If it’s the Google autocomplete we’re worried about, I don’t think it makes sense to restrict onsite usage of the word. Google’s autocomplete is populated by what people search on Google for, not what’s present on a website, right? Heck, “less wrong” is just a search phrase… I don’t think that something is going to pop up after the search phrase “less wrong” just because it happens to get discussed on the domainlesswrong.com a lot, or even because the phrases seem to appear on a lot of web pages together.
If we’re worried about people searching for the word and finding a discussion on Less Wrong… who cares? I’m assuming that we’re concerned about affecting the impressions of people researching LW itself, not random passerby so much.
If Less Wrong’s own site search piggybacks on Google’s search and feeds in to its autocomplete, that could potentially be problematic because people might search for discussions of the concept within LW and feed the autocomplete with things we don’t want. The solution to this one seems pretty simple: if you’re searching the LW archives for something you don’t wish to come up on Google’s autocomplete, use an obscure and autocomplete-free search engine such as Lycos (which seems to support the “site:yourdomain.com″ modifier for within-site search).
If we’re worried about people investigating LW and seeing discussions we don’t want them to see, then yeah, it may make sense to avoid using the word. So I think the best rationale for “phyg” is: use it so that people can speak freely without having what they say easily available to people searching on Google? Even if your comment is relatively safe for public eyes, perhaps someone will reply and say something un-kosher that will be found and cause people condemn LW unfairly?
Another possible reason is to avoid guilt by association… in other words, brain-association, not Google-association.
If it’s the Google autocomplete we’re worried about, I don’t think it makes sense to restrict onsite usage of the word. Google’s autocomplete is populated by what people search on Google for, not what’s present on a website, right? Heck, “less wrong” is just a search phrase… I don’t think that something is going to pop up after the search phrase “less wrong” just because it happens to get discussed on the domain lesswrong.com a lot, or even because the phrases seem to appear on a lot of web pages together.
If we’re worried about people searching for the word and finding a discussion on Less Wrong… who cares? I’m assuming that we’re concerned about affecting the impressions of people researching LW itself, not random passerby so much.
If Less Wrong’s own site search piggybacks on Google’s search and feeds in to its autocomplete, that could potentially be problematic because people might search for discussions of the concept within LW and feed the autocomplete with things we don’t want. The solution to this one seems pretty simple: if you’re searching the LW archives for something you don’t wish to come up on Google’s autocomplete, use an obscure and autocomplete-free search engine such as Lycos (which seems to support the “site:yourdomain.com″ modifier for within-site search).
If we’re worried about people investigating LW and seeing discussions we don’t want them to see, then yeah, it may make sense to avoid using the word. So I think the best rationale for “phyg” is: use it so that people can speak freely without having what they say easily available to people searching on Google? Even if your comment is relatively safe for public eyes, perhaps someone will reply and say something un-kosher that will be found and cause people condemn LW unfairly?
Another possible reason is to avoid guilt by association… in other words, brain-association, not Google-association.
Overall, I find these arguments weak compared to the evidence against the policy.
I’ll delete this poll and remake it in another comment if someone makes a significant point that I didn’t think of.
[pollid:400]
I would prefer the option:
(i.e. as Manfred said, clique, clan, sect, charismatic public figures, fans, etc.)
(and even then I don’t think the google keyword problem is a particularly big one, it’d just be a wee bit nicer if we avoided it)