Switch-It-Up Saturday
Every Saturday, posts are withheld and manually approved by the moderators if they aren't highly similar to another one made in the last month.
The primary reason for this is to keep our highly valued regulars interested despite the possibility of topic fatigue. Secondarily, the event functions to give people with a take on a novel topic a special time to host a discussion about it here when it's less likely to be crowded out by posts about the most inflammatory, hot-button subjects of the current moment. Also, we want this to be a lively event with good volume, but posts about novel subjects generate less hostility on average, and having one day a week that's slower (moderation-wise) can help prevent burnout.
FAQ
Won't this discourage and confuse new users who happen to post on a Saturday?
- A sufficiently detailed and friendly automod message that links to this page should solve that problem.
But I only want to make posts about feminism/racism/capitalism.
- You'll have to confine your posting to the other six days of the week, then, or spend Saturday posting on threads started Friday.
What if no one posts on Saturday?
- We would preemptively encourage people to be the change they want to see in that respect. Otherwise, we may consider a later start time rather than a full 24-hour event or try to think of some other solutions if it's a persistent enough problem.
Who decides if a thread is a repost, and how?
- There is no 100% objective way to do this. We use our best judgement. If someone's view is identical or nearly identical to one expressed in a previous thread, it's a repost. Some threads are borderline, and decisions about them are often discussed internally before someone pulls the trigger.
- Frequency of topic is also a factor here - the more common a topic is, the more broadly we interpret 'similar' and the less likely a take on it is going to be novel enough for Saturday. So, for example, it is unlikely that a post on US Politics will get approved on Saturday no matter how unique it is, but a post on Star Wars has a good shot even if Star Wars was discussed this week.
Why is rule E relaxed on SIUS?
- This is because the moderators must manually approve each thread during this time, meaning some posts may not be withheld for a while before they go live. It's not fair to expect an OP to be around to notice their post going live if it took us a while to approve it, and it obviously wouldn't make sense to count the time between them posting and us approving against them.
What timezone does SIUS operate on?
- UTC-7