A reason to shut down the forum entirely instead of leaving it in its current state is that low quality posts made by randos here can hurt the reputation of the forum and the people & organizations that were at one time or another affiliated with it. See e.g. this farewell that someone linked to on SlateStarCodex. There places online like the /r/SneerClub subreddit where people will post something that one particular Less Wrong user said and make fun of it, which tarnishes the reputation of the site in general. Banning Lumifer and VoiceOfRa would help a little in the short term, but running a quality online forum requires ongoing maintenance.
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is good advice.
There’s no reason to shut down the entire forum if the problems can be solved with less collateral damage.
Having participated in online communities which would somewhat regularly get made fun of by others, I’m not sure I agree that others making fun of an online community tarnishes its reputation in the general population. Seems to me that most people aren’t aware of the people making fun of the community. I think dishonest representations with wider distribution are much more harmful, e.g., RationalWiki’s take on LessWrong. And we should do something about that, but again, I don’t think shutting down the forum is the right approach.
Also, I tend to ignore farewell posts like that. In my experience, they happen regardless of the “health” of the community. I can think of one online community I’ve participated in that regularly has such threads, despite activity being at an all time high. They can describe real problems which should be fixed, but often don’t.
Seems to me that most people aren’t aware of the people making fun of the community.
One thing that can happen is that there will be an anti-community that springs up around making fun of the original community, and then a journalist will write a story about the community that the anti-community will discover and leave negative comments on (or the journalist will discover the anti-community and write a story on its existence—remember that journalists are strongly incentivized to drive pageviews).
or the journalist will discover the anti-community and write a story on its existence
LW is not popular for a story about the reddit community making fun of LW to be a story that’s interesting to the general public. The existance of someone critizing LW isn’t a good story.
Can you provide an example of the scenario you describe, or something like it? I agree that journalists can cause harm with irresponsible stories, but I’m less sure of the entire “anti-community” aspect. It could depend on what you mean by “anti-community”, though.
So right after seeing this comment from you, I went to my user page and noticed that a bunch of my comments that were previously at 0 points are now at −1 points—most of which were more than a week old. You’ve been accused of retributive downvoting in the past, so consider this another incident to add to your rap sheet. To make it more difficult for you to hide your tracks in this, I’ve taken the liberty of archiving my user page… the pattern of apparent retributive downvoting is fairly clear & obvious. I’ll also be letting the mods know what seems to be going on.
A reason to shut down the forum entirely instead of leaving it in its current state is that low quality posts made by randos here can hurt the reputation of the forum and the people & organizations that were at one time or another affiliated with it. See e.g. this farewell that someone linked to on SlateStarCodex. There places online like the /r/SneerClub subreddit where people will post something that one particular Less Wrong user said and make fun of it, which tarnishes the reputation of the site in general. Banning Lumifer and VoiceOfRa would help a little in the short term, but running a quality online forum requires ongoing maintenance.
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is good advice.
There’s no reason to shut down the entire forum if the problems can be solved with less collateral damage.
Having participated in online communities which would somewhat regularly get made fun of by others, I’m not sure I agree that others making fun of an online community tarnishes its reputation in the general population. Seems to me that most people aren’t aware of the people making fun of the community. I think dishonest representations with wider distribution are much more harmful, e.g., RationalWiki’s take on LessWrong. And we should do something about that, but again, I don’t think shutting down the forum is the right approach.
Also, I tend to ignore farewell posts like that. In my experience, they happen regardless of the “health” of the community. I can think of one online community I’ve participated in that regularly has such threads, despite activity being at an all time high. They can describe real problems which should be fixed, but often don’t.
One thing that can happen is that there will be an anti-community that springs up around making fun of the original community, and then a journalist will write a story about the community that the anti-community will discover and leave negative comments on (or the journalist will discover the anti-community and write a story on its existence—remember that journalists are strongly incentivized to drive pageviews).
Seriously, if you’re going to go into panic mode every time someone outside the community criticizes it, you’ll never accomplish anything.
LW is not popular for a story about the reddit community making fun of LW to be a story that’s interesting to the general public. The existance of someone critizing LW isn’t a good story.
Can you provide an example of the scenario you describe, or something like it? I agree that journalists can cause harm with irresponsible stories, but I’m less sure of the entire “anti-community” aspect. It could depend on what you mean by “anti-community”, though.
LOL
Well, I guess I’m used to hearing that I’d be the first against the wall when the revolution comes… X-D
How about banning concern trolls like hg00?
So right after seeing this comment from you, I went to my user page and noticed that a bunch of my comments that were previously at 0 points are now at −1 points—most of which were more than a week old. You’ve been accused of retributive downvoting in the past, so consider this another incident to add to your rap sheet. To make it more difficult for you to hide your tracks in this, I’ve taken the liberty of archiving my user page… the pattern of apparent retributive downvoting is fairly clear & obvious. I’ll also be letting the mods know what seems to be going on.