The eridu-generated threads show that the direct reply toll doesn’t seem to work, or at least it didn’t in this case. I still don’t like the idea of the indiscriminate whole-thread toll, but I’m no longer expecting the current alternative to be effective.
I’ve thought of another option: maybe prohibit a user from posting anywhere in a subthread under any significantly-downvoted comments of their own? This is another feature of all bad threads that could be used to automatically recognize them: the user in a failure mode keeps coming back to the same thread, so if this single user is prohibited from doing so, this seems to be sufficient.
I still don’t like the idea of the indiscriminate whole-thread toll
It looks like that idea has already been replaced with hiding subthreads rooted on comments that are −3 or lower from recent and top comments.
I like the idea of hiding bad subthreads, but wish it’s a manual moderator action instead of based on votes. A lot of discussions that descend from downvoted comments are perfectly fine and do not need to be hidden.
I’ve thought of another option: maybe prohibit a user from posting anywhere in a subthread under any significantly-downvoted comments of their own?
I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if its a non-troll user who just made a bad comment? They wouldn’t be able to come back and admit their mistake or clarify their argument. An actual troll on the other hand could just make a new account and keep going in that thread.
hiding subthreads rooted on comments that are −3 or lower from recent and top comments.
I endorse this, incidentally. (Not that there’s any particular reason for anyone to care, but I’ve expressed my opposition to various other suggestions, so it seems only fair to express my endorsement as well.)
I also share the belief that automatic actions are more likely to apply in situations their coders would not endorse. That said, I also endorse the desire to reduce the workload on administrators. (And I appreciate the desire to diffuse social pressure on those administrators to avoid or reverse the action, though I’m more conflicted about whether I endorse that.)
It looks like that idea has already been replaced with hiding subthreads rooted on comments that are −3 or lower from recent and top comments.
I just noticed that cousin_it suggested this last year. Also, Eliezer asked:
Does anyone have any strong reasons why LW is better off six months from now if there’s a preference option instead of just an automatic behavior to hide such comments? If not, I would just like to see the behavior.
If anyone can think of a strong reason, they should probably follow the link above and comment there.
Thanks for the link. I don’t expect that filtering of what’s presented is a good strategy, as it aims at shaping the perception of the community culture, not at shaping the culture itself. It’s more important to shape the culture, and perception can’t be automatically filtered in a way that presents a picture that’s significantly different from the unfiltered picture (for some sense of “significantly”).
I think the idea is that if people don’t see new replies to the hidden subthread in recent comments, they’ll be much less likely to respond to those replies, so such threads will die out much more quickly. This will also cause trolls to not have as much fun trolling here so they’ll be more likely to leave us alone in the future.
ETA: On the other hand, perhaps we should talk about non-technical ways to change the culture as well. Do you have any ideas?
ETA2: A lot of previous discussion can be found here.
I’ll observe that this will also prevent the “Huh. Can someone explain why this comment has been so heavily downvoted?” sorts of comments, as well as the “Oh. I now see what was wrong with my comment, thanks all” sorts of comments. Or, rather, it will prevent those comments from appearing where they would naturally go in a thread. Of course this won’t necessarily prevent people from making the same comments they’re making now, it will just prevent them from doing so in that location.
These might or might not be good things.
More generally, I’m interested in what results you expect from implementing such an option. It would be good to record that somewhere before making a change, so we can subsequently establish whether the change had the desired results.
I’m also curious in what ways you expect those results to compare to giving mods the power to freeze a comment tree (that is, identify a comment and not allow further comments to be made downstream of it by anyone) when they consider it appropriate. But that’s more of a personal curiosity.
I’ll observe that this will also prevent the “Huh. Can someone explain why this comment has been so heavily downvoted?” sorts of comments
I thought of that, but there doesn’t appear to be a way of automatically separating these cases. Such questions could be edited-in in the downvoted comment itself, or included in a separately posted improved reframing of the content of the downvoted comment.
what results you expect from implementing such an option
This would make bad threads of the currently typical form literally impossible to construct, so it’s at least an interesting experiment. The successful outcome is for the downvoted conversations to peter out faster due to the inconvenience of having to find new starting points that are not replies to preceding conversations. I expect the worst that could happen is that instead of the nice orderly Big Bad Threads we’ll have a deluge of bad comments scattered all over the place.
I’m also curious in what ways you expect those results to compare to giving mods the power to freeze a comment tree
This variant of blocking only the downvoted user’s comments seems better on most counts, as it doesn’t have the downside of indiscriminate blocking which motivated the need for human judgment, it’s automatic and so won’t focus complaints as much, it seems to catch all the same threads that a human moderator might close, and it applies faster.
I suspect that if the goal is to make bad threads peter out faster, preventing all users from contributing to a bad thread will likely achieve that goal more readily than preventing one user from doing so.
We could even do that automatically if we wanted. For my own part I trust humans more than simple automatic pattern-matchers for this sort of thing, but if y’all prefer automatic pattern-matchers to diffuse the resulting complaints that’s an option as well.
