That’s fair enough, but it only demonstrates that he wasn’t willing to unilaterally and proactively do this, not that he wouldn’t have cooperated if you had imposed it on him. It’s baffling to me that you spent hundreds of hours on this issue without (apparently) even attempting to impose a compromise that would have brought out the best in both Said and his detractors.
That’s not true! Did you read the very first moderation conversation that we had with Said that is quoted in the OP?
After the comment above, we reached out to Said privately and Elizabeth had something like an hour long chat conversation with him asking him what we need to do to get him to change his behavior, to which his response was:
Buuuut what’s going on here is that—and this is imo unfortunate—the website you guys have built is such that posting or commenting on it provides me with a fairly low amount of value
This is something I really do find disappointing, but it is what it is (for now? things change, of course)
So again it’s not that I disagree with you about anything you’ve said
But the sort of care / attention / effort w.r.t. tone and wording and tact and so on, that you’re asking, raises the cost of participation for me above the benefit
(Another aspect of this is that if I have to NOT say what I actually think, even on e.g. the CFAR thing w.r.t. Double Crux, well, again, what then is the point)
(I can say things I don’t really believe anywhere)
[...]
If the takeaway here is that I have to learn things or change my behavior, well—I’m not averse in principle to doing that ever under any circumstances, but it has to be worth my while, if you see what I mean
Currently it is not
I hope to see that change, of course!
What do you suggest we do after such a response? The response seems to me pretty clearly show that he wasn’t/isn’t interested in compromising on these dimensions.
This is a response to asking him to be, in full generality, more tactful or “prosocial,” not to asking him to follow a clear bright-line rule. I’ll grant that Said may not be willing or able to be tactful enough in all situations, yet there seems to be rough consensus that his comments have a lot of value in other situations, so my suggestion would be to try to delineate those situations.
Random thought: maybe there could have been disproportional gains got by getting Said to involve more humor in his messaging and branding him the official Fool of Lesswrong.com?
It seems the community indeed gets service out of Said shooting down low quality communication, and limiting that form of communication socially to his specific role maybe would have insulated the wider social implications, so that most value would have been preserved each way, maybe?
My model of Said would have been offended by being asked to take on a Jester role as a condition of staying on LessWrong, but perhaps he would have been interested?
I do think the background culture that we’re in is one that doesn’t really have this role anymore, because comedians are sometimes major public figures whose opinions are treated with respect; people don’t dismiss what they say just because they’re frivolous.
Unfortunately I do not think there are clear bright-line rules that would fix these problems, as clear bright-line rules are close to non-existent in social situations like this (what is the clear and ambiguous bright line rule that would delineate a sufficient note at the top?). The closest that I found was to allow authors to moderate their own post, which we did implement and Said has been vehemently opposed to in ways I talk about in the OP.
Beyond that, I also don’t think your characterization that this was in response to a fully-general request to be more tactful or “prosocial” is accurate. The question Elizabeth asked just before most of the quote above is:[1]
But if you’re saying “it’s comment exactly as you are, or nothing”… I honestly don’t know what our decision is, I’d have to talk with the other mods
To which Said responded with most of the quoted section above. Like, yeah, Elizabeth didn’t propose a specific clear line rule, but this exchange to me does not leave the door open for suggesting such clear rules, or suggesting further compromises.
Of course you’re right that there are no perfectly clear bright-line rules that would completely fix these problems, the question is whether there is a clear enough rule that would ameliorate the problems. You would have substituted a judgment call on whether all of Said’s comments across the whole site were on net beneficial, with a much easier judgment call on whether a given note is sufficient or not. And whether Said’s comments were net beneficial was evidently such a close call that you dithered about this decision for literal years, which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Just to be clear, this overall does not strike me as a close call. The situation seems to me more related to the section on “Crimes that are harder to catch should be more socially punished” plus some other dynamics. My epistemic state changed a lot over the years, but not in a way that would result in thin margins, but in a way where some important consideration, or some part of my model would shift, and this would switch things from “in expectation this is extremely costly” to “in expectation what Said is doing is quite important”.
