Articles & Happening Meta Discussion

Articles & Happenings is the third attempt at a news board on the Kiwi Farms. It is a cursed place. Every moderator who has been assigned here has resigned within a year. During 2016, the political crossfire was so bad it spread to different boards and culminated in me banning American news discussion entirely for several months. It has been deleted in its entirety twice. There is no actual discussion here, it's people posting garbage. It leans much further right than the rest of the site and doesn't particularly conduct discussion because dissenting opinions are dogpiled by a thousand memelords posting shit they read on /pol/ without any critical analysis.

The only rules that can be enforced are empirical ones with boolean violation answers. New threads must cite a real source directly and must use the headline of the article as a thread title without any editorializing. Articles must be archived in some way and must link to the original article. Replies that are one word or a reaction images are automatic one-month bans from the board.

I'm creating this now because it seems like this place is here to stay and is one of the largest areas of the entire site. I might as well throw in bare minimum effort to improve it. I don't even try to find mods for here because they will quit, without exception. I've added new prefixes ("Business" and "Crime") just now.

Discuss.


New threads should be made like this.

 

[The Pink Panther]

God this is so fucking gay I don’t understand how you people find this shit enjoying.

Its fun to pass the autism around.

Fun discussions occur within A&H.

 

[DumbDude42]

3. The search feature is borked and both users and the writers of the articles themselves use exceptional and unintuitive titles. The mods discretion policy that seems to currently exist is probably the best option for this minor problem. There isn't really that many threads posted anyway so it should be obvious if somebody didn't search.

thats just laziness tbh
you dont need the search function. instead, when you post a thread on some news story, just manually check the list of recently made new threads to see if the same thing has already been posted earlier today or yesterday. takes a minute or two at most.

 

[BILLY MAYS]

This thread is probably past saving but why are you shitting it up with these boring recycled memes? It's embarrassing.

Because watching people getting upset over memes is funny

 

[George Floyd Sneed]

Because watching people getting upset over memes is funny

Hmm...is this the exciting content we’re missing out on because A&H hurts left wing fee fees?

 

[Fish-Eyed Fool]

God this is so fucking gay I don’t understand how you people find this shit enjoying.

I love this thread. It's like a microcosm of the entire board.

People reeing for pages on end, contradicting their own positions, getting "dogpilled" with neg ratings, getting sidetracked, getting mad. And then it all devolves into bitching about right/left wing politics and the JQ. You're telling me this isn't the autism you came for?

Never change a thing, Null.

 

[X Prime]

This thread is probably past saving but why are you shitting it up with these boring recycled memes? It's embarrassing.

Not a problem once Null's proposal for banning for reaction images becomes a thing.

 

[Dynastier]

A&h is great, just because some Spergs freak out doesn't make it bad. The pol posting is stupid, but easy to ignore.

It obviously bothers some people that a&h talks about stuff they could get shut down on Reddit. Oh well, don't like it, don't go there.
I mean, really, what's the problem? Some group of 7 'supporters' who only use the site to talk in dms and complain in chat about newfags?
Maybe the policy of only modding people who don't want it doesn't work for a&h. Hell, make hk47 mod and don't tell him.

 

[Alec Benson Leary]

I've always considered the relative dumpster-fire aesthetic of A&H to be a feature, not a bug. I don't even know if it's possible to "fix" A&H and that's kind of the appeal. News and politics has turned into an autistic cage match on every possible outlet, so that's not unique to the Farms. The trick that people ought to learn is to just pass over opinions that irk them and learn when it's no longer productive to keep reply-chaining each other because you're really not apt to change anyone's mind at this point.

Some people are firmly rooted in Left-leaning ideology and some people are firmly rooted in Right-leaning ones. I'd actually enjoy seeing more Left-leaning topics broached into A&H, but it feels as though whenever it happens it's coming from a user who's gone so far left that they're dragging whole-ass Communism into the discussion rather than something more moderate,. The problem with that right now is that it's incredibly, frustratingly difficult to find moderate, Left-leaning journalism that would constitute as a viable source, since most mainstream outlets have worked overtime to purge out their moderates and relegated them to posting on blogs or on YouTube videos.

Though, you'd see the same "dog-piling" result if a user came in here repeatedly, unironically posting vaguely-sourced threads about how Africans are born exceptional and exist only to rape because some self-proclaimed trailer scientist in Kentucky said so. That opinion wouldn't find too much unironic agreement on the board.

