I am confused by the dialogue system. I can’t quite tell whether it’s telling me the truth but being maddeningly vague about it, or whether it’s lying to me, or whether I’m just misunderstanding something.
Every now and then I get a notification hanging off the “bell” icon at top right saying something like “New users interested in dialoguing with you”.
On the face of it, this means: at least one specific person has specifically nominated me as someone they would like to have a dialogue with.
So I click on the thing and get taken to a page which shows me (if I’m understanding the text correctly) a list of users I’ve upvoted recently, divided up according to whether they’re “recently active on dialogue matching”.
I don’t see any indication of the form “this user has nominated you as someone they would like to dialogue with”—which is fair enough, since there’s something to be said for making it possible to say “I’d like to have a dialogue with X” but not tell X that unless they also want to have a dialogue with you. But I also don’t see anything of the form “N users have specifically nominated you as someone they would like to dialogue with”.
So I have no way to tell whether there’s actually someone who would specifically like to Do The Thing with me, or whether it’s just that the LW machinery wants me to feel like there is, and the only real basis for this notification I’ve received is that there are some people who maybe kinda would be a good match, on the basis that I’ve upvoted them and they’ve upvoted me or something.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but my natural inclination is to think “if there were actually specific people, then there’d be something explicitly saying so, so probably there aren’t”. So the general impression I get from this system is (my apologies for the analogy) kinda like a slightly scammy dating app which tells you “73 hot singles are interested in your profile” or something, not because there are actually 73 people who have expressed an interest in dating you but because if they say that then you’re more likely to use the app and pay their subscription or view their advertisements.
(Being Old by internet standards and married, I haven’t actually used any scammy dating apps, or indeed any not-scammy dating apps. So my impression that that’s a thing they sometimes do might be wrong.)
Is there some full explanation somewhere of how this stuff works and what the notifications mean? I do understand that e.g. if X looks at the dialogue-matching list, sees Y there, and checks the little box for Y, and if Y does the same for X, then both of them get told “you and this specific other person are interested in having a dialogue with one another”. But I don’t understand what “users interested in dialoguing with you” means.
(Another thing I don’t know is what LW is telling other users about me on the dialogue-matching page. They get a list of topics I’ve written/commented on, but so far as I can see I don’t have any way to see that list. And they get a list of things I’ve written that they’ve read, which of course varies from user to user and it’s none of my business what it is for any given person. All this means that I have very little idea what some other user expects, if they have checked the box next to my name.)
It does mean that there are real users who checked you. I think the notifications are plausibly too “scammy dating site” regardless, but they are not false.
I realise that there’s another thing in this area that I’m possibly confused about. I think I’m not confused and it’s just that there isn’t a good way to present the relevant information.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
(Because the list I see is filtered by my having upvoted things they wrote, but AIUI not symmetrically by their having upvoted things I wrote. So maybe user X liked things I wrote, went to the dialogue page, saw my name, and checked the checkbox, causing me to get notified … but I haven’t read what X wrote, or happened not to upvote it—I don’t vote all that much, either up or down—and so X is not on the list I see. So poor X will be waiting for ever for my response, since I never get presented with the option to suggest dialogue with X.)
This could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve checked my box, but that’s no good because then in some cases I can tell that someone’s checked my box without ever having to check theirs. (I’m not sure this mechanic actually makes sense for dialogues in the way it maybe does for dating, but it’s obviously a very deliberate decision.) Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve upvoted things I wrote, but that’s also no good because that leaks information about who’s upvoted me. Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list both at random and if they’ve checked my box, or both at random and if they’ve upvoted me, or something, but that’s probably no good either because it still leaks some information and many ways of doing it leak way too much information, and because it clutters up the list of potential dialogue partners, and clutters it worse the less information it leaks.
None of these “fixes” seems at all attractive. But the alternative is that in some (many?) cases X will check the box for Y and there will be no way for Y to reciprocate, even if in fact Y would be very interested in dialogue with X.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
No, they will appear on the list somewhere, because the last section on the dialogue matching page is “Recently active on dialogue matching”, which shows all users who have made checkboxes within some recent time interval. So if they don’t appear in any of the previous lists, they will appear there.
