Respectfully, I think daenerys has the more accurate description of the behavior of this community. There’s very little trolling, but the regulars are not always polite.
I’d say LW has very different standards of what constitutes “polite”. People will fastidiously dissect every mistake you make, and suggest all sorts of personal reasons why you might have made them, but wouldn’t provide a link to a highly time-wasting website without a warning.
My above comment was specifically on the subject of “please”, “thank you”, and expressions of gratitude, which I don’t think are especially deficient on LW.
I’ve been told essentially “WRONG” full stop, with no serious engagement with my point. I’ve had people apply inconsistent procedural standards (i.e. how much detail is required of supporting arguments) to posts I’ve made. It’s not a big deal, but it isn’t “polite.” It’s not the majority, or anything close, but it doesn’t seem to get negative feedback.
I’m interested in your recommendations for discussion forums on the Internet that are more consistently polite and have something to say worth reading.
Ok, seriously. I like it here, and I’m aware of no better place for discussing “practical” philosophy. I just think that people underestimate how abrupt/dismissive they are being. For example, I think sixes_and_sevens’ response to daenerys could plausibly be read as dismissive, because the frequency of “please” “thank you” & “thanks” is not a good proxy for politeness. Rather than pick a fight with sixes_and_sevens (because I think any slight was unintentional), I made a statement in support of daenerys, to try and show that her viewpoint was not unique or strange. To be just a bit meta, exchanges like this are how informal norms are made and changed. And I have preference for a different equilibrium.
I think politeness can be easily justified on “leave a line of retreat” type grounds. And the fact that Less Wrong is the best doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
I’m all in favor of politeness… I’ve even been known to engage in it myself, from time to time.
That said, one of the things that attracted me to LW in the first place was the civility-worthwhileness cross-product in the comments, so if you did have recommendations for forums that were better along that axis, I’d have been interested. (Sadly, I’m not all that interested in board games.)
Respectfully, I think daenerys has the more accurate description of the behavior of this community. There’s very little trolling, but the regulars are not always polite.
I’d say LW has very different standards of what constitutes “polite”. People will fastidiously dissect every mistake you make, and suggest all sorts of personal reasons why you might have made them, but wouldn’t provide a link to a highly time-wasting website without a warning.
My above comment was specifically on the subject of “please”, “thank you”, and expressions of gratitude, which I don’t think are especially deficient on LW.
I’ve been told essentially “WRONG” full stop, with no serious engagement with my point. I’ve had people apply inconsistent procedural standards (i.e. how much detail is required of supporting arguments) to posts I’ve made. It’s not a big deal, but it isn’t “polite.” It’s not the majority, or anything close, but it doesn’t seem to get negative feedback.
I’m interested in your recommendations for discussion forums on the Internet that are more consistently polite and have something to say worth reading.
Boardgamegeek.com
(Warning, that can be a huge time-waster)
Ok, seriously. I like it here, and I’m aware of no better place for discussing “practical” philosophy. I just think that people underestimate how abrupt/dismissive they are being. For example, I think sixes_and_sevens’ response to daenerys could plausibly be read as dismissive, because the frequency of “please” “thank you” & “thanks” is not a good proxy for politeness. Rather than pick a fight with sixes_and_sevens (because I think any slight was unintentional), I made a statement in support of daenerys, to try and show that her viewpoint was not unique or strange. To be just a bit meta, exchanges like this are how informal norms are made and changed. And I have preference for a different equilibrium.
I think politeness can be easily justified on “leave a line of retreat” type grounds. And the fact that Less Wrong is the best doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
I’m all in favor of politeness… I’ve even been known to engage in it myself, from time to time.
That said, one of the things that attracted me to LW in the first place was the civility-worthwhileness cross-product in the comments, so if you did have recommendations for forums that were better along that axis, I’d have been interested. (Sadly, I’m not all that interested in board games.)
Sigh. Reading implicit messages that aren’t intended is one of my failure modes. Sorry about the non-responsiveness of the rant.
No worries.