I think that the benefit of criticizing publicly is that it allows your criticism to in turn be criticized.
Let us say that Alice writes a post. Bob finds the material too <adjective> to interest him. If he messages Alice privately, that is the extent of the feedback. If, however, he comments as such, Carol, Daniel, and Eve may all chime in saying that they found the material the right about of <adjective> to be interesting. The vocal minority inspires feedback from the silent majority, who might not have independently thought to give Alice feedback (because they didn’t realize their views weren’t universal, because they didn’t believe they had actionable feedback, because they didn’t have something they disagreed with).
Like all systems of voluntary feedback, there’s a great deal of self-selection involved; moving from private to public feedback just affects who selects themselves. But I think it can do so in a valuable direction.
If you have a policy of always giving feedback, then people who are disproportionately sensitive to negative reinforcement (somewhat me) will avoid interacting in the first place.
If you have a policy of always responding to feedback, then people who are disproportionately sensitive to negative reinforcement will avoid giving feedback.
De-silencing is what I call my policy of sometimes just doing the thing even though someone might give feedback or meta-feedback, even though it’s risking being painful. I made this policy because I decided that saying things moves toward a better attractor.
Note that I am describing my own behavior, not prescribing it. I predict others will like and adopt this, but I also expect a bunch of people to hate it and not do it, some of them being people who don’t feel the “place yourself as an instance of people who make this decision” thing as being important enough to be worth the pain.
I think that the benefit of criticizing publicly is that it allows your criticism to in turn be criticized.
Let us say that Alice writes a post. Bob finds the material too <adjective> to interest him. If he messages Alice privately, that is the extent of the feedback. If, however, he comments as such, Carol, Daniel, and Eve may all chime in saying that they found the material the right about of <adjective> to be interesting. The vocal minority inspires feedback from the silent majority, who might not have independently thought to give Alice feedback (because they didn’t realize their views weren’t universal, because they didn’t believe they had actionable feedback, because they didn’t have something they disagreed with).
Like all systems of voluntary feedback, there’s a great deal of self-selection involved; moving from private to public feedback just affects who selects themselves. But I think it can do so in a valuable direction.
If you have a policy of always giving feedback, then people who are disproportionately sensitive to negative reinforcement (somewhat me) will avoid interacting in the first place.
If you have a policy of always responding to feedback, then people who are disproportionately sensitive to negative reinforcement will avoid giving feedback.
De-silencing is what I call my policy of sometimes just doing the thing even though someone might give feedback or meta-feedback, even though it’s risking being painful. I made this policy because I decided that saying things moves toward a better attractor.
Note that I am describing my own behavior, not prescribing it. I predict others will like and adopt this, but I also expect a bunch of people to hate it and not do it, some of them being people who don’t feel the “place yourself as an instance of people who make this decision” thing as being important enough to be worth the pain.