Yeah, it does seem like a tricky design problem. Some discussion of it in the thread here.
My current guess is that it would be better to have a casual-feeling non-anonymous “invite to dialogue” than the dating-style algorithm. I also guess it won’t be implemented soon (for a combination of things like its marginal value given matching being smaller and how long I expect dialogues to be an organisational priority).
Thanks for the clarification! I think there would be some value in either putting some message to that effect on the dialogue page, or else having a page linked from there that provides more explanation of what’s going on and what everything means.
(The former might be tricky, since what it would be useful to see there might depend on what’s in the user’s notifications and maybe also on whether they got to the dialogue page by clicking on one of those notifications or by other means. Or maybe it would be bad for it to depend on that since then the contents of the page would change in not-so-predictable ways, which would be confusing in itself. But maybe a message along the lines of “At least one other user has checked the box to mark you as a user they would like to dialogue with. The most recent time this happened was about two days ago.” Or something; I haven’t really thought this through.)
They get a list of topics I’ve written/commented on, but so far as I can see I don’t have any way to see that list
Yeah, users can’t currently see that list for themselves (unless of course you create a new account, upvote yourself, and then look at the matching page through that account!).
What we show is “The tags a user commented on in the last 3 years, sorted by comment count, and excluding a set of tags that I deemed as less interesting to show to other users, for example because they were too general (World Modeling, …), too niche (Has Diagram, …) or too political (Drama, LW Moderation, …).”
I think it’s a reference to Francis Bacons’ “Instauratio Magna” (“The Great Instauration”), though I am not sure why we would have chosen “Magnum” instead of “Magna” as the spelling.
The Latin noun “instauratio” is feminine, so “magna” uses the feminine “-a” ending to agree with it. “forum” in Latin is neuter, so “magnum” would be the corresponding form of the adjective. (All assuming nominative case.)
I am confused by the dialogue system. I can’t quite tell whether it’s telling me the truth but being maddeningly vague about it, or whether it’s lying to me, or whether I’m just misunderstanding something.
Every now and then I get a notification hanging off the “bell” icon at top right saying something like “New users interested in dialoguing with you”.
On the face of it, this means: at least one specific person has specifically nominated me as someone they would like to have a dialogue with.
So I click on the thing and get taken to a page which shows me (if I’m understanding the text correctly) a list of users I’ve upvoted recently, divided up according to whether they’re “recently active on dialogue matching”.
I don’t see any indication of the form “this user has nominated you as someone they would like to dialogue with”—which is fair enough, since there’s something to be said for making it possible to say “I’d like to have a dialogue with X” but not tell X that unless they also want to have a dialogue with you. But I also don’t see anything of the form “N users have specifically nominated you as someone they would like to dialogue with”.
So I have no way to tell whether there’s actually someone who would specifically like to Do The Thing with me, or whether it’s just that the LW machinery wants me to feel like there is, and the only real basis for this notification I’ve received is that there are some people who maybe kinda would be a good match, on the basis that I’ve upvoted them and they’ve upvoted me or something.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but my natural inclination is to think “if there were actually specific people, then there’d be something explicitly saying so, so probably there aren’t”. So the general impression I get from this system is (my apologies for the analogy) kinda like a slightly scammy dating app which tells you “73 hot singles are interested in your profile” or something, not because there are actually 73 people who have expressed an interest in dating you but because if they say that then you’re more likely to use the app and pay their subscription or view their advertisements.
(Being Old by internet standards and married, I haven’t actually used any scammy dating apps, or indeed any not-scammy dating apps. So my impression that that’s a thing they sometimes do might be wrong.)
Is there some full explanation somewhere of how this stuff works and what the notifications mean? I do understand that e.g. if X looks at the dialogue-matching list, sees Y there, and checks the little box for Y, and if Y does the same for X, then both of them get told “you and this specific other person are interested in having a dialogue with one another”. But I don’t understand what “users interested in dialoguing with you” means.
(Another thing I don’t know is what LW is telling other users about me on the dialogue-matching page. They get a list of topics I’ve written/commented on, but so far as I can see I don’t have any way to see that list. And they get a list of things I’ve written that they’ve read, which of course varies from user to user and it’s none of my business what it is for any given person. All this means that I have very little idea what some other user expects, if they have checked the box next to my name.)
