I don’t think this sort of abstract analysis is valid. For instance, you could argue that it may underrepresent the people who disagree, because it’s become increasingly clear that Said-style criticism is unwelcome on LW in the past few months, as the conflict has escalated.
Think it’s just really hard to know without doing a lot of work.
I think it’d be more accurate to say that “there’s this other factor too” rather than “this analysis is not valid”?
There are a number of comments expressing disagreement that have gotten a fair number of upvotes, so it doesn’t look to me like expressing disagreement would be unwelcome.
Edited to add: I should also mention that I don’t think this comment came out of “abstract analysis”. It came from the fact that back when I banned Eugine Nier, I then reached out to a user who had left the site because of him to let them know their harasser was banned. The user’s response was basically, “glad to hear, but I still don’t feel like coming back”. So at least in one previous case, users who had left because of a now-banned user were actually permanently out of the resulting discussion.
I don’t think this sort of abstract analysis is valid. For instance, you could argue that it may underrepresent the people who disagree, because it’s become increasingly clear that Said-style criticism is unwelcome on LW in the past few months, as the conflict has escalated.
Think it’s just really hard to know without doing a lot of work.
I think it’d be more accurate to say that “there’s this other factor too” rather than “this analysis is not valid”?
There are a number of comments expressing disagreement that have gotten a fair number of upvotes, so it doesn’t look to me like expressing disagreement would be unwelcome.
Edited to add: I should also mention that I don’t think this comment came out of “abstract analysis”. It came from the fact that back when I banned Eugine Nier, I then reached out to a user who had left the site because of him to let them know their harasser was banned. The user’s response was basically, “glad to hear, but I still don’t feel like coming back”. So at least in one previous case, users who had left because of a now-banned user were actually permanently out of the resulting discussion.
I agree, the meta-point of selection bias is valid but the direction of bias is unclear.