permies.com publishing standards

Although about photography, this video has a lot of insight into why permies is such a successful community.  

paul wheaton wrote:Something that I have said several dozen times in the past which appears to not be covered here is:   I prefer to see posts that offer "my position" rather than "the truth".  I've deleted a lot of stuff with "the truth".  The reason is that if somebody posts "the truth" and a second somebody has an alternative position, then posting the alternative feels a lot like entering into conflict - so it is less likely to get posted.  And it is that alternative that I want to see shared on this site.  

The staff is dealing with a lot of "truth" and "facts" lately.  It seems to go like this:  somebody "puts their thing down" - some sort of facty fact.   And then somebody else attempts to present their alternative view, and the first person then wants to get into how stupid the second person is because they clearly don't know what "fact" and "truth" means.  

So I just want to be super duper clear here:  go ahead and dress your shit up in fact clothes on your site.  Leave it, and your hostility, off of my site.  The staff here have better things to do than get lectures from dumbfucks on just how facty their bullshit is.  

On this site, you are welcome to state your position.  And if you get all "truthy" then your bullshit will be deleted.   And if you get all hostile about it, your hostility gets deleted too.  If you cannot possibly present your position as your position then get the fuck off my site.  This site will only publish the posts of the good people that can figure out how to present their position - which seems to be most people.

Thanks Paul!!!

I looked up this thread to make a comment to it about the recent influx of non-publishable materials, and Paul beat me to it by two hours!

In the usa, it seems like cases of a new (and therefore frightening) disease are rapidly multiplying. The stock, bond, and oil markets have crashed hard. It's times like this that we need niceness more than ever. We need soft, gentle human-to-human connections with each other. Gentle conversations.

Seems like the experts are of little use right now, because so many things are outside of their customary patterns. Even in good times, we have learned as a moderation team that bringing "experts" into the discussion isn't all that helpful. Posts aren't meeting publishing standards because people are saying, "Your expert is a piece of shit, and my expert is the only one that knows the truth."

More posts than typical are not being published this week. That is due to their lack of niceness, and not due to the subject matter or which side of the opinion someone is expressing. We have staff on every possible side of any discussion. The staff that disagree with an opinion, are the least likely to take action against it. They ask staff that really agree with the opinion to review it. That's the nature and maturity level of the volunteer staff.

Because of the extra workload right now reviewing and discussing questionable posts, staff are leaning towards immediately deleting non-compliant posts rather than asking that they be edited.  It takes a lot of extra effort to return a post for rewriting. The staff are unpaid volunteers. We'd rather not be moderating. We'd prefer to spend our time planting beautiful gardens, or loving on our family and friends.

If you are a poster that lives on the edge of niceness, you can expect more posts to be deleted outright, and fewer opportunities for rewriting.

It's standard policy to not talk about moderation decisions in the main forums, or via purple mooseage. A post that is made to the tinkering forum gets quicker response, cause any active moderator can deal with it, and it acts as a perpetual resource for other people with similar concerns.

Gir_Bot wrote:I am gir bot! A rather limited bot buried deep within the bowels of this forum software.  I come to life once in a while to help with interesting chores!

Today, I have been activated because bio-staff have classified a post you wrote as "belongs in Tinkering With This Site".  

In order to keep the main forums on topic, we limit discussion about how the site and staff are performing to the [url=https://permies.com/f/11/tnk]Tinkering

Another moderation button that is getting a lot of use right now sends this message:

Gir_Bot wrote:
Today, I have been activated because bio-staff have classified a post you wrote as "stating truth rather than opinion".   The provided clue is:  

Please write in a way that leaves room for other people's opinions, and avoids stating things as facts or science when they are your personal position.

People have been posting controversial  topics into the main forums, instead of into the more carefully vetted Cider Press. Here's Gir_Bots message about that.

Gir_Bot wrote:Today, I have been activated because bio-staff have classified a post you wrote as "cider press topics outside the cider press".

The Cider Press is the only place on the site where controversial topics may be discussed. Things like politics, religion, or hemp.  The provided clue is:

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