I have two feature requests in response to this class of concerns.
Problem statement: authors feel pressure to respond to comments even if they think responding is low value. Meanwhile, readers hesitate to comment because they do not wish to impose costs (response costs or social costs) on the author.
Solution: authors can use emoji be able to tag a comment to indicate why they are choosing not to respond. LessWrong already has this via emoji responses, and I have used them for this purpose (as a comment author). A beneficial side-effect is that emojis can’t be karma-voted, further reducing social pressure. My feature requests aim to improve this avenue.
Tiny: remove emoji question marks. For example, the emoji that says “Seems offtopic?” can just be “Offtopic”, like “Soldier Mindset”. This would make the emoji better express something like “I am not responding because this is (in my opinion) offtopic” rather than “This might be offtopic but I am not sure, l am not responding because I can’t be bothered to find out”. This suggestion also applies to:
Too Combative? → Too Combative
Misunderstands Position? → Misunderstands Position
“Not worth getting into? (I’m guessing it’s probably not worth the time to resolve this?)” → “Not worth getting into (I don’t think it’s worth the time to resolve this)”.
Larger: highlight author emojis. If a post author gives an emoji response to a comment, this can be given more visibility. For example, instead of “🙏 2” in the bottom right of a comment, it could display “🙏 Habryka 1″. This would also cover emoji responses from the author of the parent comment.
More positive example: I replied to a reply about schitzophrenia with a “Changed my Mind” emoji and an upvote, and felt good about praising a helpful reply without reducing the signal-to-noise ratio.
Relatedly, I have a draft of a “Bowing out of this thread” react with a bowing monopoly-man, that I think is a more polite ending to a thread than “Not worth getting into”.
Anecdotally, I would perceive “Bowing out of this thread” as a more negative response because it encapsulates both topic as well as the quality of my response or behavior of myself. While “not worth getting into” is mostly about the worth of the object level matter.
(Though remarking on behavior of the person you’re arguing with is a reasonable thing to do, I’m not sure that interpretation is what you intend)
I think a more generic react/emoji like that could be a good addition for cases where none of the existing emoji fit, and for people who don’t want to be specific about why they are not responding further, for whatever reason. Thanks for working on that.
I don’t think “Not worth getting into” is impolite in any way. Replying to a comment consumes time, and it will frequently be the case that someone’s time is better spent on other activities. Since there is no obligation on the author to respond (per habryka’s post), they can’t be considered impolite for not responding further.
I don’t think “Not worth getting into” is impolite in any way.
I believe you are outright incorrect about how many people will receive this, then! Many people will, in fact, receive that statement as hostile, which will lead to it being underused by people who are concerned with politeness, which will lead to it correctly being perceived as statistically rude.
I intend to say that “Not worth getting into” is not rude on LessWrong, as a normative statement, rather than a descriptive statement about what LW readers will think. Partly it is a normative statement about what (I think) LW culture is, and partly it is a normative statement about what (I think) LW culture should be.
Arguments for what LW culture is
When an activity gives an explicit affordance for something, using it is not rude by default. Destroying someone’s base is rude in a game of Legos, but not rude in a game of Starcraft. Since LW has a “Not worth getting into?” react, using it is not rude by default. If the LW react changed to “Not worth getting into”, that would also be not rude by default. The reacts are therefore a surprising tool for shaping LW culture.
Also, as I mentioned above, there is no obligation on the author to respond, per habryka’s post. Any response, even a react, is supererogatory. By reacting the author has given the commenter (and other readers) strictly more information than they are obliged to, at no cost. It is a free gift. Since we don’t believe in Copenhagen Ethics we can’t fault an author for not doing more just because they did something instead of nothing.
In those communities saying anything bad about another community member is frowned upon.
It’s not even bad that someone should occasionally say something that is not worth responding to. Threads have to end at some point. There are many things that are worth saying but are not worth responding to. If a culture is at the point where pointing out a not-even-bad thing about a single comment is considered impolite and/or hostile, that culture is deep into The LinkedIn Attractor, and doomed as a rationalist endeavor.
