I sometimes see people express disapproval of critical blog comments by commenters who don’t write many blog posts of their own. Such meta-criticism is not infrequently couched in terms of metaphors to some non-blogging domain.
The paragraphs you quote are both metaphors analogizing some non-blogging domain to… something. It’s not clear to me that the thing they’re analogizing to is “writing posts on LW, specifically as opposed to comments on LW”. Like, it seems that you think in Habryka’s comment
The situation seems more similar to having a competitive team where anyone gets screamed at for basically any motion, with a coach who doesn’t themselves perform the sport, but just complaints [sic] in long tirades any time anyone does anything, making references to methods of practice and training long-outdated, with a constant air of superiority.
the analogy is that the coach writes blog comments and the team members write blog posts. But skimming a few comments up and down in that thread, that’s not a hypothesis I’d generate. (I’ve read the thread previously but don’t remember it in detail.) Possibly the post it’s on makes it more plausible as a hypothesis, but like, the comment in question is very deep into a thread.
And similarly, in Duncan’s comment
There’s only so much withering critique a given builder is interested in receiving (frequently from those who do not themselves even build!) before eventually they will either stop building entirely, or leave to go somewhere where buildery is appreciated, rewarded, and (importantly) defended.
It seems you think the builders are meant to be the blog posters and the people criticizing them are the blog commentators. But again, if I re-skim the post, this isn’t clear. I think the strongest short-snippet evidence for it comes from the line
the commenter most frequently complained about by the former authors was a person who did not themselves write posts
...but this line was written by Vaniver. Duncan quoted it in bold, but I don’t think that means Duncan would necessarily draw the line at “people who write posts versus people who write comments”. I’d guess he wouldn’t, and for that matter that nor would Vaniver.
It seems to me that posts-versus-comments is a helpful stand in for the actual distinction that people care about here, which is...
...well, it’s hard to pin down, which I think is part of why people use metaphor. Writing “words that stand by themselves, that provide value to a broad spectrum of people even if they haven’t read certain specific other words” versus “words that are mostly only worth reading if you’ve read some specific other words and didn’t happen to spot a specific mistake in them”? I don’t think that’s quite right, but pointing in the right general direction. (E.g. “part five in an ongoing sequence” might need parts 1-4 as context, but still be in the category that I’m trying to gesture at with the stand-by-themselves description.)
Obviously both kinds of writing can be written as both comments and posts, but there’s clear correlation for which is written as which. Describing them as posts versus comments probably isn’t ideal, but I think it’s mostly okay.
And if we assume people are talking about these other categories, instead of as posts and comments, then:
it’s not even clear to what extent comment-writing and post-writing are even different activities, rather than just being the same activity, writing.
I claim that yes, these two different types of writing are significantly different activities.
Because it would be the same sequence of bytes, the effect of rendering those bytes as text on a monitor and showing them to a human would be the same. The human reading the comment has no way of knowing who or what wrote those bytes to the database. In in the language of causal graphical models, we can say that the text of the comment “screens off” the process that produced it.
Who wrote this comment” is also written into the database, and rendered on the page! You can e.g. choose whether or not to read the words after looking at my username! The effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by my username does not need to be the same as the effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by another username!
...I’m pretty sure you know this? At any rate, later down you seem to know that it is possible to know who a comment was authored by. But I found it weirdly frustrating to have this obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion lying around.
Describing them as posts versus comments probably isn’t ideal, but I think it’s mostly okay.
Yes, in retrospect, I wish I had done a better job of flagging the metonymy. I’m glad the idea got through despite that.
I claim that yes, these two different types of writing are significantly different activities.
Different in what respect? When I write a critical post (arguing that author X is wrong about Y1 because Z1), it feels like relevantly the same activity as when I write a “non-critical” post (just arguing that Y2 because Z2 without reference to any reputedly mistaken prior work) in terms of what cognitive skills I’m using: the substance is about working out how Zi implies Yi. That’s the aspect relevant to the playing/coaching metaphor. Whether there happens to be an X in the picture doesn’t seem to change the essential character of the work. (Right? Does your subjective assessment differ?)
The effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by my username does not need to be the same as the effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by another username!
