Would you also object if I said (which I am not saying, just asking hypothetically) that I suggest the public shaming only for the downvotes that will happen in the future, after this rule is agreed upon? In other words, is retroactivity your true rejection?
It’s a good remark, but the answer is yes, I would still object. Public shaming, near-regardless of whether there was an overstepping of an explicit, an implicit, a retroactively applied or a (insert attribute) rule, is a topic I have very strong opinions on. It can cause large amounts of mental anguish, especially given a susceptible population as I suspect the LW’ers INTJ crowd tends to be. It’s simply not worth it, it’s toxic, especially when there are so many other options left to resort to (PM’s, technical limitations, etc.).
If there was one public shaming of anyone condoned by the editors (providing private information for the purpose of punishment), I’d leave this community, never looking back. Rule or no rule.
Also, I object to your slippery slope argument. I see a fundamental difference in using tools as provided (downvote buttons), and hacking a server.
and getting mass downvoted isn’t stressful? someone hounding another person through all their comments isn’t stressful? someone doing that should be ashamed. We can’t make them ashamed without public shaming. It’s either that or banning them. I don’t care about whether what they’re doing is technically allowed by the system. They’re doing something bad for the community, and they should be stopped.
It’s not fun, but having a single, anonymous individual express dislike through such an abstract means is nowhere near comparable to public shaming by a community you identify with, I assure you.
I’m sorry, was that a rhetorical question intended to slip an unsupported hypothesis?
(For the record, in case it isn’t clear: if it weren’t for the fact that being mass-downvoted means I’m currently unable to, I would definitely have downvoted your above comment.)
sure, that’s why it works. Public shaming is supposed to be stressful, in order to get that person to STOP. One is a socially mitigated system of enforcing how the ingroup behaves, whereas mass downvoting someone you own is an individual attempt to enforce how the group behaves. My point was that it being stressful was not a good reason not to do it. If someone identifies with your ingroup and you think they’re ruining it, then there is a mismatch between group identities. No group is obligated to associate with anyone who wants to be in it.
To be clear: It being stressful is a reason not to do it, but it may be outweighed by the benefits, right?
Two points: one, you pretty openly compared the two. Since they are different by several orders of magnitude, I think it impacts your point somewhat: should we do A Very Bad Thing to punish/disincentivize something far less unethical or harmful?
Two, I’m having a conversation with a mass-downvote-er in another tab. They seem pretty … corrected. I seriously doubt they will do this again.
And yet, amazingly, this happened without me choosing to so much as hint who they were, let alone “publicly shaming” them.
I’m not sure why you think your own personal definitions of what’s an order of magnitude more or less x or your anecdote about getting someone to change their ways is helpful. I personally think punishing someone for fucking with the community is less bad than someone taking it on themselves to scare people away. But you clearly disagree. I don’t know who you’re having this conversation with, but multiple people approached eugine neier and tried to talk to him about it. So clearly that’s not a solution that will always work.
Side note:
“Funny how that works” is pure rhetorical shit. It has no place in trying to convince someone of anything. All it does is show how “superior” you are to people who already agree with you.
I’m not sure why you think your own personal definitions of what’s an order of magnitude more or less x or your anecdote about getting someone to change their ways is helpful.
I assumed that some evidence would be more useful than speculation in a vacuum.
Are you seriously alleging that the “personal” opinion of someone who has relevant evidence is weaker Bayesian evidence than your own personal opinion?
I personally think punishing someone for fucking with the community is less bad than someone taking it on themselves to scare people away. But you clearly disagree.
I think it’s reasonable to suggest that different punishments fall into different reference classes.
I don’t know who you’re having this conversation with, but multiple people approached eugine neier and tried to talk to him about it. So clearly that’s not a solution that will always work.
If Eugine had been told that the moderators were aware of his actions, and that repeating them would result in a ban then either he would have stopped, or he would have been banned.
Most LessWrong users have no desire to break the rules, as evidenced by the fact that they are still here. The rules were at best … unclear … in this case.
