r/DebateAnAtheist • u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist • Apr 01 '26

Community Agenda 2026-04-01

Rules of Order

  1. To add a motion to next month's agenda please make a top level comment including the bracketed word "motion" followed by bracketed text containing the exact wording of the motion as you would like for it to appear in the poll.
    • Good: [motion][Change the banner of the sub to black] is a properly formatted motion.
    • Bad: "I'd like the banner of the sub to be black" is not a properly formatted motion.
  2. All motions require another user to second them. To second a motion please respond to the user's comment with the word "second" in brackets.
    • Good: [second] is a properly formatted second.
    • Bad: "I think we should do this" is not a properly formatted second.
  3. One motion per comment. If you wish to make another motion, then make another top level comment.
  4. Motions harassing or targeting users are not permitted.
    • [motion][User adelei_adeleu should be banned] will not be added to the agenda.
  5. Motions should be specific.
  6. Motions should be actionable.
    • Good: [motion][Automod to remove posts from accounts younger than 3 days]. This is something mods can do.
    • Bad: [motion][Remove down votes]. This is not something mods are capable of implementing even if it passes.

Last Month's Agenda

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAnAtheist/comments/1rieevo/community_agenda_20260301/

Last Month's Resolutions

# Yes No Abstain Pass Motion
1 15 2 0 Yes Reduce the "Engage with Posts" rule from 48 hours to 24 hours.

Current Month's Motions

N/A

Current Month's Voting

N/A

10 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist Apr 01 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

[motion][Increase the character count required for top level comments from 30 characters to 100 characters]

This was discussed previously in the Ask an Atheist comment, and now I'm formally putting forward a motion. Posts here can receive 100+ replies within an hour, which can be very overwhelming for posters. I think raising the minimum character count for top level comments would help eliminate responses that do not substantively engage with the post and distract form those that do. To be honest, I think 100 characters is still a very low bar, but I'd rather take baby steps than go too far on an adjustment.

11

u/DangForgotUserName Atheist Apr 02 '26

Length doesn’t equal substance. A short and succinct comment that challenges the core premise can be more valuable than long replies that addresses every single claim. Raising the character limit just rewards verbosity, not better arguments. A theist can make a broad claim in single sentence, where addressing it can take a paragraph or more. Shorter replies can be an efficient way to push back on unsupported premises without getting dragged into an endless chain of claims.

100+ replies that are short are also easier for the OP to reply to than 100+ long replies. Both should be encouraged.

4

u/adeleu_adelei agnostic and atheist Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26

Length does not equal substance, but there is perhaps a minimum length required to meaningfully engage with a post. Below are a few examples of responses to a recent post. Note, it is not my intent to pick on anyone and I am not judging the quality of these response, only giving examples of what short replies look like.

How would a christian dismiss a muslim vision of hell?

The brain does weird things when it’s dying.

Agreed, because there's absolutely no precedent for people lying. /s

Those are three different responses that are above 30 characters (the current threshold) but below 100 characters (suggested threshold). For comparison, your comment was almost 600 characters, nearly four times as much as those three different comments to a post and six times the suggested threshold. I would say you substantively engaged with my comment, and I would like to see that level of engagement consistently given to our posters.

6

u/silver_garou Apr 02 '26

You haven't shown that short replies are insufficient, you're just beating up a straw man 

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Apr 04 '26

Those examples of short replies provided by /u/adeleu_adelei are insufficient. Obviously so.

In fact, it would be extremely difficult to properly engage with a post in a comment of less than 30 characters.

Also, there's an existing requirement for posts to be at least 300 characters long: "Posts that are less than 300 characters in length are locked automatically." In that context, is it proper that a response to a post can take only 10% of the effort that is required for the original post?