YOU are speaking!
As many are aware, there has been a lot of site drama in the past week or so. This is NOT a post to discuss that, and I ask that you keep all serious discussion about it on the pinned posts it belongs in. What I am looking to do here is ask the community what they would like to see from c/agitprop going forward.
There have been ongoing discussions on Hexbear regarding making more serious posts, having a place for effortposting to get noticed (and thus incentivizing more to be made, nobody likes spending hours working on en effortpost for 5 upbears), and having a more focused place for less casual/more academic discussion. The nature of this comm, or at least what the intended purpose was supposed to be upon its inception, was to give Hexbear users a place to produce and find agitprop for use in everyday discussions. Given these two statements, last week I made an impromptu U.S. Election response/commentary resource Megathread here on c/agitprop. I figured that perhaps this was the place to open up to users for less casual/more serious analysis and discussion regarding the U.S. election, like… for actual traditional agitprop purposes.
The post was a huge success, and the community received tons of high-effort posting from individuals into the Megathread posting their own takes on the U.S. election, many references and direct links to highlight other Hexbear user’s great effortposts elsewhere on this site, and good resources from outside of Hexbear. In my opinion, this post/style of post could be a useful and engaging format for effortpost generation/congregation of larger news events in the future.
Now finally for the purpose of this post: What would you like to see from c/agitprop going forward? Feedback on the U.S. Election response/commentary resource Megathread is of course appreciated, and I’d love to hear any ideas regarding how it went/if you (dis)liked it/holding a similar thread in the future, but please do not limit your input based only on what you have seen so far from this comm. This community is, of course, only what we make it, so any and all feedback is greatly appreciated and goes a long way towards improving everybody’s user experience.
Below I will list a few ideas I have seen floated by the community for c/agitprop in the past. Additionally, I will try to keep this list updated with any ideas that are provided in the comments of this post as well in order to highlight them for discussion.
•Effortpost Megathread for larger news events (frequency/guidelines for “larger” TBD here)
•Agitprop Megathread running parallel to the Weekly News Megathread for more nuanced discussion/analysis to be used both on Hexbear and elsewhere
•Ongoing Agitprop workshop/resource thread to organize the Hexbear community’s many skills and have relevant, ready-to-go agitprop for current events ready for dissemination outside of this site
•Reference guide for left/left-adjacent spaces to crosspost agitprop material to
•Agitprop field report for returning to Hexbear (potentially contest style) and seeing where agitprop is reaching the widest audience and receiving the most engagement
•”Quick Draw” style + up to date archive of good agitprop in order to quickly debunk common talking points
•Keeping a calendar of known upcoming events to help prepare agitprop ahead of time
•Highlighting past major events or public figures to conduct a postmortem effortpost analysis
A lot of thought went into this idea and I appreciate it. I am not 100% sure how possible that would be/the amount of work it would take, but it is certainly a good idea to help be ready for upcoming events. I will try to look further into this to gauge!
As for timing of [Major Event] Effortpost Megathreads in the future like the one I posted for the election, if it is something that can be anticipated and has a set date, there is no reason to not have that posted preemptively and ready to go. I hadn’t even considered that, so if that thread is one of the directions we decide to go in the future, I will be making sure it is up ahead of time so long as it meets the (TBD) criteria of major event.
I think your diseulogy idea is funny but would have to be very focused on actual analysis and not just shitting on somebody. Maybe an idea for when we are in a period of time of decades that nothing has happened and can give users a good outlet for effortposting and analysis.
Yeah, sustainability and viability is fundamental to this kind of effort. Don't destroy your modteam by burning them out simply because I had a good idea that caused your crew to get overextended. I say this as someone who has done project work jobs in the past.
As for upcoming events that do not have a set date, it would still be possible to do the work prior to the event itself - it's not like we have to set our schedule of a mega based on the date that the event itself happens, right? If we can foresee things likely occurring, we can encourage a culture of preparation such as the very likely chance that Macron was going to stage a constitutional coup - that manoeuvre was being telegraphed increasingly loudly before it actually happened, so a mega would have been a good chance to prep for its likelihood. Ultimately this is what the radical newspapers of the prior era would do and it's partly how they would hone cadre's political awareness and analysis; if you can see an event likely coming, you can start to strategise for it in the present. The next step is to make more direct irl organising efforts around this likely event to exploit the absolute hell out of it. This is why so many of the most effective radical leaders came out of the newspaper printing milieu - it was absolutely no coincidence.
Anyway, start small and work on the biggest events. If there's a lull maybe test the viability of a diseulogy mega for one of the most reviled figures who is still around today, or one who appears to be on their last legs. See how that works. If it is successful then start growing it as the capacity of your team allows.
My initial suggestion for this, especially to ease the demands on your modteam, would be to have a mod put a comment below the mega for any and all shitposting. A "Shit Here" comment, if you will. That way the mega will be largely self-cleaning and it will create structural disincentive for the shitposting because nobody wants to dig into the depths of a reply thread which is really long. They're most likely going to the top-level comments. You could even de-prioritise the cesspit comment by instructing people not to give it uppies, and whoever posts that comment can remove their automatic self-uppie.
Again, just spitballing and thinking about minimising the demands on your team while running containment etc. - if you like it, maybe try it one day. If it works, run with it.
Just FYI I added more to that top comment if you wanted to check it out - I think my edit and your reply came in at roughly the same time.
Well maybe that comment wasn't entirely off-brand for me in that case lol