It's also worth noting two things: one, it's not all that difficult to find "moderate" leftists. I'm one. We exist here the way we do because we've been driven out of lefty communities because they are run by insane people (as we all know by now). We have spent several years venting because we need to and it's not safe to do it in what used to be lefty talking circles. Kiwi Farms is not the only place this occurs by far. Dave Rubin has built a career out of it, to name just one example.

Two: I'd love it if we had more lefty posters actually sperging on as much as the heavy right wingers do. In the first post Null said Dynastia is great at calling out right-wanky shit and I agree. So is CatParty. I kind of wish those two, and others like them, would quit the pithy one-sentence hot takes and actually speak more in depth about why whatever shit they're seeing posted here is stupid. I've seen both of them do it on occasion and they're great at it. I'm not tagging anyone because it's not all on the two of them and it should be something they want to do, not a responsibility, but there really does seem to be this "don't engage, just drive-by mock and run" philosophy on the part of so many leftists. Maybe the reason A&H is turning into too much of a right-wing circlejerk is because right-wingers are far more likely to be interested in actually explaining their beliefs instead of assuming that the good people already agree with them and anyone who even asks a question is "radicalized" and not worth speaking to.

Again, let me emphasize I'm not calling out Dynastia or CatParty or anyone specific, but if you happen to be a lefty who is sick of the bias going on, I suggest you be the change you want to see. There's plenty of us who would welcome you. As @It's HK-47 says, any serious nazi ramblings or bitching about Africans being subhuman also gets dogpiled and downvoted to hell and back.

I'm all for month bans on one-word answers, and the usual "and nothing of value was lost" and other such responses that are so trite we know they're coming before post them. Maybe there should just be a "one word post" rating so you can use that instead of clogging up the page.

 

[An Ghost]

the board has been downhill since all the 13 year old edgelords showed up after Christchurch. When the board is deleted again, it will be Tarrant’s last victim.

The greatest change made to the board is separating fresh threads into “new sperging” on the home page. People here seem to genuinely enjoy just posting headlines without discussion. You give Ps1gamenwatch his own world news thread for dumb jap boat news and he stops.

See, I get that, but where were the calls for Animal Control to get nuked when the Kero shit dropped and the outraged furfags and furfags adjacent flooded the site? The same could be said for the Weeb Wars shit, plenty of autists came over from that who didn't really "get" the site culture and that section of the site is considered okay too. Why the enmity towards A&H in particular, for all this time?

I've been seeing people, some of which have deleted their accounts, who have been bitching on-and-off about A&H for months and months now. At best it comes off as people just disliking a part of the site that they don't have to interact with, and at worst it makes it seem like gatekeeping. Not to mention, and I know I'm just one guy so ymmv on this, but I've not really run into this mythical /pol/ poster who runs headlong into a thread to sperg about dah joose on a nonsensical tirade on more than a couple of occasions, and when it did happen you know what I did in response? Rated it dumb or autistic and moved on to the next post, because it's not a big fucking deal, like, at all.

Neutering/nuking A&H in response to a couple of exceptional individuals just seems like overkill.



Not my fault that it comes off as that. Again, that assumption is being generous in assuming that there's no agenda behind it other than wanting mouthbreathing idiots to not make an autistic screed every now and again.

When the Amberlynn board was full of spergy users, open season was called and everybody just doxed each other until things settled. When the Greer board was full of spergy users, they were mocked until they left and the board still ended up being deleted. A&H needs some change.

And you can specifically keep beating the “you don’t have to post here” drum but the “here’s shit I don’t like” methodology of threads here does spill over. People posted enough autism about video games and multimedia that gets moved, the fun hangout boards are now KiA lite.
Edit: I remembered when somebody started a dota thread, a bunch of A&H posters filed in and complained about the game because they’re fucking roaches and spread. Like, do people from the board know what fun is?

 

[Keystone]

My actual suggestions for improving A&H:

1. Disable all ratings. It will cut down on a lot of clutter where people always try to be the first person to make the same tired jokes, discourage dog-piling, and overall I think will foster better discussion.
2. Ban posting op-eds outside of the clickbait thread.
3. Ban users who post duplicate threads.
4. Ban users who post reaction images.
5. Make more megathreads.
6. Limit users to only posting a maximum of 2 threads a day.

1. Ratings don't (and shouldn't) matter. Getting rid of them in this situation would prove otherwise. If getting a bunch of neg rates gets under someone's skin then they need to lurk more, get thicker skin, or find somewhere else to post.

