So like, do you distrust writers using substack? Because substack writers can just ban people from commenting. Or more concretely, do you distrust Scott to garden his own space on ACX?
Giving authors the ability to ban people they don’t want commenting is so common that it feels like a Chesterton’s Fence to me.
So like, do you distrust writers using substack? Because substack writers can just ban people from commenting. Or more concretely, do you distrust Scott to garden his own space on ACX?
It’s normally out of my mind, but whenever I’m reminded of it, I’m like “damn, I wonder how many mistaken articles I read and didn’t realize it because the author banned or discouraged their best (would be) critiques.” (Substack has other problems though like lack of karma that makes it hard to find good comments anyway, which I would want to fix first.)
Giving authors the ability to ban people they don’t want commenting is so common that it feels like a Chesterton’s Fence to me.
It could also just be a race to the bottom to appeal to unhealthy motivation, kind of like YouTube creating Shorts to compete with TikTok.
Substack seems like it has the usual rigors of the rest of the Internet — namely, one isn’t going to see strong objections to articles posted there in the comments section. This isn’t very rigorous.
LW’s rigors are higher if authors aren’t banning, or can’t ban, people from commenting on their posts because if someone tries to advance an attractive but underbaked/wrongheaded/etc. idea, he/she will be rebutted right there in the comments. This makes things posted to LW, in general, better than most of the rest of the Internet.
I want LW to be better than the most of the rest of the Internet.
Agreed on wanting LW to be better than the rest of the Internet.
My model is something like: The site dies without writers → writers only write if they enjoy writing on the platform → writers don’t enjoy writing without the ability to ban commenters that they find personally aversive → Give authors the ability to ban commenters on their posts.
I’m cognizant of the failure where good critiques get banned. Empirically, however, I don’t think that’s a problem here on LW. Long, well-written critiques are some of the most upvoted posts on the site. I think it’s fine if the critique lives in the larger LW archipelago, and not in the island of one author. The rigor lives in the broader site, not just in an individual posts comment section.
Long, well-written critiques are some of the most upvoted posts on the site. I think it’s fine if the critique lives in the larger LW archipelago,
If the critique “lives in the larger LW archipelago”, then:
It won’t be highly upvoted, because…
Almost nobody will read it; and therefore…
It won’t be posted in the first place.
You don’t get to have both (a) well-written criticism being commonplace, and (b) writers never having to read comments that they find “personally aversive”. Pick one.
Doesn’t the existence proof of long, well-written and highly upvoted critiques disprove your point?
There’s plenty of comments that are critiques, and the author of the post doesn’t ban them because the critique wasn’t cruel. Even if an author starts constantly banning anyone who disagrees with them, they’ll get a reputation pretty fast.
It feels to me like you are vigorously defending against a failure mode that is already handled by existing reputational effects like karma, and people being free to write their own post in response.
If the critique “lives in the larger LW archipelago”, then:
It won’t be highly upvoted, because…
Almost nobody will read it; and therefore…
It won’t be posted in the first place.
Both regimes share the property wherein someone can disagree and write a lengthy critique as a top-level post. This empirically does happen, and they are sometimes highly upvoted and widely read. Hence existence proof. The regimes are not different in this regard.
Really, this has been covered before. Not every[1] good, useful, or even necessary critical comment can be turned into a post in a way that makes sense. See the example in the linked comment:
“You keep using the word [X] in your post; I counted you used it 10 times. But it seems to just be a mere substance-free applause light, and indeed we have covered this matter extensively back in the Sequences [insert link to sequences post]. If you think I’m wrong, give some examples to illustrate what I’m missing.”
I think you failed to establish that the long, well-written and highly-upvoted critiques lived in the larger LW archipelago, so there’s a hole in your existence proof. On that basis, I would surmise that on priors Said assumed you were referring to comments or on-site posts.
There are so many critical posts just here on LessWrong that I feel like we are living in different worlds. The second most upvoted post on the entire site is a critique, and there’s dozens more about everything from AI alignment to discussion norms.
I thought commenters on Substack posts were exclusively people paying money to the post’s author until a week or two ago.
I figured I’d been wrong all along when I saw this one post getting negative comments from commenters scolding the author for not abiding by their thede’s taboos which they consider universal.
I absolutely didn’t trust Scott to garden his own space on SSC (and correctly so, in retrospect, as his pattern of bans was quite obviously jam-packed with political bias). I don’t read ACX comments much, but I don’t expect that anything’s changed since the SSC days, in this regard. (And this is despite the fact that I both respect Scott as a writer and thinker, and like him as a person.)
I don’t even trust myself to moderate a forum that I run (where, despite being the sole administrator of the site, I am not only formally excluded from having moderation privileges, but I don’t even pick the moderators).[1]
Giving authors the ability to ban people they don’t want commenting is so common that it feels like a Chesterton’s Fence to me.
