We've had a number of posts and messages to modmail recently expressing concern about, broadly, the culture war thread getting to be less "culture" and more "war". So let's talk about that.

^{I know we have a lot of meta threads, but what can you do: last week's CW thread was half again as large as any previous; it seems to be time.}

Here's some things the mod team has been thinking about:

• People making comments which are more allied with one faction or another isn't necessarily a problem. But it seems to us that upvotes have become increasingly correlated with which "side" a comment supports, where that was historically less the case. This is especially true for ideas outside the Overton window among the general public - those to the right of it are far more likely to be upvoted than those to the left. As a consequence, we risk evaporative cooling our way into becoming a poor place for discussion between people who disagree because everyone who disagrees has been driven off. And I think a lot of people are going to get driven off if we keep steelmanning murderers and avowed racists quite so frequently. Not that we have any intention of making these against the rules; the concern is their prevalence, not individual incidents.

• In a similar vein, we are seeing more comments which do little but express support of or opposition to a position, or to each other, with relatively little in the way of actual contribution, and often with a disappointing lack of charity. These are still, thankfully, a small fraction of the CW threads - but more than we'd like.

• As the subreddit grows, it's hard to keep up standards. On the other hand, a higher number of posts means it's easier for us to prioritize quality and sacrifice some quantity. Maybe we should start more readily giving temporary bans for things for which we've historically given warnings.

• We've had several people express frustration that our moderation policy allows someone to state an extreme opinion but not someone to express an extreme reaction to it. Personally, while I understand the sentiment, I'm in favor of the current policy - but I'm curious what everyone else thinks, and am especially curious if we might come up with a policy which would satisfy everyone.

• We experimented with a change in moderation style a while ago, but never did much with the results.

• A temporary moratorium on explosive topics for the first few days after they come up might let us talk about them more calmly.

• Most importantly - ultimately, what values do we care to prioritize in the subreddit? Are we still in favor charity, of niceness, community, and civilization? Do we prioritize the truth, niceness and community be damned? Do we just want to get practice defending positions no one else wants to defend? Should this be a place you come to have your views challenged, or would you rather read interesting articles you already mostly agree with?

We're not sure what if anything should be changed on our part, or what we should ask of you. For a start, we might step up the severity of our interventions, and we'd like to ask people try to more readily upvote thoughtful defenses of positions not "on their side" - though also I want to express gratitude that this seems to already be happening a fair bit.

With all that said, I think the subreddit continues to mostly be a good place for discussion, often great discussion. Maybe we mods are just fatigued by modqueue-induced selection bias.

So - we're opening the floor to you, for commentary on the above and on the subreddit in general. What works, what doesn't; what shouldn't change, what should; are we just imagining things, are things worse than we've represented them here; do you have an idea we haven't even considered (we're especially interested in these) - what are your thoughts?

Also: please, please keep this thread civil.

Edit: also, this seems a good place to announce that /u/zahlman has accepted an invitation to join the mod team.