Personally to me it does smack of certain people wanting to sanitize something they don't like and, funny enough, actually turn it into a hugbox where their feelings don't get hurt by silly icons on the bottom of their internet post. So which is it: nuke the board because feels are getting hurt, or nuke it because steps won't be taken to avoid hurt feels? Outrageous false dichotomy.

2. If there's going to be any new A&H subforums I would suggest this be one. That clickbait thread is impossible to keep up on any one particular story.

3. Sure, temp ban if they do it too many times in a certain period or can't be bothered to remove it of their own cognizance in a quick manner after being told. Perm (board) ban if they get to the point where it's obvious they aren't even checking the first page for what they're posting.

4. Agree.

5. Also agree.

6. Was ambivalent on this at first, but thinking more about it I'd have to disagree. Mainly because it becomes a "well why two? why not just one?" until eventually it trickles down to "you don't need to post that many times in one day" kind of thing. I'd argue #3 would make this a moot point, since only good threads that can stand on their own will be allowed to stay.

Maybe the reason A&H is turning into too much of a right-wing circlejerk is because right-wingers are far more likely to be interested in actually explaining their beliefs instead of assuming that the good people already agree with them and anyone who even asks a question is "radicalized" and not worth speaking to.

I believe this is very poignant and deserves highlighting.

Two: I'd love it if we had more lefty posters actually sperging on as much as the heavy right wingers do. In the first post Null said Dynastia is great at calling out right-wanky shit and I agree. So is CatParty. I kind of wish those two, and others like them, would quit the pithy one-sentence hot takes and actually speak more in depth about why whatever shit they're seeing posted here is stupid.

As I said earlier in the thread, I genuinely enjoy most of their postings. Not to suck on Dyn's dead abbo cock, but I really enjoyed when he stopped to elaborate on a comment of his, because while it was usually contrary to whatever was being discussed he made the genuine effort to explain his position. Might not always agree with it, but I immensely respect taking the time to discuss it while not being contrarian for the sake of it; something you see way too much of elsewhere both online and IRL.

Also I feel like an idiot not noticing Ron changed his name to @Rand /pol/ . Sorry man, love the Roger avatar.

 

[Cosmos]

I agree when it comes to unecesary hate to @Ashy the Angel but the guy atleast posts his opinion and isnt afraid to defend it ( even though 99% of the times that opinion is some excepcional shit) , but from what i have seen from @Cosmos A&H posts every time he posts he either A) posts a uwu wholesome animal thread that most people dont really care outside of a thats nice, B) an excepcional stunning and brave hot take like murder is bad m'kay or C) bitching about A&H so i wouldnt consider him a good example of someone getting unnesary hate

Wait. @Cosmos is not a woman?

I am a woman. Not sure where the male pronouns came from, haha.

And I think it’s pretty obvious that A&H has been inundated with /pol/tards, many of whom joined after the Christchurch massacre. I just remember waves of brand-new accounts glorifying the slaughter of random Muslims. Also, I’ve been called a bleeding heart libtard and a brainwashed socialist for what I think are pretty benign opinions that wouldn’t raise eyebrows elsewhere.

And lol, people who say there isn’t an echo chamber problem are usually firmly in the echo chamber themselves. Most people with leftist opinions have been run off or just don’t want to deal with the constant neg ratings anymore.

 

[Dynastier]

the board has been downhill since all the 13 year old edgelords showed up after Christchurch. When the board is deleted again, it will be Tarrant’s last victim.

The greatest change made to the board is separating fresh threads into “new sperging” on the home page. People here seem to genuinely enjoy just posting headlines without discussion. You give Ps1gamenwatch his own world news thread for dumb jap boat news and he stops.

When the Amberlynn board was full of spergy users, open season was called and everybody just doxed each other until things settled. When the Greer board was full of spergy users, they were mocked until they left and the board still ended up being deleted. A&H needs some change.

And you can specifically keep beating the “you don’t have to post here” drum but the “here’s shit I don’t like” methodology of threads here does spill over. People posted enough autism about video games and multimedia that gets moved, the fun hangout boards are now KiA lite.

Can you illustrate the actual problem? Like, quote the "spillover"? I never see "hey come check out a&h, it's great!' in community watch. I do see a shitload of "I don't like your opinion, go back to a&h".

It's frustrating to be outnumbered but maybe... Deal with it?

Also, dynastia rarely engaged, he was the no content bullshit poster most of the time. @Senior Lexmechanic does a much better job going against the grain. Cat party posts funny bait articles, I don't think I have ever seen him share an opinion.

