They, being authors themselves, see the author’s pain firsthand, but the commenter’s feelings are merely an abstract report at most.
I do think there is a bunch of truth to this, but I am active on many other forums, and have e.g. been issued moderation warnings on the EA Forum, so I do experience moderation in other contexts (and of course get blocked on Twitter from time to time). Also, I… think authors are not that much less likely to ban moderators from their posts than other users. Of the maybe 30 users who have ever been banned from other user posts, one of them is a moderator:
I am sure that if Eliezer was more active on the site, my guess is people would be a bunch more likely to ban him from their posts than they would other people for the same behavior. In general, in my experience, tallest-poppy dynamics are stronger in the rationality community than leadership-deference dynamics.
I do think there is a bunch of truth to this, but I am active on many other forums, and have e.g. been issued moderation warnings on the EA Forum, so I do experience moderation in other contexts (and of course get blocked on Twitter from time to time). Also, I… think authors are not that much less likely to ban moderators from their posts than other users. Of the maybe 30 users who have ever been banned from other user posts, one of them is a moderator:
I am sure that if Eliezer was more active on the site, my guess is people would be a bunch more likely to ban him from their posts than they would other people for the same behavior. In general, in my experience, tallest-poppy dynamics are stronger in the rationality community than leadership-deference dynamics.
I’m thinking less deference to leaders, more not wanting to piss off people with power over an area that you care about.