Of course, if we’re OK with automatically blocking the downvoted user on the thread but not OK with automatically blocking other users on the thread, then an automatic branch-freeze won’t work. This might be true if there are other as-yet-unstated goals being addressed, beyond the desire to end the thread itself.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of letting everyone post on a thread except the person they are responding to; one-sided conversations make my teeth itch.
The eridu-generated threads show that the direct reply toll doesn’t seem to work, or at least it didn’t in this case. I still don’t like the idea of the indiscriminate whole-thread toll, but I’m no longer expecting the current alternative to be effective.
I’ve thought of another option: maybe prohibit a user from posting anywhere in a subthread under any significantly-downvoted comments of their own? This is another feature of all bad threads that could be used to automatically recognize them: the user in a failure mode keeps coming back to the same thread, so if this single user is prohibited from doing so, this seems to be sufficient.
It looks like that idea has already been replaced with hiding subthreads rooted on comments that are −3 or lower from recent and top comments.
I like the idea of hiding bad subthreads, but wish it’s a manual moderator action instead of based on votes. A lot of discussions that descend from downvoted comments are perfectly fine and do not need to be hidden.
I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if its a non-troll user who just made a bad comment? They wouldn’t be able to come back and admit their mistake or clarify their argument. An actual troll on the other hand could just make a new account and keep going in that thread.
A trivial low-cost solution, roundly ignored by EY and the rest of the forum management.
A related quote:
“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” -- Howard Aiken
If you want to try harder at this “ramming”, you could follow the link I posted above and present your idea there as a comment. :)
Done.
I endorse this, incidentally. (Not that there’s any particular reason for anyone to care, but I’ve expressed my opposition to various other suggestions, so it seems only fair to express my endorsement as well.)
I also share the belief that automatic actions are more likely to apply in situations their coders would not endorse. That said, I also endorse the desire to reduce the workload on administrators. (And I appreciate the desire to diffuse social pressure on those administrators to avoid or reverse the action, though I’m more conflicted about whether I endorse that.)
I just noticed that cousin_it suggested this last year. Also, Eliezer asked:
If anyone can think of a strong reason, they should probably follow the link above and comment there.
Thanks for the link. I don’t expect that filtering of what’s presented is a good strategy, as it aims at shaping the perception of the community culture, not at shaping the culture itself. It’s more important to shape the culture, and perception can’t be automatically filtered in a way that presents a picture that’s significantly different from the unfiltered picture (for some sense of “significantly”).
I think the idea is that if people don’t see new replies to the hidden subthread in recent comments, they’ll be much less likely to respond to those replies, so such threads will die out much more quickly. This will also cause trolls to not have as much fun trolling here so they’ll be more likely to leave us alone in the future.
ETA: On the other hand, perhaps we should talk about non-technical ways to change the culture as well. Do you have any ideas? ETA2: A lot of previous discussion can be found here.
I’d prefer the subthread to be outright locked than this. (I only very mildly oppose the latter but the former would be abhorrent.)
I’ll observe that this will also prevent the “Huh. Can someone explain why this comment has been so heavily downvoted?” sorts of comments, as well as the “Oh. I now see what was wrong with my comment, thanks all” sorts of comments.
Or, rather, it will prevent those comments from appearing where they would naturally go in a thread. Of course this won’t necessarily prevent people from making the same comments they’re making now, it will just prevent them from doing so in that location.
These might or might not be good things.
More generally, I’m interested in what results you expect from implementing such an option. It would be good to record that somewhere before making a change, so we can subsequently establish whether the change had the desired results.
I’m also curious in what ways you expect those results to compare to giving mods the power to freeze a comment tree (that is, identify a comment and not allow further comments to be made downstream of it by anyone) when they consider it appropriate. But that’s more of a personal curiosity.
I thought of that, but there doesn’t appear to be a way of automatically separating these cases. Such questions could be edited-in in the downvoted comment itself, or included in a separately posted improved reframing of the content of the downvoted comment.
This would make bad threads of the currently typical form literally impossible to construct, so it’s at least an interesting experiment. The successful outcome is for the downvoted conversations to peter out faster due to the inconvenience of having to find new starting points that are not replies to preceding conversations. I expect the worst that could happen is that instead of the nice orderly Big Bad Threads we’ll have a deluge of bad comments scattered all over the place.
This variant of blocking only the downvoted user’s comments seems better on most counts, as it doesn’t have the downside of indiscriminate blocking which motivated the need for human judgment, it’s automatic and so won’t focus complaints as much, it seems to catch all the same threads that a human moderator might close, and it applies faster.
OK, thanks.
I suspect that if the goal is to make bad threads peter out faster, preventing all users from contributing to a bad thread will likely achieve that goal more readily than preventing one user from doing so.
We could even do that automatically if we wanted. For my own part I trust humans more than simple automatic pattern-matchers for this sort of thing, but if y’all prefer automatic pattern-matchers to diffuse the resulting complaints that’s an option as well.
Of course, if we’re OK with automatically blocking the downvoted user on the thread but not OK with automatically blocking other users on the thread, then an automatic branch-freeze won’t work. This might be true if there are other as-yet-unstated goals being addressed, beyond the desire to end the thread itself.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of letting everyone post on a thread except the person they are responding to; one-sided conversations make my teeth itch.