I am a woman. Not sure where the male pronouns came from, haha.

And I think it’s pretty obvious that A&H has been inundated with /pol/tards, many of whom joined after the Christchurch massacre. I just remember waves of brand-new accounts glorifying the slaughter of random Muslims. Also, I’ve been called a bleeding heart libtard and a brainwashed socialist for what I think are pretty benign opinions that wouldn’t raise eyebrows elsewhere.

And lol, people who say there isn’t an echo chamber problem are usually firmly in the echo chamber themselves. Most people with leftist opinions have been run off or just don’t want to deal with the constant neg ratings anymore.

Lol you are a very black pot.
The Christchurch kiddies have mostly moved on anyway. Totally agree they sucked and got in the way though.
What's the actual problem though? I thought it was a&h spilling over, now you say the problem is actually that lefties are outnumbered? God forbid one single place on the internet not be controlled by the left....

 

[An Ghost]

Can you illustrate the actual problem? Like, quote the "spillover"? I never see "hey come check out a&h, it's great!' in community watch. I do see a shitload of "I don't like your opinion, go back to a&h".

It's frustrating to be outnumbered but maybe... Deal with it?

Also, dynastia rarely engaged, he was the no content bullshit poster most of the time. @Senior Lexmechanic does a much better job going against the grain. Cat party posts funny bait articles, I don't think I have ever seen him share an opinion.

There was a time where multimedia and games were just full of “i hate sjw reboot of cartoon” and “vidya has bad PR” because they were posted here and moved. Cause they’re not news.
But the culture war stuff became common on those boards so now games has a KiA lite megathread for the people who actually believe Kf is the last bastion of free speech.
And like I also said, A&H are roaches and will just post in whatever new content threads there are. Often the people who have 1k posts in a month that are disruptive have most of their posts in the news board. The stuff in the dota thread is deleted because well it’s not fun. Younger kiddos don’t remember the salt mine board which was deleted because it was supposed to be the fun version of A&H but it was such a cringey, angry, dumpster fire. Eventually the mods were banned.

You don’t see “articles and happenings best board” ever posted, because it’s not.

 

[KimCoppolaAficionado]

Lol you are a very black pot.
The Christchurch kiddies have mostly moved on anyway. Totally agree they sucked and got in the way though.
What's the actual problem though? I thought it was a&h spilling over, now you say the problem is actually that lefties are outnumbered? God forbid one single place on the internet not be controlled by the left....

The problem isn't "lefties are outnumbered", it's "reasonable political opinions on either side of the aisle are outnumbered by autistic /pol/tards who shriek and throw their own feces when confronted with opinions such as 'I do not believe that genocide is good', 'I believe black people deserve the same rights as white people', or 'I think that there are ways besides violent revolution to deal with our current political issues'."

 

[Dynastier]

The problem isn't "lefties are outnumbered", it's "reasonable political opinions on either side of the aisle are outnumbered by autistic /pol/tards who shriek and throw their own feces when confronted with opinions such as 'I do not believe that genocide is good', 'I believe black people deserve the same rights as white people', or 'I think that there are ways besides violent revolution to deal with our current political issues'."

Lol this is just not true. Those idiots mostly exist after discussion has ended, otherwise they're told to fuck off from both sides. But why not just quote some examples?

 

[Absolutego]

the board has been downhill since all the 13 year old edgelords showed up after Christchurch. When the board is deleted again, it will be Tarrant’s last victim.

The board's been going downhill for longer than that. I blame the 2018 midterms and the Kavanaugh confirmation, which was when a lot of the more prolific circlejerkers joined the Farms.

 

[An Ghost]

Lol this is just not true. Those idiots mostly exist after discussion has ended, otherwise they're told to fuck off from both sides. But why not just quote some examples?

Europe doesn't have free speech. If you can be punished for political speech it isn't free, this isn't exactly a leap of logic.

That's a rather common story with black democrats in poor areas.
I'm gonna go against the kiwi grain and suggest the correlation works the opposite way the racists would say. It's not that black people are more likely to steal. It's that black people who steal are less likely to be punished for it by the democrats. And, I guess, that black constituency will let black representatives get away with a lot more.

The /pol/ is coming from inside the house

 

[Dynastier]

I've been negrated twice now in this thread, now I'm getting dogpiled. Where are all the pol kiddies to negrate my detractors away and dogpile them?
I have never been to pol and saying black people aren't more likely to steal is hardly a pol talking point.