Also, I go back to my problem statement above. It’s valuable for authors to have easy ways to gracefully indicate why they are not responding. LW culture should support authors in choosing how much time to spend responding to comments. Failure to do so results in fewer authors, and greater use of moderation tools to block comments as a preventive. It also results in fewer comments by people respectful of the time of authors, without discouraging comments by people who are not so respectful (eg, allegedly, Said). This is bad.
On statistical rudeness
Frequent users of “Bowing out of this thread” reacts and “Not worth getting into” reacts will be slightly different, statistically. That doesn’t make the reacts polite or rude. By analogy, people who wear cowboy hats are statistically different to those who wear bowler hats, but that doesn’t make the hats polite or rude.
Is this worth getting into?
This comment was worth it for me because it’s potentially upstream of LW features & culture, and LW potentially has an impact on the risk of extinction. If you don’t think it’s worth getting into further I will not consider this impolite, rude, or hostile.
Clarification re “emojis can’t be upvoted or downvoted”, which @the gears to ascension and @mruwnik would bet is false. I mean that if I give an emoji react to a post saying “not worth getting into”, I can’t get karma votes on that emoji, whereas if I give a text reply to a post saying the same thing, it can get karma votes and replies from people who think it is getting into. Since I don’t want to get into meta-discussions about whether a comment is worth replying to, or have such choices judged by others, that is a feature. I’m interested if I’m missing something here.
Good point. I further feature-suggest that if the author replies “Offtopic” and someone downvotes that it is ontopic, I still want to see the author’s react. Maybe that could be “📌 Habryka −1″.
That is literally what happens! Hidden reacts show up in a small menu in the bottom right corner, and when you hover over that you can see both “upvotes” and “downvotes” on the react:
I wasn’t clear (I should have made a mockup, sorry). I don’t think the author’s react should be in hover-text, I think it should be inline text visible by default without the reader needing to hover anywhere. At least on desktop, anyway. Currently just the react and the number is visible by default.
I have two feature requests in response to this class of concerns.
Problem statement: authors feel pressure to respond to comments even if they think responding is low value. Meanwhile, readers hesitate to comment because they do not wish to impose costs (response costs or social costs) on the author.
Solution: authors can use emoji be able to tag a comment to indicate why they are choosing not to respond. LessWrong already has this via emoji responses, and I have used them for this purpose (as a comment author). A beneficial side-effect is that emojis can’t be karma-voted, further reducing social pressure. My feature requests aim to improve this avenue.
Tiny: remove emoji question marks. For example, the emoji that says “Seems offtopic?” can just be “Offtopic”, like “Soldier Mindset”. This would make the emoji better express something like “I am not responding because this is (in my opinion) offtopic” rather than “This might be offtopic but I am not sure, l am not responding because I can’t be bothered to find out”. This suggestion also applies to:
Too Combative? → Too Combative
Misunderstands Position? → Misunderstands Position
“Not worth getting into? (I’m guessing it’s probably not worth the time to resolve this?)” → “Not worth getting into (I don’t think it’s worth the time to resolve this)”.
Larger: highlight author emojis. If a post author gives an emoji response to a comment, this can be given more visibility. For example, instead of “🙏 2” in the bottom right of a comment, it could display “🙏 Habryka 1″. This would also cover emoji responses from the author of the parent comment.
Concrete example: I ended a discussion with Said on vegan weirdness points with a “Not worth getting into” emoji, and I think this was a good choice that saved us both time.
More positive example: I replied to a reply about schitzophrenia with a “Changed my Mind” emoji and an upvote, and felt good about praising a helpful reply without reducing the signal-to-noise ratio.
Relatedly, I have a draft of a “Bowing out of this thread” react with a bowing monopoly-man, that I think is a more polite ending to a thread than “Not worth getting into”.
Anecdotally, I would perceive “Bowing out of this thread” as a more negative response because it encapsulates both topic as well as the quality of my response or behavior of myself. While “not worth getting into” is mostly about the worth of the object level matter. (Though remarking on behavior of the person you’re arguing with is a reasonable thing to do, I’m not sure that interpretation is what you intend)
I think a more generic react/emoji like that could be a good addition for cases where none of the existing emoji fit, and for people who don’t want to be specific about why they are not responding further, for whatever reason. Thanks for working on that.
