Only if nitpicking (or the resulting lower posting volume, or something like that) demotivates good posters more strongly than it demotivates mediocre posters. If this is true, it requires an explanation. My naive guess would be it demotivates mediocre posters more strongly because they’re wrong more often.
My naive guess would be it demotivates mediocre posters more strongly because they’re wrong more often.
A lot of the time, “mediocre posters” tend to be the source of the nitpicking. This is because writing up a nuanced objection takes time and effort, and requires much of the same skills as writing a good top-level post; whereas posting low-effort nitpicks is easy, especially if other people reward you with karma when you do so. (And empirically, I observed a great deal of poorly reasoned comments receiving upvotes on LW 1.0 towards the end of its lifespan, although I will decline to speculate publicly as to the cause of this.)
It doesn’t have to demotivate good posters more often, it just has to demotivate them enough to make them come less.
There are (at least) two types of mediocre posters – those that produce mediocre content, and those that like nitpicking and or picking fights. If you evenly drive away all content producers, and are left with nitpicking and drama, it doesn’t matter if the mediocre content producers are wrong more often. (And the effect doesn’t seem to be that strong to start an evaporative cooling process)
This seems like an argument for the hypothesis that nitpicking is net bad, but not for mr-hire’s hypothesis in the great-grandparent comment that nitpicking caused LW 1.0 to have a lot of mediocre content as a second-order effect.
I’m not 100% sure what mr hire meant, but I saw my comments as being in line with this shorter comment by Davis. Not sure if that’s the same or different from what you meant.
(That said, I get that this subthread was about your particular experience and if the issue was lack of good, positive content it makes sense for the above model to apply less.
I do think there’s an alternate model which might or might not apply to your experience, which is:
‘What matters is whether the good posters come faster than they leave, independent of how much mediocre there is.’
i.e. if a site has at least a core group of good content generators, it’s easier to pick those people out of a crowd, even if there’s a lot of mediocre content. And it doesn’t take much nitpicking for good posters to feel like they’d rather be someplace else)
(I agree with this and made the uncle comment before seeing it. Also, my experience wasn’t like that most of the time; I think it was mainly that way toward the end of LW 1.0.)
It’s not necessary for good posters to be disproportionately effected. Good posters already HAVE a disproportionate effect on the health of a community, so a small impact on good posters is worse than a large impact on mediocre posters.
So I think there’s a core of good advice somewhere here. Don’t nitpick is different from don’t bully, of course.
And, of course, whether pointing out a flaw in a post is bullying, or nitpicking, or assisting in finding the best expression of a valuable idea, is in the eye of the beholder.
My memory of LW 1.0 is that it had a lot of mediocre content that made me not want to read it regularly.
This at least plausibly seems like it could be a clear second order effect of the thing Davis was pointing out.
Only if nitpicking (or the resulting lower posting volume, or something like that) demotivates good posters more strongly than it demotivates mediocre posters. If this is true, it requires an explanation. My naive guess would be it demotivates mediocre posters more strongly because they’re wrong more often.
A lot of the time, “mediocre posters” tend to be the source of the nitpicking. This is because writing up a nuanced objection takes time and effort, and requires much of the same skills as writing a good top-level post; whereas posting low-effort nitpicks is easy, especially if other people reward you with karma when you do so. (And empirically, I observed a great deal of poorly reasoned comments receiving upvotes on LW 1.0 towards the end of its lifespan, although I will decline to speculate publicly as to the cause of this.)
It doesn’t have to demotivate good posters more often, it just has to demotivate them enough to make them come less.
There are (at least) two types of mediocre posters – those that produce mediocre content, and those that like nitpicking and or picking fights. If you evenly drive away all content producers, and are left with nitpicking and drama, it doesn’t matter if the mediocre content producers are wrong more often. (And the effect doesn’t seem to be that strong to start an evaporative cooling process)
This seems like an argument for the hypothesis that nitpicking is net bad, but not for mr-hire’s hypothesis in the great-grandparent comment that nitpicking caused LW 1.0 to have a lot of mediocre content as a second-order effect.
I’m not 100% sure what mr hire meant, but I saw my comments as being in line with this shorter comment by Davis. Not sure if that’s the same or different from what you meant.
(That said, I get that this subthread was about your particular experience and if the issue was lack of good, positive content it makes sense for the above model to apply less.
I do think there’s an alternate model which might or might not apply to your experience, which is:
‘What matters is whether the good posters come faster than they leave, independent of how much mediocre there is.’
i.e. if a site has at least a core group of good content generators, it’s easier to pick those people out of a crowd, even if there’s a lot of mediocre content. And it doesn’t take much nitpicking for good posters to feel like they’d rather be someplace else)
(I agree with this and made the uncle comment before seeing it. Also, my experience wasn’t like that most of the time; I think it was mainly that way toward the end of LW 1.0.)
It’s not necessary for good posters to be disproportionately effected. Good posters already HAVE a disproportionate effect on the health of a community, so a small impact on good posters is worse than a large impact on mediocre posters.
Yes, that’s my view. My model of what went wrong with LW 1.0 culturally was something like:
1. Nitpicky standards get into the culture
2. Many of the strongest contributors dislike interacting with the nitpicky standards and move elsewhere
3. Many of the remaining contributors don’t have as good content to contribute
4. LW is perceived as mediocre and no longer “the place to go”, reinforcing migration away from the site
So I think there’s a core of good advice somewhere here. Don’t nitpick is different from don’t bully, of course.
And, of course, whether pointing out a flaw in a post is bullying, or nitpicking, or assisting in finding the best expression of a valuable idea, is in the eye of the beholder.