Basically, I think a good way to encourage members of the site to read more political theory would be to put some kind of marker on their profile or next to their name that shows how much and what kinds of political theory they have read. I also hope this would have the secondary effect of allowing lurkers who see disagreements to get a better feel of which side has a stronger basis for their position.

Maybe something simple like marking which accounts participate in the weekly reading series, and make it a riff on challenge coins or something.

Edit: I should specify that it would be awarded to people that are participating in discussion groups and such as a way to signify who is involved in the education side of the community.

Edit 2: Fuck It, I have been convinced that this is a bad idea. Instead how about a weekly what are you reading thread?

  • Civility [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I think this is a bad idea for a few reasons.

    1. This website already has a major sectarianism problem, posts and comments removed for sectarianism often get hundreds of upbears and our userbase is overwhelmingly ML/XJT. Theory flairs would almost certainly lead to people discriminating sectarianly based on what sects theory is in people's flairs.

    2. There's a major difference between reading, understanding and being able to apply theory. Just having read a book (and I say this as someone who's read a bunch of books) doesn't mean it's being applied to any given post. If you're making a post that comes from an understanding of theory and you want to share that, reference the relevant part of those texts in the post, preferably with page numbers and a link. Saying "I've read State and Revolution AND all 3 Volumes of Capital while you're only half way through Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism so my opinions on Hasan's new car are objectively better than yours get rekt nerd" isn't something we actually want to happen or people to implicitly assume.

    3. It implicitly places purely academic experience of having read a book over practical experiences of surviving oppression, agitation, organisation and direct action.

    4. It would take a significant amount of dev time to set up and an enormous amount of mod time to administrate, both of which could almost certainly be better spent elsewhere.

    • TheGreenOx [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      These critiques are fair, so here is how I would modify the original idea. (I put this in the original post too)

      Instead of just "read theory" what if the criteria was "participate in hex-bear book club" so it is less about collecting books and more about who engages with the material and the community?

      Also I figured point 4 would be a sticking point. I had intended this post as more of a conversation starter, and figured someone who knew more about running websites would weigh in.