It doesn’t need to, but should it? The section titled “However, Critic Contributions Can Inform Uncertain Estimates of Comment Value” describes one reason why it should. My bold philosophical claim is that that’s the only reason. (I’m counting gjm’s comment about known expertise as relevantly “the same reason.”)
Alternatively, for the purpose of the argument in that section, we can instead imagine that we’re talking about a blog where the commenting form has a blank “Author name” field, rather than a site with passworded accounts: the name could be forged just as easily as the comment content, and the “comment” is the (author-name, content) pair. That would restore the screening-off property.
Oh, I’d say it didn’t. At least not to me, and judging from my memory of the comments, not to many others either.
That is, when I read the essay I thought: “Zack thinks that Oli and Duncan think X, and Zack thinks X is wrong. I think instead Oli and Duncan think X’, which is obviously true.”
Judging from this comment, you actually thought Oli and Duncan think X’, and you think X’ is wrong. And sure, after reading the essay I thought “Oli and Duncan think X’”, so arguably the essay transmitted that to me. But it felt more like the essay pointed me in a direction that let me generate the hypothesis myself, rather than actually transmitting the hypothesis to me.
Not sure if this is particularly a meaningful distinction.
Different in what respect?
This is kind of hard to answer because the distributions overlap, but they still seem like clearly different distributions to me. For example:
If I’m writing a post-like-thing, I need to come up with a topic, and I might change the topic half way through writing it. If I’m writing a comment-like-thing, I’m continuing with the topic that someone else started.
Post-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that I’ve picked myself is true/useful, comment-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that someone else picked is false/useless-or-harmful.
I’m more likely to try to come up with an analogy when writing a post-like-thing, and more likely to dive into an analogy when writing a comment-like-thing.
A post-like-thing usually can’t assume any one specific text as background knowledge. A comment-like-thing can typically assume the reader’s also read the thing I’m commenting on and knows the argument it’s making.
A post-like-thing is more likely to be written in the form of “fiction that communicates an idea” than a comment-like-thing is.
Hypothesis: even when you (i.e. Zack) write top-level posts, they’re typically towards the comment-like side of things, and that’s part of why it’s not clear to you that there’s a difference. For example, this top-level post is fairly comment-like.
It doesn’t need to, but should it?
Meh, not a conversation I feel like having.
To reiterate: you made an obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion. (“For a given comment, the same bytes are written to the database regardless of the author. So the text screens off the author; that is, given the text, the effect on the reader can’t change depending on the author.”) And you know the conclusion is wrong, but you still left the wrong argument in the text, without pointing out where the mistake was or even that there must be a mistake, and that bugged me.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw in the post, but I felt like pointing at it and grumbling anyway.
The paragraphs you quote are both metaphors analogizing some non-blogging domain to… something. It’s not clear to me that the thing they’re analogizing to is “writing posts on LW, specifically as opposed to comments on LW”. Like, it seems that you think in Habryka’s comment
the analogy is that the coach writes blog comments and the team members write blog posts. But skimming a few comments up and down in that thread, that’s not a hypothesis I’d generate. (I’ve read the thread previously but don’t remember it in detail.) Possibly the post it’s on makes it more plausible as a hypothesis, but like, the comment in question is very deep into a thread.
And similarly, in Duncan’s comment
It seems you think the builders are meant to be the blog posters and the people criticizing them are the blog commentators. But again, if I re-skim the post, this isn’t clear. I think the strongest short-snippet evidence for it comes from the line
...but this line was written by Vaniver. Duncan quoted it in bold, but I don’t think that means Duncan would necessarily draw the line at “people who write posts versus people who write comments”. I’d guess he wouldn’t, and for that matter that nor would Vaniver.
It seems to me that posts-versus-comments is a helpful stand in for the actual distinction that people care about here, which is...
...well, it’s hard to pin down, which I think is part of why people use metaphor. Writing “words that stand by themselves, that provide value to a broad spectrum of people even if they haven’t read certain specific other words” versus “words that are mostly only worth reading if you’ve read some specific other words and didn’t happen to spot a specific mistake in them”? I don’t think that’s quite right, but pointing in the right general direction. (E.g. “part five in an ongoing sequence” might need parts 1-4 as context, but still be in the category that I’m trying to gesture at with the stand-by-themselves description.)
