Irony: I clicked on this post because an unemployed friend of mine recently had their mechanical turk account suspended for no clear reason. They’re still waiting on the appeal process two months later…

For anyone considering this work, you should also be prepared for your “employers” to randomly reject your submitted work and deny you pay. Good times.

having people go out for original research is basically saying “Let people make up bullshit.”… not a good idea.

Yeah, I’ve seen what this does to fan wikis. There is a certain type of personality that thrives on having their version of reality be what is reflected in wiki articles, and they will revert any and all attempts to excise their personal theories. If admins step in to break up the edit war, it’s clearly “favoritism” and “admins should only exist in service to the users and have no say in content”. Some of these wiki addicts go out of their way to become the wiki equivalent of Reddit’s supermods in order to ensure that they have the upper hand in these content disputes.

“No original research” is one of the core pillars of your ability to push back against delusional nonsense. If you’re determined to live without it, you need to have very strong content standards in its place to decide the difference between objective fact and someone’s conspiracy vomit. Good content policies save you from having to waste a bunch of time on bad faith arguments about why the content of your wiki pages have to abandon fact for massaging someone’s ego.

(Somewhat of a tangent, but if you’re bored you can look into a brief history of AlexShepherd’s crusade against circumcision in the Silent Hill fandom. He’s not the only person I’ve seen thrive on wikis who don’t adopt an original research policy, but definitely the most entertaining read.)

It’s a common feature of any demographic that is convinced of their moral superiority. Once you’ve accepted that you and your leaders are on the side of justice and are presented a designated enemy, you cease having to look inward. Progress requires acknowledging that you are operating inside of a flawed system, and that you have to work with people from other systems who acknowledge their own flaws.

Tangent: “Enlightened centrists” acknowledge the flaws of both sides of an argument while failing to acknowledge that both sides have to play fair.

Basically another Eternal September. Yes, I’m going to keep linking to it in these threads like the lazy bum I am.

It is possible, but a major US election requires a massive burst of popularity to avoid splitting the vote of the majority candidate having “less shitty than the other guy” policy positions. Failure to breach that threshold hands the victory to the majority candidate with the shittiest position on policies.

The simple test is this: has your third-party candidate achieved a realistically high margin of popular opinion behind them? I’m not saying be a slave to polling, but it isn’t rocket science either. You will know if a third-party candidate has momentum behind them. They have charisma that sucks people in. They are somehow getting attention regularly driven to them despite the majority candidates pumping much more money into the news media.

If the third-party candidate doesn’t have something bordering on a revolutionary ideological movement backing them, they aren’t going to make that cut in a nationwide race.

Edit: I’m not saying give up. Donate to causes you honestly believe in. Volunteer. Do what you can to make a difference. Support local government efforts to implement ranked choice voting in your state, which can and will break this system. (look at Alaska) But when it comes to casting that final vote, be realistic, even if it means voting against all the hard work you just put in. Sunk cost fallacy at the expense of giving away victory doesn’t help anyone.

Edit: Recalling terrible dad joke because it wasn’t obvious enough I was making fun of the Reddit admins.