It does mean that there are real users who checked you. I think the notifications are plausibly too “scammy dating site” regardless, but they are not false.
I realise that there’s another thing in this area that I’m possibly confused about. I think I’m not confused and it’s just that there isn’t a good way to present the relevant information.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
(Because the list I see is filtered by my having upvoted things they wrote, but AIUI not symmetrically by their having upvoted things I wrote. So maybe user X liked things I wrote, went to the dialogue page, saw my name, and checked the checkbox, causing me to get notified … but I haven’t read what X wrote, or happened not to upvote it—I don’t vote all that much, either up or down—and so X is not on the list I see. So poor X will be waiting for ever for my response, since I never get presented with the option to suggest dialogue with X.)
This could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve checked my box, but that’s no good because then in some cases I can tell that someone’s checked my box without ever having to check theirs. (I’m not sure this mechanic actually makes sense for dialogues in the way it maybe does for dating, but it’s obviously a very deliberate decision.) Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve upvoted things I wrote, but that’s also no good because that leaks information about who’s upvoted me. Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list both at random and if they’ve checked my box, or both at random and if they’ve upvoted me, or something, but that’s probably no good either because it still leaks some information and many ways of doing it leak way too much information, and because it clutters up the list of potential dialogue partners, and clutters it worse the less information it leaks.
None of these “fixes” seems at all attractive. But the alternative is that in some (many?) cases X will check the box for Y and there will be no way for Y to reciprocate, even if in fact Y would be very interested in dialogue with X.
No, they will appear on the list somewhere, because the last section on the dialogue matching page is “Recently active on dialogue matching”, which shows all users who have made checkboxes within some recent time interval. So if they don’t appear in any of the previous lists, they will appear there.
Ah, so it is. Thanks.
Yeah, it does seem like a tricky design problem. Some discussion of it in the thread here.
My current guess is that it would be better to have a casual-feeling non-anonymous “invite to dialogue” than the dating-style algorithm. I also guess it won’t be implemented soon (for a combination of things like its marginal value given matching being smaller and how long I expect dialogues to be an organisational priority).
Thanks for the clarification! I think there would be some value in either putting some message to that effect on the dialogue page, or else having a page linked from there that provides more explanation of what’s going on and what everything means.
(The former might be tricky, since what it would be useful to see there might depend on what’s in the user’s notifications and maybe also on whether they got to the dialogue page by clicking on one of those notifications or by other means. Or maybe it would be bad for it to depend on that since then the contents of the page would change in not-so-predictable ways, which would be confusing in itself. But maybe a message along the lines of “At least one other user has checked the box to mark you as a user they would like to dialogue with. The most recent time this happened was about two days ago.” Or something; I haven’t really thought this through.)
That seems like a good idea! (I don’t know exactly when we’ll get to it).
(Also, sorry for the brevity of my messages; I am grateful for the details in yours)
Brevity is fine. I’m sure you have other things to do besides replying to my comments.
Yeah, users can’t currently see that list for themselves (unless of course you create a new account, upvote yourself, and then look at the matching page through that account!).
However, the SQL for this is actually open source, in the function getUserTopTags: https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum/blob/master/packages/lesswrong/server/repos/TagsRepo.ts
What we show is “The tags a user commented on in the last 3 years, sorted by comment count, and excluding a set of tags that I deemed as less interesting to show to other users, for example because they were too general (World Modeling, …), too niche (Has Diagram, …) or too political (Drama, LW Moderation, …).”
Just out of curiosity, is the name “ForumMagnum” an anatomical pun?
Lol, no, but that is kind of hilarious.
I think it’s a reference to Francis Bacons’ “Instauratio Magna” (“The Great Instauration”), though I am not sure why we would have chosen “Magnum” instead of “Magna” as the spelling.
The Latin noun “instauratio” is feminine, so “magna” uses the feminine “-a” ending to agree with it. “forum” in Latin is neuter, so “magnum” would be the corresponding form of the adjective. (All assuming nominative case.)
Huh, I learned something today about the name of my own Forum. Thank you!