I guess long-time lurkers/new posters like me are part of the problem(though obviously I assume most online only LW members didn’t engage with a California drama post). I still think LW is a great place for discussion and just being exposed to new ideas and good feedback, but I’m probably dragging down the sanity level.
Re fear: I think the SSC situation made it clear that LW and rationalist adjacent spaces are more public than users might think, maybe people are hesitant because they don’t want to get twitter blasted or show up as a snap in an NYTimes article two years down the line.
Re concentration of force: I would imagine raw censorship would be really hard and contentious to enforce. Probably attempting to aristocratize/oligarchize the site might work better. Maybe increase the visibility of old-time users and posters, tweak the karma needed to post/vote, highlight high karma account comments over low karma comments.
There must be some blog post somewhere documenting every attempted antidote to Eternal September syndrome to pick and choose from. Disclaimer, norm and law changes have chaotically unpredictable effects on communities, so who knows what the outcome would be.
A democratic version of this is people being more meta in comments and replies, addressing structural concerns with what people are commenting, as you mention in the post rewriting the original comment in a more rigorous/ironman form. Upside, this is a way to acculturate people into the community in an emotionally positive manner, rather than just by punishment. It’s also much more legible and learnable than a comment deletion, which might have all sorts of reasons. Downside, this can make actual discussion really difficult and encourages pedantry which can also be taken too far. It also requires some degree of critical mass of users willing to engage in it.
The utopian version of this to me would be people looking at a post or comment they disagree with, suspending their own opinion on it, and attempting to help the commenter improve their argument in the direction the OP was going.
Re concentration of force: I would imagine raw censorship would be really hard and contentious to enforce. Probably attempting to aristocratize/oligarchize the site might work better. Maybe increase the visibility of old-time users and posters, tweak the karma needed to post/vote, highlight high karma account comments over low karma comments.
I think that “attempting to aristocratize/oligarchize the site” might (or might not—I am undecided) have desirable consequences… but I think it would be a mistake to base this on karma scores. (See this old comment of mine for reasoning.)
I guess long-time lurkers/new posters like me are part of the problem(though obviously I assume most online only LW members didn’t engage with a California drama post). I still think LW is a great place for discussion and just being exposed to new ideas and good feedback, but I’m probably dragging down the sanity level.
Re fear: I think the SSC situation made it clear that LW and rationalist adjacent spaces are more public than users might think, maybe people are hesitant because they don’t want to get twitter blasted or show up as a snap in an NYTimes article two years down the line.
Re concentration of force: I would imagine raw censorship would be really hard and contentious to enforce. Probably attempting to aristocratize/oligarchize the site might work better. Maybe increase the visibility of old-time users and posters, tweak the karma needed to post/vote, highlight high karma account comments over low karma comments.
There must be some blog post somewhere documenting every attempted antidote to Eternal September syndrome to pick and choose from. Disclaimer, norm and law changes have chaotically unpredictable effects on communities, so who knows what the outcome would be.
A democratic version of this is people being more meta in comments and replies, addressing structural concerns with what people are commenting, as you mention in the post rewriting the original comment in a more rigorous/ironman form. Upside, this is a way to acculturate people into the community in an emotionally positive manner, rather than just by punishment. It’s also much more legible and learnable than a comment deletion, which might have all sorts of reasons. Downside, this can make actual discussion really difficult and encourages pedantry which can also be taken too far. It also requires some degree of critical mass of users willing to engage in it.
The utopian version of this to me would be people looking at a post or comment they disagree with, suspending their own opinion on it, and attempting to help the commenter improve their argument in the direction the OP was going.
I think that “attempting to aristocratize/oligarchize the site” might (or might not—I am undecided) have desirable consequences… but I think it would be a mistake to base this on karma scores. (See this old comment of mine for reasoning.)