gwern is not a “senior member”. He is not a moderator, as far as I know, though he did do some work for MIRI. He is a very prominent regular with superb research and analysis skills, quick wit, sharp tongue and occasionally bad attitude, apparently uninterested in applying the principle of charity. He’s been told as much and was unwilling to acknowledge this as a problem.
Like on any forum, you don’t have to engage everyone who replies to you. I ignore comments from a few regulars, some very active here, whom I have engaged in the past in repeated unproductive exchanges until I learned better. ThisSpaceAvailable should do likewise. This is basic internet hygiene. As long as the person you are unhappy to talk to does not run the place actively hounding you from thread to thread, downvoting and sniping, ignore them. If you feel that they break the forum rules, raise the issue with the mods. What ThisSpaceAvailable wrote comes across as drama-queening (an uncharitable term, but it fits in this case, hence all the downvotes of the OP). The very first sentence is an extreme put-off. Just now I have looked through the linked thread and my impression is that it’s the OP who lost his cool. Anyway, I agree that my original reply could have been written in a more charitable way, but the point (a “heuristic”, if you like) still stands: ignore those you don’t like, unless they clearly break forum rules, or don’t complain (or don’t participate). It’s not a “deontological imperative”, more like common sense in online discourse.
I’ll try one more time...
gwern is not a “senior member”. He is not a moderator, as far as I know, though he did do some work for MIRI. He is a very prominent regular with superb research and analysis skills, quick wit, sharp tongue and occasionally bad attitude, apparently uninterested in applying the principle of charity. He’s been told as much and was unwilling to acknowledge this as a problem.
Like on any forum, you don’t have to engage everyone who replies to you. I ignore comments from a few regulars, some very active here, whom I have engaged in the past in repeated unproductive exchanges until I learned better. ThisSpaceAvailable should do likewise. This is basic internet hygiene. As long as the person you are unhappy to talk to does not run the place actively hounding you from thread to thread, downvoting and sniping, ignore them. If you feel that they break the forum rules, raise the issue with the mods. What ThisSpaceAvailable wrote comes across as drama-queening (an uncharitable term, but it fits in this case, hence all the downvotes of the OP). The very first sentence is an extreme put-off. Just now I have looked through the linked thread and my impression is that it’s the OP who lost his cool. Anyway, I agree that my original reply could have been written in a more charitable way, but the point (a “heuristic”, if you like) still stands: ignore those you don’t like, unless they clearly break forum rules, or don’t complain (or don’t participate). It’s not a “deontological imperative”, more like common sense in online discourse.