Posting something to LW requires a nontrivial investment of time and energy into the crafting and editing of the article. High quality posts require much more effort than low quality posts. If the rules are not clear, or if there is not an effective and reliable process for appeal, then two things will happen:
(1) There will be fewer posts as more authors choose not to post on a topic if they think there is a chance of it being moderated. E.g. if there is some haphazard moderation of low-quality political posts, but without clraity or consistency, then you will end up seeing no high quality posts either as people who would be writing are unsure whether their time investment would be wasted.
(2) What posts do exist will be lower and lower quality as authors are not willing to invest significant time and energy into something they are uncertain will be allowed on the site.
If you have uncertainty about the rules, then you end up increasing the assessed probability that any potential topic might be moderated, which discounts the effective return for writing these posts, which decreases the quality of LW. If you want to make LW a better community, then clarify those rules.
People should focus on contributing the kind of content that clearly belong to LW and thus isn’t likely to be moderated.
When people plan to post content that doesn’t clearly belong to LW like posts about Trump and politics then I don’t think there a problem with uncertainty discouraging the posts.
It’s okay to discourage posts on the edge.
There are no fixed rules. There are values and value judgments. Don’t try to optimize for rules but for what brings LW forward.
I think we should change this, because a lack of fixed rules makes LW pretty hard to use and helps keep it dead.
It’s not clear to me that a lack of fixed rules has that consequence. Why do you think that?
It seems to have had consequences for at least one poster (namely, the OP).
Sure. That seems like a slender thread of evidence on which to hang any sort of general claim, though.
Posting something to LW requires a nontrivial investment of time and energy into the crafting and editing of the article. High quality posts require much more effort than low quality posts. If the rules are not clear, or if there is not an effective and reliable process for appeal, then two things will happen:
(1) There will be fewer posts as more authors choose not to post on a topic if they think there is a chance of it being moderated. E.g. if there is some haphazard moderation of low-quality political posts, but without clraity or consistency, then you will end up seeing no high quality posts either as people who would be writing are unsure whether their time investment would be wasted.
(2) What posts do exist will be lower and lower quality as authors are not willing to invest significant time and energy into something they are uncertain will be allowed on the site.
If you have uncertainty about the rules, then you end up increasing the assessed probability that any potential topic might be moderated, which discounts the effective return for writing these posts, which decreases the quality of LW. If you want to make LW a better community, then clarify those rules.
People should focus on contributing the kind of content that clearly belong to LW and thus isn’t likely to be moderated.
When people plan to post content that doesn’t clearly belong to LW like posts about Trump and politics then I don’t think there a problem with uncertainty discouraging the posts. It’s okay to discourage posts on the edge.
We disagree about what “clearly belongs” on LessWrong.
Is that still true if we define “clearly belongs” as “not containing parts that make some people wish to have it moderated away”?
In addition, many people don’t need rules to avoid posting content that they fear might be unwelcome at LessWrong.