I’m also mystified at why traceless deletition/banning are desirable properties to have on a forum like this. But (with apologies to the moderators) I think consulting the realpolitik will spare us the futile task of litigating these issues on the merits. Consider it instead a fait accompli with the objective to attract a particular writer LW2 wants by catering to his whims.
For whatever reason, Eliezer Yudkowsky wants to have the ability to block commenters and have the ability to do traceless deletion on his own work, and he’s been quite clear this is a condition for his participation. Lo and behold precisely these features have been introduced, with suspiciously convenient karma thresholds which allow EY (at his current karma level) to traceless delete/ban on his own promoted posts, yet exclude (as far as I can tell) the great majority of other writers with curated/front page posts from being able to do the same.
Given the popularity of EY’s writing (and LW2 wants to include future work of his), the LW2 team are obliged to weigh up the (likely detrimental) addition of these features versus the likely positives of his future posts. Going for the latter is probably the right judgement call to make, but let’s not pretend it is a principled one: we are, as the old saw goes, just haggling over the price.
Yeah, I didn’t want to make this a thread about discussing Eliezer’s opinion, so I didn’t put that front and center, but Eliezer only being happy to crosspost things if he has the ability to delete things was definitely a big consideration.
Here is my rough summary of how this plays into my current perspective on things:
1. Allowing users to moderate their own posts and set their own moderation policies on their personal blogs is something I wanted before we even talked to Eliezer about LW2 the first time.
2. Allowing users to moderate their own front-page posts is not something that Eliezer requested (I think he would be happy with them just being personal posts), but is a natural consequence of wanting to allow users to moderate their own posts, while also not giving up our ability to promote the best content to the front-page and to curated
3. Allowing users to delete things without a trace was a request by Eliezer, but is also something I thought about independently to deal with stuff like spam and repeated offenders (for example, Eugine has created over 100 comments on one of Ozy’s posts, and you don’t want all of them to show up as deleted stubs). I expect we wouldn’t have built the future as it currently stands without Eliezer, but I hadn’t actually considered a moderation logs page like the one Said pointed out, and I actually quite like that idea, and don’t expect Eliezer to object too much to it. So that might be a solution that makes everyone reasonably happy.
I think consulting the realpolitik will spare us the futile task of litigating these issues on the merits. Consider it instead a fait accompli with the objective to attract a particular writer LW2 wants by catering to his whims.
As usual Greg, I will always come to you first if I ever need to deliver well-articulated sick burn that my victim needs to read twice before they can understand ;-)
Edit: Added a smiley to clarify this was meant as a joke.
I’m also mystified at why traceless deletition/banning are desirable properties to have on a forum like this. But (with apologies to the moderators) I think consulting the realpolitik will spare us the futile task of litigating these issues on the merits. Consider it instead a fait accompli with the objective to attract a particular writer LW2 wants by catering to his whims.
For whatever reason, Eliezer Yudkowsky wants to have the ability to block commenters and have the ability to do traceless deletion on his own work, and he’s been quite clear this is a condition for his participation. Lo and behold precisely these features have been introduced, with suspiciously convenient karma thresholds which allow EY (at his current karma level) to traceless delete/ban on his own promoted posts, yet exclude (as far as I can tell) the great majority of other writers with curated/front page posts from being able to do the same.
Given the popularity of EY’s writing (and LW2 wants to include future work of his), the LW2 team are obliged to weigh up the (likely detrimental) addition of these features versus the likely positives of his future posts. Going for the latter is probably the right judgement call to make, but let’s not pretend it is a principled one: we are, as the old saw goes, just haggling over the price.
Yeah, I didn’t want to make this a thread about discussing Eliezer’s opinion, so I didn’t put that front and center, but Eliezer only being happy to crosspost things if he has the ability to delete things was definitely a big consideration.
Here is my rough summary of how this plays into my current perspective on things:
1. Allowing users to moderate their own posts and set their own moderation policies on their personal blogs is something I wanted before we even talked to Eliezer about LW2 the first time.
2. Allowing users to moderate their own front-page posts is not something that Eliezer requested (I think he would be happy with them just being personal posts), but is a natural consequence of wanting to allow users to moderate their own posts, while also not giving up our ability to promote the best content to the front-page and to curated
3. Allowing users to delete things without a trace was a request by Eliezer, but is also something I thought about independently to deal with stuff like spam and repeated offenders (for example, Eugine has created over 100 comments on one of Ozy’s posts, and you don’t want all of them to show up as deleted stubs). I expect we wouldn’t have built the future as it currently stands without Eliezer, but I hadn’t actually considered a moderation logs page like the one Said pointed out, and I actually quite like that idea, and don’t expect Eliezer to object too much to it. So that might be a solution that makes everyone reasonably happy.
As usual Greg, I will always come to you first if I ever need to deliver well-articulated sick burn that my victim needs to read twice before they can understand ;-)
Edit: Added a smiley to clarify this was meant as a joke.
Let’s focus on the substance, please.