I don’t think “Not worth getting into” is impolite in any way. Replying to a comment consumes time, and it will frequently be the case that someone’s time is better spent on other activities. Since there is no obligation on the author to respond (per habryka’s post), they can’t be considered impolite for not responding further.
I believe you are outright incorrect about how many people will receive this, then! Many people will, in fact, receive that statement as hostile, which will lead to it being underused by people who are concerned with politeness, which will lead to it correctly being perceived as statistically rude.
I intend to say that “Not worth getting into” is not rude on LessWrong, as a normative statement, rather than a descriptive statement about what LW readers will think. Partly it is a normative statement about what (I think) LW culture is, and partly it is a normative statement about what (I think) LW culture should be.
Arguments for what LW culture is
When an activity gives an explicit affordance for something, using it is not rude by default. Destroying someone’s base is rude in a game of Legos, but not rude in a game of Starcraft. Since LW has a “Not worth getting into?” react, using it is not rude by default. If the LW react changed to “Not worth getting into”, that would also be not rude by default. The reacts are therefore a surprising tool for shaping LW culture.
Also, as I mentioned above, there is no obligation on the author to respond, per habryka’s post. Any response, even a react, is supererogatory. By reacting the author has given the commenter (and other readers) strictly more information than they are obliged to, at no cost. It is a free gift. Since we don’t believe in Copenhagen Ethics we can’t fault an author for not doing more just because they did something instead of nothing.
Arguments for what LW culture should be
This is partly covered by The LinkedIn attractor in habryka’s post:
It’s not even bad that someone should occasionally say something that is not worth responding to. Threads have to end at some point. There are many things that are worth saying but are not worth responding to. If a culture is at the point where pointing out a not-even-bad thing about a single comment is considered impolite and/or hostile, that culture is deep into The LinkedIn Attractor, and doomed as a rationalist endeavor.
Also, I go back to my problem statement above. It’s valuable for authors to have easy ways to gracefully indicate why they are not responding. LW culture should support authors in choosing how much time to spend responding to comments. Failure to do so results in fewer authors, and greater use of moderation tools to block comments as a preventive. It also results in fewer comments by people respectful of the time of authors, without discouraging comments by people who are not so respectful (eg, allegedly, Said). This is bad.
On statistical rudeness
Frequent users of “Bowing out of this thread” reacts and “Not worth getting into” reacts will be slightly different, statistically. That doesn’t make the reacts polite or rude. By analogy, people who wear cowboy hats are statistically different to those who wear bowler hats, but that doesn’t make the hats polite or rude.
Is this worth getting into?
This comment was worth it for me because it’s potentially upstream of LW features & culture, and LW potentially has an impact on the risk of extinction. If you don’t think it’s worth getting into further I will not consider this impolite, rude, or hostile.
Clarification re “emojis can’t be upvoted or downvoted”, which @the gears to ascension and @mruwnik would bet is false. I mean that if I give an emoji react to a post saying “not worth getting into”, I can’t get karma votes on that emoji, whereas if I give a text reply to a post saying the same thing, it can get karma votes and replies from people who think it is getting into. Since I don’t want to get into meta-discussions about whether a comment is worth replying to, or have such choices judged by others, that is a feature. I’m interested if I’m missing something here.
I think the reactions are just because de-facto you can vote on reacts:
That’s what the vote button in the bottom right corners are for. You can downvote a react, and if net votes go to zero, it disappears.
Good point. I further feature-suggest that if the author replies “Offtopic” and someone downvotes that it is ontopic, I still want to see the author’s react. Maybe that could be “📌 Habryka −1″.
That is literally what happens! Hidden reacts show up in a small menu in the bottom right corner, and when you hover over that you can see both “upvotes” and “downvotes” on the react:
I wasn’t clear (I should have made a mockup, sorry). I don’t think the author’s react should be in hover-text, I think it should be inline text visible by default without the reader needing to hover anywhere. At least on desktop, anyway. Currently just the react and the number is visible by default.