I decided that Zvi’s content is bypassing the usual frontpage guidelines for now, in an effort strike a balance between informing people of important and urgent developments, while not overwhelming the whole site with political and coronavirus-related content again.
Given rising case counts and the importance of keeping everyone up-to-date with COVID stuff given the holiday season, I am making an exception to our usual frontpage guidelines and promoting this to the frontpage (as well as subsequent update posts in the coming weeks). This does not apply to other COVID content, and is only temporary until case counts either drop substantially again, or we decide for some other reason that these should no longer be on the frontpage. Zvi still has dictatorial control over moderation. Feel free to comment on this decision here, happy to talk about it and pretty open to changing my mind. This really wasn’t an obvious call.
After some reflection, I still do not understand the reasoning why the new rule is that Covid-19 content is forbidden except for Zvi’s? Why are more level-headed posts banned from the frontpage, making spicing up articles with a certain rhetorics a necessary condition for Covid-19 frontpage posts?
I am pretty confident we don’t want the vast majority of news-driven COVID content on the frontpage. Happy to hear alternative proposals for a relatively simple and clear rule. Since Zvi does these weekly and they tend to be by far the most popular, consistent and comprehensive content, having just these weekly updates and associated posts on the frontpage seems like a reasonable and simple rule to me. If you have a different suggested one, happy to consider that one instead.
I guess I can’t suggest a rule here; I seem to misunderstand the rules that are valid on LessWrong. With respect to the more-or-less explicit ones (“unusually high standards of discourse” etc, and “explain not persuade”), my understanding seems to be different from yours. There are also implicit rules which I thought existed as a standard or as an ideal, but they would not fit the preferences revealed by frontpaging or by popularity.
Sorry, just to be clear, Zvi’s posts are definitely violating the frontpage guidelines, as are basically all news-driven COVID posts. But we are making an explicit exception to our guidelines in order to make sure that people who follow LessWrong have at least basic guidance and advice during the most crucial phases of this whole coronavirus pandemic. Having the rule of frontpaging Zvi’s updates in particular seems like a decent middle-ground of not completely breaking our guidelines while also giving people basic orientation during these critical periods.
FYI I don’t think this distinction makes sense here, or at least it doesn’t feel like the cruxy bit explaining the current disagreement. (I’d say that’s more “being rigidly rule based” vs “making tradeoffs sometimes on rule flexibility.”)
There is something we can frame in two different ways, either “What is it that the mods make exceptions for?” or “What are the real rules?” I assume this comes down to the same question, but the second version is more explicit.
I think the implicit rule that I perceived was, more or less: “Posts should be about important/useful insights (whatever that means). They should try to explain, be based on and provide evidence when talking about the real world, be written in a level-headed way, avoid sneery comments about outgroups (and be timeless, even though that’s sometimes a vague concept). Because the things we want to avoid correlate with politics, we discourage politics in posts.”
Now, steelmanning, one could argue that the new rule is the same is before but augmented by “However, if a post contains expectionally important/useful insights (e.g. emergency information), all other criteria can be overruled. If the mods find the main points of a post convincing, other statements in the post then do not have to be rigorously argued for or be backed up by evidence, rants can take the place of level-headed writing, sneery comments about outgroups are ok (timelessness is not a criterion in an emergency anyway), and politics in general is not a problem anymore, including if that essentially means that LessWrong effectively endorses political demands that are not implied by being a rationality community.” (I am not saying Zvi’s posts are completely like that; instead I am trying to describe a potential rule that would potentially put them in the set of posts allowed for the frontpage, without saying that they are at the extreme border of that set.)
Is that the reasoning?
If so, I’ll note that I think it still damages the culture of the forum, but of course that may be justified. But then only the net effect is the justification. And the posts would therefore have to be really exceptionally important. Another possibility would be that the true rule should better be thought of as some function of the listed criteria? Then the more the other criteria are violated the more exceptional the main contant would have to be. However, that would not fit the “exception” reasoning. In any case, I think that it damages the culture more if it’s just left as a vague “We’ll make an exception”, combined with the implicit claim that Zvi’s post are very similar to other COVID posts (like this?).
Moreover, I am a bit suspicious of the claims about the unique value of these posts (“to make sure that people who follow LessWrong have at least basic guidance and advice during the most crucial phases of this whole coronavirus pandemic”, as habryka wrote above), which would fit the first dimension of the “exception criteria”. But as I am not in the US and do follow a different country’s media (including social media), it is of course possible that all other sources of information in the US are basically useless.
What I also don’t see is why this is “a decent middle-ground of not completely breaking our guidelines”; exceptions do break rules, otherwise they would not be exceptions, right?
I still don’t fully understand what you are saying, so: 1) What does the word “utilitarian” add to this explanation? 2) What would LessWrong run by “consequentialist calculus” look like, in contrast to “run by utilitarian calculus”? 3) Do you equate “habryka thinks” with the utilitarian calculus that is supposed to run LW?
We got a lot of complaints about it, and one of the first things we did was to add ways to filter out coronavirus related stuff from the frontpage. Of course not everyone minded, but I very distinctly had a sense that it was difficult to talk about anything else. It was also all very news-focused, which is something I care a lot about avoiding with LessWrong, because I think becoming news-focused is a very strong attractor for online communities that usually has pretty bad effects on overall intellectual progress.
