But would a commenter who had never written “top-level” posts thereby be a worse commenter? It’s hard to see why that would be the case. In the analogy, coaching is an activity that depends on playing, but comment-writing doesn’t seem to depend on post-writing to nearly the same extent or even in the same way,
It depends on the kind of comment, and I think a lot is being read between the lines in the criticisms of criticisms that you’re critical of.
If the post is some some niche subject (e.g. Woodrow Wilson’s teeth brushing habits) and the comment challenges a matter of fact on WW’s teeth brushing habits, then it doesn’t matter so much whether the commenter has written top level posts and it matters a lot if they are a scholar of WW’s teeth brushing habits.
If the comment is criticizing the post—maybe saying “too long” or “too unclear” or something similar—then expertise on the topic of the post isn’t as relevant as “knowing how to judge when a post is too long”. And that’s something that is harder to do if you’ve never had to navigate that trade off in writing your own posts. I might know that I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, or that I didn’t undersetand it, but unless I’ve written posts that have conveyed similar things in fewer words I’m not really in a place to judge. Because my judgements would likely be wrong.
It might be fair of me to say “Shoot, this is confusing to me” or “I don’t have time to read the whole thing. Is it possible to summarize?”, but this feedback is no longer criticism. And the impression I get from the criticisms of criticisms that you’re quoting is that it’s these implicit “I’m in a position to judge the quality of your post” claims that they’re criticizing.
Requoting:
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[sic] in long tirades any time anyone does anything, making references to methods of practice and training long-outdated, with a constant air of superiority.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 coach here isn’t just making objective statements like “You’ll score more points by doing nothing”. He’s complaining and holding a constant air of superiority. The wrong claim being complained about here is the implied superiority, not the silly object level advice itself. The silly object level advice wouldn’t be a problem, if not for resting on a false claim of implied superiority, which is being shielded from evidence with aggression.
“Hey guys, can you try doing nothing? I think moving at all might be counterproductive” doesn’t sound like a coach that would get complained about in the same way. Because this coach will notice when his advice turns out to be dumb. If his lack of experience means he has nothing to add, he’ll stop meddling.
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.
I don’t think Sabien would respond negatively to someone saying “Shoot, this is confusing to me. Can you help me understand?”, and I don’t think he’s a fan of “Your post is confusing. Write it better next time or don’t write it at all”. I’d guess that you probably agree that the latter comments are bad, especially when written by someone who has never tried writing a top level post themselves?
Where it becomes a little more subtle though, is when the comment says something like “False. Woodrow Wilson did brush his teeth in the morning (on leap year days)”. At face value, the claim is about the object level facts about Woodrow Wilson’s teeth brushing habits, but the fact that it was judged as “False.” and not “Pretty much yeah, but there’s a narrow exception” conveys other implicit claims about how precise a post must be before it’s viewed as “bad”.
This does get into your “it’s about status” hypothesis, but the point is that this is not orthogonal to truth. It’s truth about different claims, which are usually made implicitly.
While generally I’m on board with the idea of “look at the object level, let status sort itself out”, it’s not that the truth of status claims does’t matter. Communities that get “Who is worth listening to and emulating” wrong don’t turn out well, so it’s important that BS status claims are recognized as BS.
If comments containing implicit and unfounded claims of “Your post is bad, and I’m in a position to judge” are seen as legitimate, there’s a problem. If the community recognizes that “Your post is bad” requires knowing how hard it is to write good posts, then even bad comments aren’t such an issue because the badness won’t spread.
And that’s something that is harder to do if you’ve never had to navigate that trade off in writing your own posts.
Huh? How does this make sense? If a post is too long, then it’s too long. If writing a post that’s short enough is hard, that… doesn’t actually have any bearing whatsoever on whether the post is too long or not.
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before? Obviously it’s not. If I bake a soufflé and it collapses, do you have to have baked a soufflé yourself to see that my soufflé has collapsed? No. If I build a bridge and it collapses, do you have to have built a bridge yourself to see that my bridge has collapsed? Of course not.
If the community recognizes that “Your post is bad” requires knowing how hard it is to write good posts, then even bad comments aren’t such an issue because the badness won’t spread.
But “your post is bad” doesn’t require knowing how hard it is to write good posts.
Whence comes this absolutely bizarre idea that would-be critics of a thing must themselves know how to do or make that thing? Did Roger Ebert ever direct any movies? Has Ruth Reichl operated any restaurants? Was John Neal himself a painter?
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before?
