factual responses.
    – J D
    Commented Jun 11 at 18:58
  • Your last para is our area of disagreement. The others... not relevant to the discussion... if we get into it some are laughable. eg. Here is roughly Indian Tucker Carlson mocking America The next time an American commentator says India is not safe, remind them that 6 year olds kill American teachers with guns whereas in India we dont give knives to our children.
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 12 at 2:09
  • @JD by coincidence, I added some objective measures to the end of my answer
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 12 at 4:01
  • @JD Whataboutism is the basis for all legal systems. And all means all — common law, civil law, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, you-name-it. Its called precedent. Or if one wants to be legally punctilious Stare Decisis.
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 12 at 5:59
  • Anyways... The Indian newscaster is beside the point other than to say that the world does not share America's self-image. The point being the elephant in the room in your answer — you make out as though European and American are different. Its like saying Islam is different from Christianity because Christians worship God and Muslims worship Allah. In simple terms: This site has an overwhelming westo-centric bias. Admittedly not as extreme as politics-SE where by definition Palestinians are terrorists and Israelis are God's chosen. [I deleted my account] But not all that much better either
    – Rushi
    Commented Jun 12 at 8:10
-3

Which issues? You didn't link to it, but I presume that you're talking about this question, which is mired in a word game because its author doesn't know the history of Pride.

There's no problem with giving the author a straight answer: they misunderstood what the words designate in ordinary usage. Regardless of how you feel about queer folks, the question can be answered in a direct, unambiguous, and uncontroversial manner.

(Also, don't pretend like your biases aren't visible. We can all see and infer your private beliefs. If you don't want to be judged for them, then write them out of your comments and actions.)

1
  • As usual, downvoters aren't capable of justifying themselves. Our techniques are supposed to cut through rhetoric, sophistry, and delusions; not reinforce or excuse them.
    – Corbin
    Commented Jun 18 at 15:14

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