Okay, I must have missed something here, but this is the second reference I’ve seen to this in the last week, without there having been any explicit general announcement that I can recall.
Since when are there “moderators” (as opposed to “editors”) on Less Wrong?
As I understood things In The Beginning, moderation on LW was accomplished by voting, with two users (Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky) having certain godlike powers such as promoting posts, deleting spam, and banning users. These users were called “editors”. Later I learned that there were a couple more editors I hadn’t heard about, but this didn’t seem like a big deal because they seemed to be technical people who worked on the functioning of the site (maybe working for Tricycle or something).
However, I don’t remember any post (or even comment) from an editor saying “Attention everybody! Less Wrong now has designated moderators. I’m pleased to announce that cousin_it, Yvain, and...[?]....will be serving in this capacity. Please congratulate these fine folks on their newly-acquired powers over you.”
And nor am I aware of any list of moderators, or any indication on the status of such people on their user pages.
I’m not saying having moderators is a bad idea, by any means. But would a little more transparency really be so costly? Surely a heads-up is warranted whenever basic changes are made to the way the site works. Otherwise it seems sneaky.
Whenever someone is made a moderator, there should be an “investiture ceremony” in the form of (at the very least) a top-level post in the discussion section.
You’re right. I’ll tell what I know. A proper general announcement would be better, of course, but it’s not within my power to speak for the government of LW. I just PM’d Eliezer asking for such an announcement to be made.
Some days ago I got a surprise PM from user matt saying I’d been made a moderator. As far as I know, everyone on the “top contributors” list except Roko got such messages. My only superpower is deleting (“banning”) posts and comments, and it’s meant to be used only for removing spam. I cannot promote posts to the frontpage or ban people. I have not exercised my power yet because there was no need. Lists of moderators are at the following URLs: mods for LW proper, mods for discussion section. I don’t know if non-mods can see these lists, so I’ll retype them here.
It goes without saying that if there’s ever any significant controversy about my “banning” anything (though I find that hard to imagine), I’ll give up my mod status.
Okay, I must have missed something here, but this is the second reference I’ve seen to this in the last week, without there having been any explicit general announcement that I can recall.
Since when are there “moderators” (as opposed to “editors”) on Less Wrong?
As I understood things In The Beginning, moderation on LW was accomplished by voting, with two users (Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky) having certain godlike powers such as promoting posts, deleting spam, and banning users. These users were called “editors”. Later I learned that there were a couple more editors I hadn’t heard about, but this didn’t seem like a big deal because they seemed to be technical people who worked on the functioning of the site (maybe working for Tricycle or something).
However, I don’t remember any post (or even comment) from an editor saying “Attention everybody! Less Wrong now has designated moderators. I’m pleased to announce that cousin_it, Yvain, and...[?]....will be serving in this capacity. Please congratulate these fine folks on their newly-acquired powers over you.”
And nor am I aware of any list of moderators, or any indication on the status of such people on their user pages.
I’m not saying having moderators is a bad idea, by any means. But would a little more transparency really be so costly? Surely a heads-up is warranted whenever basic changes are made to the way the site works. Otherwise it seems sneaky.
Whenever someone is made a moderator, there should be an “investiture ceremony” in the form of (at the very least) a top-level post in the discussion section.
You’re right. I’ll tell what I know. A proper general announcement would be better, of course, but it’s not within my power to speak for the government of LW. I just PM’d Eliezer asking for such an announcement to be made.
Some days ago I got a surprise PM from user matt saying I’d been made a moderator. As far as I know, everyone on the “top contributors” list except Roko got such messages. My only superpower is deleting (“banning”) posts and comments, and it’s meant to be used only for removing spam. I cannot promote posts to the frontpage or ban people. I have not exercised my power yet because there was no need. Lists of moderators are at the following URLs: mods for LW proper, mods for discussion section. I don’t know if non-mods can see these lists, so I’ll retype them here.
LW: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, RobinHanson, AnnaSalamon, Yvain, Alicorn, Kaj_Sotala, PhilGoetz, Wei_Dai, cousin_it, Vladimir_Nesov, Kevin
Discussion section: wmoore, AnnaSalamon, Eliezer_Yudkowsky, Yvain, Alicorn, Kaj_Sotala, PhilGoetz, Wei_Dai, cousin_it, Vladimir_Nesov, Kevin
It goes without saying that if there’s ever any significant controversy about my “banning” anything (though I find that hard to imagine), I’ll give up my mod status.
Thanks; upvoted.
It probably was an emergency response to the recent Plague Of Spam in the discussion section, which would explain the lack of communication.