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
Cooking soup and writing posts isn’t the only way to get to a non-myopic perspective, and if the cook accidentally spilled all the salt into the soup it’s not hard to notice that. At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too. If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
There is only “too salty for my personal tastes”, evaluated for all relevant values of “my” and aggregated accordingly. Having cooked soup is not necessary for making such judgments. Indeed, having cooked soup adds nothing to your ability to make such judgments.
If you’re optimizing “how successful would the restaurant be if the soup were more/less salty”, then you are no longer optimizing “how salty should the soup be, for it to be good soup”. (It’s entirely possible that your restaurant will be more successful if you make the soup a bit too salty, thus encouraging your patrons to spend more money on drinks. Or, perhaps you could make the soup alternately not salty enough and too salty, and start some sort of viral social media argument thing about whether your soup is too salty or not salty enough. Or something else that involves something other than actually cooking good soup.)
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
Given that you can only taste food with your own taste buds, not anyone else’s, you cannot possibly represent anything but “a sample size of one”. And if my own taste of the soup says it’s fine, then it is no more and no less reasonable to blow off your criticism of my soup as it is to blow off a hundred different people’s criticism of my soup. And none of this has the slightest thing to do with whether any of those people have ever cooked soup before.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
If I try your soup, and it’s too salty, and you give me that reply, then the correct response on my part is to totally ignore what you said, and to not update my evaluation of your soup at all. Literally zero update is the correct amount of update. Because your arguments and your perspective cannot possibly affect my judgment of whether the soup is too salty. It’s simply a non sequitur.
At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too.
This is false. People miss simple and obvious problems all the time.
If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
As a counterpoint to the above argument, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this before?
Bob: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Alice: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup tastes fine now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become more pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, you should have undersalted it slightly.
Bob: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
Or, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: It’s definitely too salty, I can taste it…
Bob: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this?
Alice: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Bob: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup is too salty now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become less pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, I have oversalted it slightly.
Alice: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
(Application of the lessons drawn from these two scenarios to the domain of writing posts on a community blog is left as an exercise for the reader.)
It depends on the kind of comment, and I think a lot is being read between the lines in the criticisms of criticisms that you’re critical of.
If the post is some some niche subject (e.g. Woodrow Wilson’s teeth brushing habits) and the comment challenges a matter of fact on WW’s teeth brushing habits, then it doesn’t matter so much whether the commenter has written top level posts and it matters a lot if they are a scholar of WW’s teeth brushing habits.
If the comment is criticizing the post—maybe saying “too long” or “too unclear” or something similar—then expertise on the topic of the post isn’t as relevant as “knowing how to judge when a post is too long”. And that’s something that is harder to do if you’ve never had to navigate that trade off in writing your own posts. I might know that I didn’t have time to read the whole thing, or that I didn’t undersetand it, but unless I’ve written posts that have conveyed similar things in fewer words I’m not really in a place to judge. Because my judgements would likely be wrong.
It might be fair of me to say “Shoot, this is confusing to me” or “I don’t have time to read the whole thing. Is it possible to summarize?”, but this feedback is no longer criticism. And the impression I get from the criticisms of criticisms that you’re quoting is that it’s these implicit “I’m in a position to judge the quality of your post” claims that they’re criticizing.
Requoting:
The coach here isn’t just making objective statements like “You’ll score more points by doing nothing”. He’s complaining and holding a constant air of superiority. The wrong claim being complained about here is the implied superiority, not the silly object level advice itself. The silly object level advice wouldn’t be a problem, if not for resting on a false claim of implied superiority, which is being shielded from evidence with aggression.
“Hey guys, can you try doing nothing? I think moving at all might be counterproductive” doesn’t sound like a coach that would get complained about in the same way. Because this coach will notice when his advice turns out to be dumb. If his lack of experience means he has nothing to add, he’ll stop meddling.
I don’t think Sabien would respond negatively to someone saying “Shoot, this is confusing to me. Can you help me understand?”, and I don’t think he’s a fan of “Your post is confusing. Write it better next time or don’t write it at all”. I’d guess that you probably agree that the latter comments are bad, especially when written by someone who has never tried writing a top level post themselves?
Where it becomes a little more subtle though, is when the comment says something like “False. Woodrow Wilson did brush his teeth in the morning (on leap year days)”. At face value, the claim is about the object level facts about Woodrow Wilson’s teeth brushing habits, but the fact that it was judged as “False.” and not “Pretty much yeah, but there’s a narrow exception” conveys other implicit claims about how precise a post must be before it’s viewed as “bad”.
This does get into your “it’s about status” hypothesis, but the point is that this is not orthogonal to truth. It’s truth about different claims, which are usually made implicitly.
