What kind of policy response (from moderators, you, gwern, other users) do you think improves things, and why?
Without having a vested interest in that thread, I found it (at the time, and still do) somewhat hard to follow both of you and it seemed like both of you lost cool and could have tried harder to not escalate and to break down what you were saying into more basic and simplistic terms. But ‘could have tried harder’ and ‘should have tried harder’ do not necessarily coincide.
gwern scores low on agreeableness and this sometimes shows; this is undisputed. It is widely agreed (including, hohoho, by gwern I guess?) that gwern is biting. gwern is clueful enough that I think it does the community a service that gwern comes across as confident and authoritative, but a marginal disservice that he seems to lose his cool sometimes and when he slides into (seeming) bullying. I’m not sure how easy that is to change, though.
I think gwern should be aware that him making increasingly acerbic posts and getting upvoted while the other person is downvoted can be extremely distressing and feel like bullying by a senior member. I think we should all be more proactive in pointing out to him when he (or anyone else) is participating in a thread of comments that looks like it’s taking a turn for the worse, and potentially downvote comments that seem like they have been made in a mood that is predictably non-constructive, and explain the downvote.
I reject the principle of ‘if u dont like it just leave’. To the extent I shall mock it by removing capitalisation and punctuation, in fact. But I will note that in this particular case I am not convinced (though also not disconvinced) that there is a more worthwhile action, though it has yet to be seen if this thread will end up net-positive or net-negative in value.
That seems truly odd to me; I don’t think I’ve ever noticed gwern being problematic or hard to understand. I remember him as a major character because he has contributed many things I’ve read and found valuable, and his comments have always seemed reasonable.
What kind of policy response (from moderators, you, gwern, other users) do you think improves things, and why?
Without having a vested interest in that thread, I found it (at the time, and still do) somewhat hard to follow both of you and it seemed like both of you lost cool and could have tried harder to not escalate and to break down what you were saying into more basic and simplistic terms. But ‘could have tried harder’ and ‘should have tried harder’ do not necessarily coincide.
gwern scores low on agreeableness and this sometimes shows; this is undisputed. It is widely agreed (including, hohoho, by gwern I guess?) that gwern is biting. gwern is clueful enough that I think it does the community a service that gwern comes across as confident and authoritative, but a marginal disservice that he seems to lose his cool sometimes and when he slides into (seeming) bullying. I’m not sure how easy that is to change, though.
I think gwern should be aware that him making increasingly acerbic posts and getting upvoted while the other person is downvoted can be extremely distressing and feel like bullying by a senior member. I think we should all be more proactive in pointing out to him when he (or anyone else) is participating in a thread of comments that looks like it’s taking a turn for the worse, and potentially downvote comments that seem like they have been made in a mood that is predictably non-constructive, and explain the downvote.
I reject the principle of ‘if u dont like it just leave’. To the extent I shall mock it by removing capitalisation and punctuation, in fact. But I will note that in this particular case I am not convinced (though also not disconvinced) that there is a more worthwhile action, though it has yet to be seen if this thread will end up net-positive or net-negative in value.
That seems truly odd to me; I don’t think I’ve ever noticed gwern being problematic or hard to understand. I remember him as a major character because he has contributed many things I’ve read and found valuable, and his comments have always seemed reasonable.
I’m not sure exactly which parts you’re referring to, so can you quote the parts you find odd or by which you are confused?