To my knowledge, nobody has ever complained about excess noise relative to signal on Less Wrong, which indicates to me that we can ease up on the moderation somewhat, e.g. by restricting downvote velocity heavily.
I prefer it this way. Maybe somewhat less moderation would be better, but I think we will get there gradually without announcing such intent. I am afraid that trying to intentionally reduce moderation could easily lead to too noisy site, and the change back would be painful, because it would create conflicts.
It seems to me that web communities tend to become less moderated as the time goes on. I have also seen a few communities with explicit rules which were intentionally broken and then the offenders complained loudly about censorship and created huge mindkilling debates; and I fear that the debate about voting without explicit rules would be even worse—people accusing other people of censorship by downvoting, unproved accusations of karma assassination, well-meaning people upvoting worthless content just to provide “freedom” and “balance” against the supposed censors and thus completely ruining the feedback system. Maybe the LW community would handle it with greater rationality, but to me the danger is not worth risking.
Maybe the LW community would handle it with greater rationality, but to me the danger is not worth risking.
I am not confident that’s true of the current community (call it <10%). I am still less confident (call it <1%) that it would be true of the community that would replace the current community, should those changes be made.
I prefer it this way. Maybe somewhat less moderation would be better, but I think we will get there gradually without announcing such intent. I am afraid that trying to intentionally reduce moderation could easily lead to too noisy site, and the change back would be painful, because it would create conflicts.
It seems to me that web communities tend to become less moderated as the time goes on. I have also seen a few communities with explicit rules which were intentionally broken and then the offenders complained loudly about censorship and created huge mindkilling debates; and I fear that the debate about voting without explicit rules would be even worse—people accusing other people of censorship by downvoting, unproved accusations of karma assassination, well-meaning people upvoting worthless content just to provide “freedom” and “balance” against the supposed censors and thus completely ruining the feedback system. Maybe the LW community would handle it with greater rationality, but to me the danger is not worth risking.
I am not confident that’s true of the current community (call it <10%). I am still less confident (call it <1%) that it would be true of the community that would replace the current community, should those changes be made.