Obviously both kinds of writing can be written as both comments and posts, but there’s clear correlation for which is written as which. Describing them as posts versus comments probably isn’t ideal, but I think it’s mostly okay.
And if we assume people are talking about these other categories, instead of as posts and comments, then:
I claim that yes, these two different types of writing are significantly different activities.
Who wrote this comment” is also written into the database, and rendered on the page! You can e.g. choose whether or not to read the words after looking at my username! The effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by my username does not need to be the same as the effect of rendering these bytes as text preceded by another username!
...I’m pretty sure you know this? At any rate, later down you seem to know that it is possible to know who a comment was authored by. But I found it weirdly frustrating to have this obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion lying around.
Thanks for commenting!
Yes, in retrospect, I wish I had done a better job of flagging the metonymy. I’m glad the idea got through despite that.
Different in what respect? When I write a critical post (arguing that author X is wrong about Y1 because Z1), it feels like relevantly the same activity as when I write a “non-critical” post (just arguing that Y2 because Z2 without reference to any reputedly mistaken prior work) in terms of what cognitive skills I’m using: the substance is about working out how Zi implies Yi. That’s the aspect relevant to the playing/coaching metaphor. Whether there happens to be an X in the picture doesn’t seem to change the essential character of the work. (Right? Does your subjective assessment differ?)
It doesn’t need to, but should it? The section titled “However, Critic Contributions Can Inform Uncertain Estimates of Comment Value” describes one reason why it should. My bold philosophical claim is that that’s the only reason. (I’m counting gjm’s comment about known expertise as relevantly “the same reason.”)
Alternatively, for the purpose of the argument in that section, we can instead imagine that we’re talking about a blog where the commenting form has a blank “Author name” field, rather than a site with passworded accounts: the name could be forged just as easily as the comment content, and the “comment” is the (author-name, content) pair. That would restore the screening-off property.
Oh, I’d say it didn’t. At least not to me, and judging from my memory of the comments, not to many others either.
That is, when I read the essay I thought: “Zack thinks that Oli and Duncan think X, and Zack thinks X is wrong. I think instead Oli and Duncan think X’, which is obviously true.”
Judging from this comment, you actually thought Oli and Duncan think X’, and you think X’ is wrong. And sure, after reading the essay I thought “Oli and Duncan think X’”, so arguably the essay transmitted that to me. But it felt more like the essay pointed me in a direction that let me generate the hypothesis myself, rather than actually transmitting the hypothesis to me.
Not sure if this is particularly a meaningful distinction.
This is kind of hard to answer because the distributions overlap, but they still seem like clearly different distributions to me. For example:
If I’m writing a post-like-thing, I need to come up with a topic, and I might change the topic half way through writing it. If I’m writing a comment-like-thing, I’m continuing with the topic that someone else started.
Post-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that I’ve picked myself is true/useful, comment-like-things are more likely to argue that some claim or idea that someone else picked is false/useless-or-harmful.
I’m more likely to try to come up with an analogy when writing a post-like-thing, and more likely to dive into an analogy when writing a comment-like-thing.
A post-like-thing usually can’t assume any one specific text as background knowledge. A comment-like-thing can typically assume the reader’s also read the thing I’m commenting on and knows the argument it’s making.
A post-like-thing is more likely to be written in the form of “fiction that communicates an idea” than a comment-like-thing is.
Hypothesis: even when you (i.e. Zack) write top-level posts, they’re typically towards the comment-like side of things, and that’s part of why it’s not clear to you that there’s a difference. For example, this top-level post is fairly comment-like.
Meh, not a conversation I feel like having.
To reiterate: you made an obviously-wrong argument for an obviously-wrong conclusion. (“For a given comment, the same bytes are written to the database regardless of the author. So the text screens off the author; that is, given the text, the effect on the reader can’t change depending on the author.”) And you know the conclusion is wrong, but you still left the wrong argument in the text, without pointing out where the mistake was or even that there must be a mistake, and that bugged me.
This isn’t necessarily a flaw in the post, but I felt like pointing at it and grumbling anyway.