Side note: “Funny how that works” is pure rhetorical shit. It has no place in trying to convince someone of anything. All it does is show how “superior” you are to people who already agree with you.
You know, you have a point there. It doesn’t add enough to the comment, and it’s somewhat discourteous to you. I’ll change it.
If you look at the recent thread with Kaj, he allegedly talked to Eugine, and told him to stop.
Huhm.
I got the impression that Eugine was asked to explain his actions, then banned when he did not reveal mitigating circumstances:
As previously discussed, on June 6th I received a message from jackk, a Trike Admin. He reported that the user Jiro had asked Trike to carry out an investigation to the retributive downvoting that Jiro had been subjected to. The investigation revealed that the user Eugine_Nier had downvoted over half of Jiro’s comments, amounting to hundreds of downvotes.
I asked the community’s guidance on dealing with the issue, and while the matter was being discussed, I also reviewed previous discussions about mass downvoting and looked for other people who mentioned being the victims of it. I asked Jack to compile reports on several other users who mentioned having been mass-downvoted, and it turned out that Eugine was also overwhelmingly the biggest downvoter of users David_Gerard, daenarys, falenas108, ialdabaoth, shminux, and Tenoke. As this discussion was going on, it turned out that user Ander had also been targeted by Eugine.
I sent two messages to Eugine, requesting an explanation. I received a response today. Eugine admitted his guilt, expressing the opinion that LW’s karma system was failing to carry out its purpose of keeping out weak material and that he was engaged in a “weeding” of users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
Needless to say, it is not the place of individual users to unilaterally decide that someone else should be “weeded” out of the community.
I don’t think he was asked to stop and refused—although I admit it would be nice to see the relevant messages, rather than Kaj’s secondhand description.
Just stop with downvotes altogether then, since even smaller amounts can be stressful. Allowing spammy no-value posters to drown out the few valuable comments is also bad for the community, but whatever.
What’s with the whole “shut up” routine (in your other comment)? You’re shaming yourself, here. Not going to engage with you anymore.
I’m going to answer your question despite you saying you won’t engage but: You can’t justify objecting to punishing someone for doing something technically not forbidden by the rules because there was no rule against at the time without also justifying the punishment if there’s no rule against the punishment.
eg “You can’t punish x for crime y because y isn’t actually against the rules” but “Punishing x for crime y” isn’t against the rules either. So either you want there to be outside of the rules systems for what people can and cannot do or not.
The same goes for my stress argument, it was mostly just turning your own argument around. Downvotes are SUPPOSED to be unpleasant. making a bad comment that gets downvoted should make you feel bad about making a bad comment. Good comments getting downvoted because you made a bad comment corrupts that system.
Spammy no value posters get downvoted plenty without mass downvoting campaigns.
It’s a good remark, but the answer is yes, I would still object. Public shaming, near-regardless of whether there was an overstepping of an explicit, an implicit, a retroactively applied or a (insert attribute) rule, is a topic I have very strong opinions on. It can cause large amounts of mental anguish, especially given a susceptible population as I suspect the LW’ers INTJ crowd tends to be. It’s simply not worth it, it’s toxic, especially when there are so many other options left to resort to (PM’s, technical limitations, etc.).
If there was one public shaming of anyone condoned by the editors (providing private information for the purpose of punishment), I’d leave this community, never looking back. Rule or no rule.
Also, I object to your slippery slope argument. I see a fundamental difference in using tools as provided (downvote buttons), and hacking a server.
and getting mass downvoted isn’t stressful? someone hounding another person through all their comments isn’t stressful? someone doing that should be ashamed. We can’t make them ashamed without public shaming. It’s either that or banning them. I don’t care about whether what they’re doing is technically allowed by the system. They’re doing something bad for the community, and they should be stopped.
ahem
It’s not fun, but having a single, anonymous individual express dislike through such an abstract means is nowhere near comparable to public shaming by a community you identify with, I assure you.
I’m sorry, was that a rhetorical question intended to slip an unsupported hypothesis?
