Did you know that if a comment gets deleted, the author of it is notified via PM and given a copy of the deleted comment? So if you don’t mind the experience of having a comment deleted, you can just post your comment here, and repost it as an article later if it does get deleted.
I didn’t know that, but neither do I mind the experience of having a comment deleted. I would mind:
that Benquo might moderate this thread to a stringent degree according to a standard he might fail to disclose, and thus can use moderation as a means to move the goal posts, while under the social auspices of claiming to delete my comment because he is saw it as wilfully belligerent, without substantiating that claim.
that Benquo will be more motivated to do this than he otherwise would be with on other discussions he would moderate on LW, as he has initiated this discussion with an adversarial frame, and is one that Benquo feels personally quite strongly about (e.g., it is based on a long-lasting public dispute he has had with his former employer, and Benquo here is not shy here about his hostility to at least large portions of the EA movement).
that were he to delete my comment on such grounds, there would be no record by which anyone reading this discussion would be able to hold Benquo accountable to the standards he used to delete my comments, unduly stacking the deck against an appeal I could make that in deleting my comment Benquo had been inconsistent in his moderation.
Were this to actually happen, of course I would take my comment and re-post it as its own article. However, I would object to how Benquo would have deleted my comment in that case, not the fact that he did do it, on the grounds I’d see it as legitimately bad for the state of discourse LW should aspire to. By checking what form Benquo’s moderation standard specifically takes beyond a reign of tyranny against any comments he sees as vaguely annoying or counterproductive, I am trying to:
1. externalize a moderation standard to which Benquo could be held accountable.
2. figure out how I can write my comment so it meets Benquo’s expectations for quality, so as to minimize unnecessary friction.
In general, I’d very much like a permanent neat-things-to-know-about-LW post or page, which receives edits when there’s a significant update (do tell me if there’s already something like this). For example, I remember trying to find information about the mapping between karma and voting power a few months ago, and it was very difficult. I think I eventually found an announcement post that had the answer, but I can’t know for sure, since there might have been a change since that announcement was made. More recently, I saw that there were footnotes in the sequences, and failed to find any reference whatsoever on how to create footnotes. I didn’t learn how to do this until a month or so later, when the footnotes came to the EA forum and aaron wrote a post about it.
I agree with this. We are working on an updated About/Welcome page which will have info in this reference class (or at least links to other posts that have all of that info).
Did you know that if a comment gets deleted, the author of it is notified via PM and given a copy of the deleted comment? So if you don’t mind the experience of having a comment deleted, you can just post your comment here, and repost it as an article later if it does get deleted.
I didn’t know that, but neither do I mind the experience of having a comment deleted. I would mind:
that Benquo might moderate this thread to a stringent degree according to a standard he might fail to disclose, and thus can use moderation as a means to move the goal posts, while under the social auspices of claiming to delete my comment because he is saw it as wilfully belligerent, without substantiating that claim.
that Benquo will be more motivated to do this than he otherwise would be with on other discussions he would moderate on LW, as he has initiated this discussion with an adversarial frame, and is one that Benquo feels personally quite strongly about (e.g., it is based on a long-lasting public dispute he has had with his former employer, and Benquo here is not shy here about his hostility to at least large portions of the EA movement).
that were he to delete my comment on such grounds, there would be no record by which anyone reading this discussion would be able to hold Benquo accountable to the standards he used to delete my comments, unduly stacking the deck against an appeal I could make that in deleting my comment Benquo had been inconsistent in his moderation.
Were this to actually happen, of course I would take my comment and re-post it as its own article. However, I would object to how Benquo would have deleted my comment in that case, not the fact that he did do it, on the grounds I’d see it as legitimately bad for the state of discourse LW should aspire to. By checking what form Benquo’s moderation standard specifically takes beyond a reign of tyranny against any comments he sees as vaguely annoying or counterproductive, I am trying to:
1. externalize a moderation standard to which Benquo could be held accountable.
2. figure out how I can write my comment so it meets Benquo’s expectations for quality, so as to minimize unnecessary friction.
This does seem like something we should telegraph better than we currently do, although I’m not sure how.
In general, I’d very much like a permanent neat-things-to-know-about-LW post or page, which receives edits when there’s a significant update (do tell me if there’s already something like this). For example, I remember trying to find information about the mapping between karma and voting power a few months ago, and it was very difficult. I think I eventually found an announcement post that had the answer, but I can’t know for sure, since there might have been a change since that announcement was made. More recently, I saw that there were footnotes in the sequences, and failed to find any reference whatsoever on how to create footnotes. I didn’t learn how to do this until a month or so later, when the footnotes came to the EA forum and aaron wrote a post about it.
I agree with this. We are working on an updated About/Welcome page which will have info in this reference class (or at least links to other posts that have all of that info).
Strongly upvoted.
Just to add user feedback, I did indeed have no idea this was what happens when comments are deleted.