While generally I’m on board with the idea of “look at the object level, let status sort itself out”, it’s not that the truth of status claims does’t matter. Communities that get “Who is worth listening to and emulating” wrong don’t turn out well, so it’s important that BS status claims are recognized as BS.
If comments containing implicit and unfounded claims of “Your post is bad, and I’m in a position to judge” are seen as legitimate, there’s a problem. If the community recognizes that “Your post is bad” requires knowing how hard it is to write good posts, then even bad comments aren’t such an issue because the badness won’t spread.
Huh? How does this make sense? If a post is too long, then it’s too long. If writing a post that’s short enough is hard, that… doesn’t actually have any bearing whatsoever on whether the post is too long or not.
I mean, would you say that judging whether soup is too salty is harder to do if you’ve never cooked soup before? Obviously it’s not. If I bake a soufflé and it collapses, do you have to have baked a soufflé yourself to see that my soufflé has collapsed? No. If I build a bridge and it collapses, do you have to have built a bridge yourself to see that my bridge has collapsed? Of course not.
But “your post is bad” doesn’t require knowing how hard it is to write good posts.
Whence comes this absolutely bizarre idea that would-be critics of a thing must themselves know how to do or make that thing? Did Roger Ebert ever direct any movies? Has Ruth Reichl operated any restaurants? Was John Neal himself a painter?
Too salty for my personal tastes? Or too salty in some sort of objective way, like “This restaurant would be more successful if they made their soups less salty”?
It’s easy to whine “Ew! This is definitely too salty!” and claim it to be obvious, but on what is that based? If it’s my personal tastes, then I represent a sample size of one, and it would be completely reasonable to blow off my criticism of your soup. Especially if your own taste of the soup says it’s fine.
If I can say “Look, I’ve cooked soup for all sorts of demographics, and the amount of salt you put in there is going to be appealing to only a select few”, then that’s a very different sort of criticism. It’s not the “cooking” that matters, its exposure to the tradeoffs.
Cooking soup and writing posts isn’t the only way to get to a non-myopic perspective, and if the cook accidentally spilled all the salt into the soup it’s not hard to notice that. At the same time, if it’s that simple it’s probably obvious to the cook too. If someone is blowing off your criticism as myopic and you can’t see how that’s justified, they’re probably right.
There is only “too salty for my personal tastes”, evaluated for all relevant values of “my” and aggregated accordingly. Having cooked soup is not necessary for making such judgments. Indeed, having cooked soup adds nothing to your ability to make such judgments.
If you’re optimizing “how successful would the restaurant be if the soup were more/less salty”, then you are no longer optimizing “how salty should the soup be, for it to be good soup”. (It’s entirely possible that your restaurant will be more successful if you make the soup a bit too salty, thus encouraging your patrons to spend more money on drinks. Or, perhaps you could make the soup alternately not salty enough and too salty, and start some sort of viral social media argument thing about whether your soup is too salty or not salty enough. Or something else that involves something other than actually cooking good soup.)
Given that you can only taste food with your own taste buds, not anyone else’s, you cannot possibly represent anything but “a sample size of one”. And if my own taste of the soup says it’s fine, then it is no more and no less reasonable to blow off your criticism of my soup as it is to blow off a hundred different people’s criticism of my soup. And none of this has the slightest thing to do with whether any of those people have ever cooked soup before.
If I try your soup, and it’s too salty, and you give me that reply, then the correct response on my part is to totally ignore what you said, and to not update my evaluation of your soup at all. Literally zero update is the correct amount of update. Because your arguments and your perspective cannot possibly affect my judgment of whether the soup is too salty. It’s simply a non sequitur.
This is false. People miss simple and obvious problems all the time.
And so this is also false.
As a counterpoint to the above argument, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this before?
Bob: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Alice: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup tastes fine now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become more pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, you should have undersalted it slightly.
Bob: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
Or, consider a scenario like this one:
Alice (trying Bob’s soup): This soup is too salty.
Bob: What? No way. It’s perfect!
Alice: It’s definitely too salty, I can taste it…
Bob: Ah, I take it you’ve never made soup like this?
Alice: No, but I don’t see what that has to do with it; my taste buds work fine…
Bob: Indeed, and you are correct that the soup is too salty now, but as it cools, and especially when you refrigerate it, the saltiness will become less pronounced (and this will persist after reheating). So to ensure optimal saltiness for consuming this soup over the course of some days, I have oversalted it slightly.
Alice: Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize.
(Application of the lessons drawn from these two scenarios to the domain of writing posts on a community blog is left as an exercise for the reader.)