(For the record, in case it isn’t clear: if it weren’t for the fact that being mass-downvoted means I’m currently unable to, I would definitely have downvoted your above comment.)
sure, that’s why it works. Public shaming is supposed to be stressful, in order to get that person to STOP. One is a socially mitigated system of enforcing how the ingroup behaves, whereas mass downvoting someone you own is an individual attempt to enforce how the group behaves. My point was that it being stressful was not a good reason not to do it. If someone identifies with your ingroup and you think they’re ruining it, then there is a mismatch between group identities. No group is obligated to associate with anyone who wants to be in it.
To be clear: It being stressful is a reason not to do it, but it may be outweighed by the benefits, right?
Two points: one, you pretty openly compared the two. Since they are different by several orders of magnitude, I think it impacts your point somewhat: should we do A Very Bad Thing to punish/disincentivize something far less unethical or harmful?
Two, I’m having a conversation with a mass-downvote-er in another tab. They seem pretty … corrected. I seriously doubt they will do this again.
And yet, amazingly, this happened without me choosing to so much as hint who they were, let alone “publicly shaming” them.
That sounds like a budding bromance. Hopefully not some kind of Stockholm syndrome.
I’m not sure why you think your own personal definitions of what’s an order of magnitude more or less x or your anecdote about getting someone to change their ways is helpful. I personally think punishing someone for fucking with the community is less bad than someone taking it on themselves to scare people away. But you clearly disagree. I don’t know who you’re having this conversation with, but multiple people approached eugine neier and tried to talk to him about it. So clearly that’s not a solution that will always work.
Side note:
“Funny how that works” is pure rhetorical shit. It has no place in trying to convince someone of anything. All it does is show how “superior” you are to people who already agree with you.
I assumed that some evidence would be more useful than speculation in a vacuum.
Are you seriously alleging that the “personal” opinion of someone who has relevant evidence is weaker Bayesian evidence than your own personal opinion?
I think it’s reasonable to suggest that different punishments fall into different reference classes.
If Eugine had been told that the moderators were aware of his actions, and that repeating them would result in a ban then either he would have stopped, or he would have been banned.
Most LessWrong users have no desire to break the rules, as evidenced by the fact that they are still here. The rules were at best … unclear … in this case.
You know, you have a point there. It doesn’t add enough to the comment, and it’s somewhat discourteous to you. I’ll change it.
Eugine DID get told that. If you look at the recent thread with Kaj, he allegedly talked to Eugine, and told him to stop.
You’re right that my opinion isn’t really more valid than yours.
Huhm.
I got the impression that Eugine was asked to explain his actions, then banned when he did not reveal mitigating circumstances:
I don’t think he was asked to stop and refused—although I admit it would be nice to see the relevant messages, rather than Kaj’s secondhand description.
Just stop with downvotes altogether then, since even smaller amounts can be stressful. Allowing spammy no-value posters to drown out the few valuable comments is also bad for the community, but whatever.
What’s with the whole “shut up” routine (in your other comment)? You’re shaming yourself, here. Not going to engage with you anymore.
I’m going to answer your question despite you saying you won’t engage but: You can’t justify objecting to punishing someone for doing something technically not forbidden by the rules because there was no rule against at the time without also justifying the punishment if there’s no rule against the punishment.
eg “You can’t punish x for crime y because y isn’t actually against the rules” but “Punishing x for crime y” isn’t against the rules either. So either you want there to be outside of the rules systems for what people can and cannot do or not.
The same goes for my stress argument, it was mostly just turning your own argument around. Downvotes are SUPPOSED to be unpleasant. making a bad comment that gets downvoted should make you feel bad about making a bad comment. Good comments getting downvoted because you made a bad comment corrupts that system.
Spammy no value posters get downvoted plenty without mass downvoting campaigns.
I think the question was less “please elaborate on your other comment”, and more “why did you think that “shut up” was a valuable thing to say?”
It probably wasn’t but it fit into the classic format of an apt put-down.