Some people did. Some people left for other reasons. One of those reasons was disliking getting downvoted a lot. In one case, it was specifically disliking getting mass-downvoted by Eugine. Which happens to be what you asked for.
(I agree that most people who have left LW have left for reasons other than getting mass-downvoted by Eugine. I hadn’t thought that was under any sort of dispute.)
“Mod-bombed” is strange expression. I find it probable that at least some people left LW because of karma harassment. However my impression stands—what made LW barren is people leaving because it stopped being interesting. But judging by the volume of discussion about particular reasons for leaving, you’d never guess that :-/
And they left because they were done with their respective projects, and maybe because of negative comments.
Eliezer had said the things he was planning to say with the sequences and had found new research fellows to start working on AI again.
Yvain was a sock puppet that Scott used on a role playing forum he was active on and did some LW posts as backstopping. Then he continued posting here for a while but writing without politics and not under his own name felt too much like hard work. Now his entire blog is pseudonymous because writing about politics under your own name is not such a good idea, but it is still all about political conversations rather than the sciency stuff he did as Yvain.
But it was not about Eugine or downvotes because they always got much more upvotes than downvotes on damn near every comment and every post.
An interesting thread. My overwhelming impression from it is that people left LW because it stopped being interesting.
Some people did. Some people left for other reasons. One of those reasons was disliking getting downvoted a lot. In one case, it was specifically disliking getting mass-downvoted by Eugine. Which happens to be what you asked for.
(I agree that most people who have left LW have left for reasons other than getting mass-downvoted by Eugine. I hadn’t thought that was under any sort of dispute.)
“Mod-bombed” is strange expression. I find it probable that at least some people left LW because of karma harassment. However my impression stands—what made LW barren is people leaving because it stopped being interesting. But judging by the volume of discussion about particular reasons for leaving, you’d never guess that :-/
And vice versa.
LW would probably still be interesting if certain people (e.g. Eliezer and Yvain) still regularly posted here.
And they left because they were done with their respective projects, and maybe because of negative comments.
Eliezer had said the things he was planning to say with the sequences and had found new research fellows to start working on AI again.
Yvain was a sock puppet that Scott used on a role playing forum he was active on and did some LW posts as backstopping. Then he continued posting here for a while but writing without politics and not under his own name felt too much like hard work. Now his entire blog is pseudonymous because writing about politics under your own name is not such a good idea, but it is still all about political conversations rather than the sciency stuff he did as Yvain.
But it was not about Eugine or downvotes because they always got much more upvotes than downvotes on damn near every comment and every post.
Yep. It’s a negative feedback loop, there’s a reason it’s known as the death spiral.