This seems right to me. It seems to me that “moderation” in this sense is perhaps better phrased as “active enforcement of community norms of good discourse”, not necessarily by folks with admin privileges as such. Also simply explicating what norms are expected, or hashing out in common what norms there should be.
I agree that there should be much more active enforcement of good norms than heavy-handed moderation (banning etc.), but I have a cached thought that lack of such moderation was a significant part of why I lost interest in lesswrong.com, though I don’t remember specific examples.
In hindsight, I think I undervalued the importance of pointing out minor reasoning/content errors on Less Wrong. “Someone is wrong on less wrong” seems to me to be an actually worth fixing; it seems like that’s how we make a community that is capable of vetting arguments.
Completely agree. One particularly important mechanism, IMO, is that brains tend to pay substantially more attention to things they perceive other humans caring about. I know I write substantially better code when someone I respect will be reviewing it in detail, and that I have trouble rousing the same motivation without that.
I agree that there should be much more active enforcement of good norms than heavy-handed moderation (banning etc.), but I have a cached thought that lack of such moderation was a significant part of why I lost interest in lesswrong.com, though I don’t remember specific examples.
Completely agree. One particularly important mechanism, IMO, is that brains tend to pay substantially more attention to things they perceive other humans caring about. I know I write substantially better code when someone I respect will be reviewing it in detail, and that I have trouble rousing the same motivation without that.