Maybe you guys just immediately dismiss anything that doesn't agree with you 100 percent. As you just lumped me in with pol due to ????.

 

[Safir]

I'm a communist and longtime Chris fan. Before TDS and troons infected everything else, I went here several times a year for Chris updates.
I like A&H and use it as my to-go news aggregator. I read most standalone A&H threads I click on and all I post in.

Beauty Parlor, Weeb Wars, and Amberlynn often have the same exact problem. Any big subforum will become like this.

I tried getting into weebs / AL / parlor but couldn't figure out where to start.

Null should spend one of his PR youtube appearances saying things that will entice lefty thinkers who want to speak their minds, if he wants both free speech and more balanced boards.

Have a mod/janitor highlight valuable posts, like it was done for the GET, skinner box style. Optionally reward valueposters with fancier points.

Perhaps remove reaction stickers for A&H? So that way people are not downvoted into leaving?
Edit: Interesting, I think this is the first time I have been downvoted instead of just ignored when I say something controversial/borderline exceptional

You haven't been downvoted, you exceptional individual. You got 1 Dumb and several Agrees. Disagree is not negative.
Also people pay for stickers.

It’s too late to delete my comment and I’m just parroting everyone else ha. But still you guys need to learn that calling a transwoman a “he” over and over is not by itself funny.

Calling a transwoman "he" is not a joke. Males are male. Calling failed males "she" is not lefty, it implies manhood is a state of grace and womanhood is degradation, and if you don't understand this you should not speak for leftists.

 

[Freedom Fries]

It's also worth noting two things: one, it's not all that difficult to find "moderate" leftists. I'm one. We exist here the way we do because we've been driven out of lefty communities because they are run by insane people (as we all know by now). We have spent several years venting because we need to and it's not safe to do it in what used to be lefty talking circles. Kiwi Farms is not the only place this occurs by far. Dave Rubin has built a career out of it, to name just one example.

Two: I'd love it if we had more lefty posters actually sperging on as much as the heavy right wingers do. In the first post Null said Dynastia is great at calling out right-wanky shit and I agree. So is CatParty. I kind of wish those two, and others like them, would quit the pithy one-sentence hot takes and actually speak more in depth about why whatever shit they're seeing posted here is stupid. I've seen both of them do it on occasion and they're great at it. I'm not tagging anyone because it's not all on the two of them and it should be something they want to do, not a responsibility, but there really does seem to be this "don't engage, just drive-by mock and run" philosophy on the part of so many leftists. Maybe the reason A&H is turning into too much of a right-wing circlejerk is because right-wingers are far more likely to be interested in actually explaining their beliefs instead of assuming that the good people already agree with them and anyone who even asks a question is "radicalized" and not worth speaking to.

Again, let me emphasize I'm not calling out Dynastia or CatParty or anyone specific, but if you happen to be a lefty who is sick of the bias going on, I suggest you be the change you want to see. There's plenty of us who would welcome you. As @It's HK-47 says, any serious nazi ramblings or bitching about Africans being subhuman also gets dogpiled and downvoted to hell and back.

I'm all for month bans on one-word answers, and the usual "and nothing of value was lost" and other such responses that are so trite we know they're coming before post them. Maybe there should just be a "one word post" rating so you can use that instead of clogging up the page.

So what you're saying is that we need a "nigger" sticker? Honestly though I do agree that threads would get clogged with one word answers if stuff like agree and disagree were removed. If people are so obsessed with their reactions, maybe a better path would be for A&H ratings not to count toward people's super important made-up online score.

The problem isn't "lefties are outnumbered", it's "reasonable political opinions on either side of the aisle are outnumbered by autistic /pol/tards who shriek and throw their own feces when confronted with opinions such as 'I do not believe that genocide is good', 'I believe black people deserve the same rights as white people', or 'I think that there are ways besides violent revolution to deal with our current political issues'."

None of the things you mentioned are contentious at all in A&H. 90% if that stuff disagreeing is obviously a joke which is in many ways meant to poke fun at takes like that and/or people saying it because they can't say it elsewhere (at least elsewhere where people aren't actually the scary neon-nazis some people wrongly believe to inhabit this sub). I think a lot of people complaining about a right wing circle jerk and being "dogpiled" should just use r/politics if they can't take a couple "downvotes." You will find what you're looking for there, and I don't think this site has the set-up to match that type of forum anyway.