This history may be causing much of the current difficulties, because the admins may (perhaps subconsciously) worry that if they fully reevaluated the decision, it could lead to a repudiation of the system, which would necessitate going back on a commitment made to you.
Look, I know I wouldn’t want to use LessWrong if I couldn’t ban annoying commenters from my posts. I wouldn’t run LessWrong if I didn’t have the ability to ban annoying commenters from the site.
Yes, if there were trusted enough moderators who would do the job well-enough for me, then I could get away without moderation tools when posting, but currently, if I was an external party, I would not trust even the current LW team with a copy of myself to do this. The LW team is trying to allow a bunch of people with incompatible conversation styles to be on the site, and this means that I cannot expect site-wide bans and deletion to be sufficient for making it so I don’t have run-ins with a bunch of people who will very predictably waste hours of my time.
Like, de-facto we try to compensate a bunch for this by asking people what kind of moderation they would like on their post, and then try to help them with moderation, but it’s a labor intensive process that mostly fails for bandwidth reasons.
And look, it sucks. You show up with a top-level thread where you say:
I don’t want to relitigate the policy in a balanced way at this point, but simply to introduce some potentially new considerations. So, admins, no need to respond now, but please keep these points in mind if you do decide to rethink the policy at some point.
And then you just fully ignore this intention, and tag a bunch of people to please weigh in on a dispute, absolutely asking me to respond. Like, sure, you can open up this thread again, and every time anyone takes any moderation decision ever on the site, but please at least don’t say that you are not going to do it, and then totally do it.
I wouldn’t run LessWrong if I didn’t have the ability to ban annoying commenters from the site.
I’m totally fine with site moderators moderating in an disinterested way. It’s the “moderators modding their own thread” thing that I’m objecting to. Kind of strange that you’re still writing as if you don’t get this.
And then you just fully ignore this intention, and tag a bunch of people to please weigh in on a dispute, absolutely asking me to respond. Like, sure, you can open up this thread again, and every time anyone takes any moderation decision ever on the site, but please at least don’t say that you are not going to do it, and then totally do it.
Yeah, I realize I’m being inconsistent. That was my original intention, but @rsaarelm subsequently came in with a really clear and concise description of the core problem, and it seemed like too good of an opportunity not to pivot a bit. (I don’t think I tagged anyone besides Eliezer though?) Of course I don’t blame you for wanting to respond in this situation.
I’m totally fine with site moderators moderating in an disinterested way. It’s the “moderators modding their own thread” thing that I’m objecting to. Kind of strange that you’re still writing as if you don’t get this.
I mean, that’s what my previous sentence was about. The logical structure was implicitly “Look, I know I wouldn’t want to use LessWrong if I couldn’t ban annoying commenters from my posts because I also wouldn’t run LessWrong if I didn’t have the ability to ban annoying commenters from the site.”
And then I continued explaining that trusting site-moderators to handle every case for me is a tricky task that I don’t expect site moderators are capable of. Indeed, it’s not even clear a copy of me could handle it, because global governance is indeed just different from local governance, and it’s very hard to wear both hats at the same time.
Yeah, I realize I’m being inconsistent
Cool, if we are on the same page that there was a shift here, I feel better about this. I agree there was an opportunity there (though I disagree that rsaarelm’s post was a particularl good summary of the situation, but it seems fine for you to believe that).
I think it kind of sucks that this did indeed invalidate my ability to trust that threads like this aren’t threads I have to follow in great detail and managed in costly ways, which then makes discussions about this kind of stuff worse in the future.
Look, I know I wouldn’t want to use LessWrong if I couldn’t ban annoying commenters from my posts. I wouldn’t run LessWrong if I didn’t have the ability to ban annoying commenters from the site.
Yes, if there were trusted enough moderators who would do the job well-enough for me, then I could get away without moderation tools when posting, but currently, if I was an external party, I would not trust even the current LW team with a copy of myself to do this. The LW team is trying to allow a bunch of people with incompatible conversation styles to be on the site, and this means that I cannot expect site-wide bans and deletion to be sufficient for making it so I don’t have run-ins with a bunch of people who will very predictably waste hours of my time.
Like, de-facto we try to compensate a bunch for this by asking people what kind of moderation they would like on their post, and then try to help them with moderation, but it’s a labor intensive process that mostly fails for bandwidth reasons.
And look, it sucks. You show up with a top-level thread where you say:
And then you just fully ignore this intention, and tag a bunch of people to please weigh in on a dispute, absolutely asking me to respond. Like, sure, you can open up this thread again, and every time anyone takes any moderation decision ever on the site, but please at least don’t say that you are not going to do it, and then totally do it.
I’m totally fine with site moderators moderating in an disinterested way. It’s the “moderators modding their own thread” thing that I’m objecting to. Kind of strange that you’re still writing as if you don’t get this.
Yeah, I realize I’m being inconsistent. That was my original intention, but @rsaarelm subsequently came in with a really clear and concise description of the core problem, and it seemed like too good of an opportunity not to pivot a bit. (I don’t think I tagged anyone besides Eliezer though?) Of course I don’t blame you for wanting to respond in this situation.
I mean, that’s what my previous sentence was about. The logical structure was implicitly “Look, I know I wouldn’t want to use LessWrong if I couldn’t ban annoying commenters from my posts because I also wouldn’t run LessWrong if I didn’t have the ability to ban annoying commenters from the site.”
And then I continued explaining that trusting site-moderators to handle every case for me is a tricky task that I don’t expect site moderators are capable of. Indeed, it’s not even clear a copy of me could handle it, because global governance is indeed just different from local governance, and it’s very hard to wear both hats at the same time.
Cool, if we are on the same page that there was a shift here, I feel better about this. I agree there was an opportunity there (though I disagree that rsaarelm’s post was a particularl good summary of the situation, but it seems fine for you to believe that).
I think it kind of sucks that this did indeed invalidate my ability to trust that threads like this aren’t threads I have to follow in great detail and managed in costly ways, which then makes discussions about this kind of stuff worse in the future.