Something being a difficult call to make does not generally mean that it also needed to be a close call.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
I mean, we tried anyways, but I do think it was overall a mistake and a reasonable thing to do at the time would have been to respond with “well, sorry, if you as a commenter are already pre-empting that you are not willing to change basically at all based on moderator feedback, then yeah, goodbye, farewell, goodluck, we really need more cooperation than that”. Elizabeth advocated for this IIRC, and I instead tried to make things work out. I think Elizabeth was ultimately right here.
That’s fair enough, but it only demonstrates that he wasn’t willing to unilaterally and proactively do this, not that he wouldn’t have cooperated if you had imposed it on him. It’s baffling to me that you spent hundreds of hours on this issue without (apparently) even attempting to impose a compromise that would have brought out the best in both Said and his detractors.
That’s not true! Did you read the very first moderation conversation that we had with Said that is quoted in the OP?
After the comment above, we reached out to Said privately and Elizabeth had something like an hour long chat conversation with him asking him what we need to do to get him to change his behavior, to which his response was:
What do you suggest we do after such a response? The response seems to me pretty clearly show that he wasn’t/isn’t interested in compromising on these dimensions.
This is a response to asking him to be, in full generality, more tactful or “prosocial,” not to asking him to follow a clear bright-line rule. I’ll grant that Said may not be willing or able to be tactful enough in all situations, yet there seems to be rough consensus that his comments have a lot of value in other situations, so my suggestion would be to try to delineate those situations.
Random thought: maybe there could have been disproportional gains got by getting Said to involve more humor in his messaging and branding him the official Fool of Lesswrong.com?
It seems the community indeed gets service out of Said shooting down low quality communication, and limiting that form of communication socially to his specific role maybe would have insulated the wider social implications, so that most value would have been preserved each way, maybe?
My model of Said would have been offended by being asked to take on a Jester role as a condition of staying on LessWrong, but perhaps he would have been interested?
I do think the background culture that we’re in is one that doesn’t really have this role anymore, because comedians are sometimes major public figures whose opinions are treated with respect; people don’t dismiss what they say just because they’re frivolous.
I think it still sounds intriguing to try it out sometime. (With a different user who is funnier than Said.)
I volunteer as tributeUnfortunately I do not think there are clear bright-line rules that would fix these problems, as clear bright-line rules are close to non-existent in social situations like this (what is the clear and ambiguous bright line rule that would delineate a sufficient note at the top?). The closest that I found was to allow authors to moderate their own post, which we did implement and Said has been vehemently opposed to in ways I talk about in the OP.
Beyond that, I also don’t think your characterization that this was in response to a fully-general request to be more tactful or “prosocial” is accurate. The question Elizabeth asked just before most of the quote above is:[1]
To which Said responded with most of the quoted section above. Like, yeah, Elizabeth didn’t propose a specific clear line rule, but this exchange to me does not leave the door open for suggesting such clear rules, or suggesting further compromises.
If Said and Elizabeth both agree I could share the full transcript, but don’t want to do so unilaterally.
Of course you’re right that there are no perfectly clear bright-line rules that would completely fix these problems, the question is whether there is a clear enough rule that would ameliorate the problems. You would have substituted a judgment call on whether all of Said’s comments across the whole site were on net beneficial, with a much easier judgment call on whether a given note is sufficient or not. And whether Said’s comments were net beneficial was evidently such a close call that you dithered about this decision for literal years, which would seem to indicate that a relatively small nudge would have tipped his contributions to the positive side.
Also, if the door to Said changing his behavior was so completely closed, I’m really confused about what all those hundreds of hours were spent on.
Just to be clear, this overall does not strike me as a close call. The situation seems to me more related to the section on “Crimes that are harder to catch should be more socially punished” plus some other dynamics. My epistemic state changed a lot over the years, but not in a way that would result in thin margins, but in a way where some important consideration, or some part of my model would shift, and this would switch things from “in expectation this is extremely costly” to “in expectation what Said is doing is quite important”.
Something being a difficult call to make does not generally mean that it also needed to be a close call.
I mean, we tried anyways, but I do think it was overall a mistake and a reasonable thing to do at the time would have been to respond with “well, sorry, if you as a commenter are already pre-empting that you are not willing to change basically at all based on moderator feedback, then yeah, goodbye, farewell, goodluck, we really need more cooperation than that”. Elizabeth advocated for this IIRC, and I instead tried to make things work out. I think Elizabeth was ultimately right here.