It’s not a Chesterton’s fence at all, because (a) it’s very new (it wasn’t like this before the blog era!), and (b) we know perfectly well why it came about (hint: the answer is “politics”).
Now, why do you think I set things up like that? Specifically, what do I personally gain from this setup (i.e., setting aside answers like “I have a principled belief that this is the correct way to run a forum”)?
So like, do you distrust writers using substack? Because substack writers can just ban people from commenting. Or more concretely, do you distrust Scott to garden his own space on ACX?
Giving authors the ability to ban people they don’t want commenting is so common that it feels like a Chesterton’s Fence to me.
It’s normally out of my mind, but whenever I’m reminded of it, I’m like “damn, I wonder how many mistaken articles I read and didn’t realize it because the author banned or discouraged their best (would be) critiques.” (Substack has other problems though like lack of karma that makes it hard to find good comments anyway, which I would want to fix first.)
It could also just be a race to the bottom to appeal to unhealthy motivation, kind of like YouTube creating Shorts to compete with TikTok.
Substack seems like it has the usual rigors of the rest of the Internet — namely, one isn’t going to see strong objections to articles posted there in the comments section. This isn’t very rigorous.
LW’s rigors are higher if authors aren’t banning, or can’t ban, people from commenting on their posts because if someone tries to advance an attractive but underbaked/wrongheaded/etc. idea, he/she will be rebutted right there in the comments. This makes things posted to LW, in general, better than most of the rest of the Internet.
I want LW to be better than the most of the rest of the Internet.
Agreed on wanting LW to be better than the rest of the Internet.
My model is something like: The site dies without writers → writers only write if they enjoy writing on the platform → writers don’t enjoy writing without the ability to ban commenters that they find personally aversive → Give authors the ability to ban commenters on their posts.
I’m cognizant of the failure where good critiques get banned. Empirically, however, I don’t think that’s a problem here on LW. Long, well-written critiques are some of the most upvoted posts on the site. I think it’s fine if the critique lives in the larger LW archipelago, and not in the island of one author. The rigor lives in the broader site, not just in an individual posts comment section.
If the critique “lives in the larger LW archipelago”, then:
It won’t be highly upvoted, because…
Almost nobody will read it; and therefore…
It won’t be posted in the first place.
You don’t get to have both (a) well-written criticism being commonplace, and (b) writers never having to read comments that they find “personally aversive”. Pick one.
Doesn’t the existence proof of long, well-written and highly upvoted critiques disprove your point?
There’s plenty of comments that are critiques, and the author of the post doesn’t ban them because the critique wasn’t cruel. Even if an author starts constantly banning anyone who disagrees with them, they’ll get a reputation pretty fast.
It feels to me like you are vigorously defending against a failure mode that is already handled by existing reputational effects like karma, and people being free to write their own post in response.
… no?
Why in the world would it? How can the existence of things in the current regime disprove my point about what would happen in a different regime?
Both regimes share the property wherein someone can disagree and write a lengthy critique as a top-level post. This empirically does happen, and they are sometimes highly upvoted and widely read. Hence existence proof. The regimes are not different in this regard.
“Lengthy critique”≠ “good critique.”
Really, this has been covered before. Not every[1] good, useful, or even necessary critical comment can be turned into a post in a way that makes sense. See the example in the linked comment:
I’d even go further and say “not even a large portion of”
I think you failed to establish that the long, well-written and highly-upvoted critiques lived in the larger LW archipelago, so there’s a hole in your existence proof. On that basis, I would surmise that on priors Said assumed you were referring to comments or on-site posts.
There are so many critical posts just here on LessWrong that I feel like we are living in different worlds. The second most upvoted post on the entire site is a critique, and there’s dozens more about everything from AI alignment to discussion norms.
I thought commenters on Substack posts were exclusively people paying money to the post’s author until a week or two ago.
I figured I’d been wrong all along when I saw this one post getting negative comments from commenters scolding the author for not abiding by their thede’s taboos which they consider universal.
I absolutely didn’t trust Scott to garden his own space on SSC (and correctly so, in retrospect, as his pattern of bans was quite obviously jam-packed with political bias). I don’t read ACX comments much, but I don’t expect that anything’s changed since the SSC days, in this regard. (And this is despite the fact that I both respect Scott as a writer and thinker, and like him as a person.)
I don’t even trust myself to moderate a forum that I run (where, despite being the sole administrator of the site, I am not only formally excluded from having moderation privileges, but I don’t even pick the moderators).[1]
It’s not a Chesterton’s fence at all, because (a) it’s very new (it wasn’t like this before the blog era!), and (b) we know perfectly well why it came about (hint: the answer is “politics”).
Now, why do you think I set things up like that? Specifically, what do I personally gain from this setup (i.e., setting aside answers like “I have a principled belief that this is the correct way to run a forum”)?