I decided that Zvi’s content is bypassing the usual frontpage guidelines for now, in an effort strike a balance between informing people of important and urgent developments, while not overwhelming the whole site with political and coronavirus-related content again.
Here is the relevant comment where I announced this policy: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vkvaAXHN2zPXhDjJC/covid-12-3-land-of-confusion?commentId=dR8FYiztgL4pzwpCs
To make it easier to read, the full text:
After some reflection, I still do not understand the reasoning why the new rule is that Covid-19 content is forbidden except for Zvi’s? Why are more level-headed posts banned from the frontpage, making spicing up articles with a certain rhetorics a necessary condition for Covid-19 frontpage posts?
I am pretty confident we don’t want the vast majority of news-driven COVID content on the frontpage. Happy to hear alternative proposals for a relatively simple and clear rule. Since Zvi does these weekly and they tend to be by far the most popular, consistent and comprehensive content, having just these weekly updates and associated posts on the frontpage seems like a reasonable and simple rule to me. If you have a different suggested one, happy to consider that one instead.
I guess I can’t suggest a rule here; I seem to misunderstand the rules that are valid on LessWrong. With respect to the more-or-less explicit ones (“unusually high standards of discourse” etc, and “explain not persuade”), my understanding seems to be different from yours. There are also implicit rules which I thought existed as a standard or as an ideal, but they would not fit the preferences revealed by frontpaging or by popularity.
Sorry, just to be clear, Zvi’s posts are definitely violating the frontpage guidelines, as are basically all news-driven COVID posts. But we are making an explicit exception to our guidelines in order to make sure that people who follow LessWrong have at least basic guidance and advice during the most crucial phases of this whole coronavirus pandemic. Having the rule of frontpaging Zvi’s updates in particular seems like a decent middle-ground of not completely breaking our guidelines while also giving people basic orientation during these critical periods.
I like the idea of front-paging Zvi’s weekly updates. (No opinion on whether other COVID-19 content should be barred from the frontpage.)
LessWrong isn’t run by consequentialist calculus but by utilitarian calculus.
FYI I don’t think this distinction makes sense here, or at least it doesn’t feel like the cruxy bit explaining the current disagreement. (I’d say that’s more “being rigidly rule based” vs “making tradeoffs sometimes on rule flexibility.”)
There is something we can frame in two different ways, either “What is it that the mods make exceptions for?” or “What are the real rules?” I assume this comes down to the same question, but the second version is more explicit.
I think the implicit rule that I perceived was, more or less: “Posts should be about important/useful insights (whatever that means). They should try to explain, be based on and provide evidence when talking about the real world, be written in a level-headed way, avoid sneery comments about outgroups (and be timeless, even though that’s sometimes a vague concept). Because the things we want to avoid correlate with politics, we discourage politics in posts.”
Now, steelmanning, one could argue that the new rule is the same is before but augmented by “However, if a post contains expectionally important/useful insights (e.g. emergency information), all other criteria can be overruled. If the mods find the main points of a post convincing, other statements in the post then do not have to be rigorously argued for or be backed up by evidence, rants can take the place of level-headed writing, sneery comments about outgroups are ok (timelessness is not a criterion in an emergency anyway), and politics in general is not a problem anymore, including if that essentially means that LessWrong effectively endorses political demands that are not implied by being a rationality community.” (I am not saying Zvi’s posts are completely like that; instead I am trying to describe a potential rule that would potentially put them in the set of posts allowed for the frontpage, without saying that they are at the extreme border of that set.)
Is that the reasoning?
If so, I’ll note that I think it still damages the culture of the forum, but of course that may be justified. But then only the net effect is the justification. And the posts would therefore have to be really exceptionally important. Another possibility would be that the true rule should better be thought of as some function of the listed criteria? Then the more the other criteria are violated the more exceptional the main contant would have to be. However, that would not fit the “exception” reasoning. In any case, I think that it damages the culture more if it’s just left as a vague “We’ll make an exception”, combined with the implicit claim that Zvi’s post are very similar to other COVID posts (like this?).
Moreover, I am a bit suspicious of the claims about the unique value of these posts (“to make sure that people who follow LessWrong have at least basic guidance and advice during the most crucial phases of this whole coronavirus pandemic”, as habryka wrote above), which would fit the first dimension of the “exception criteria”. But as I am not in the US and do follow a different country’s media (including social media), it is of course possible that all other sources of information in the US are basically useless.
What I also don’t see is why this is “a decent middle-ground of not completely breaking our guidelines”; exceptions do break rules, otherwise they would not be exceptions, right?
Please explain.
habryka thinks that the value that Zvi’s post provide means that utilitarian value of making an expection for them from the general rules is positive.
I still don’t fully understand what you are saying, so: 1) What does the word “utilitarian” add to this explanation? 2) What would LessWrong run by “consequentialist calculus” look like, in contrast to “run by utilitarian calculus”? 3) Do you equate “habryka thinks” with the utilitarian calculus that is supposed to run LW?
I did not mind the amount of “coronavirus-related content” in April, and I do not remember the site being overwhelmed with political content.
We got a lot of complaints about it, and one of the first things we did was to add ways to filter out coronavirus related stuff from the frontpage. Of course not everyone minded, but I very distinctly had a sense that it was difficult to talk about anything else. It was also all very news-focused, which is something I care a lot about avoiding with LessWrong, because I think becoming news-focused is a very strong attractor for online communities that usually has pretty bad effects on overall intellectual progress.