Meta: I would like to see these sorts of posts receive substantially less attention.
I see the primary topic as being “drama” (for lack of a better term).
I think drama tends to be pretty mind-killing, which leads to low quality discussion, discussions that last way too long, and discussions that frequently end up being demon threads.
I think it usually leaves people feeling kinda sour and bad after reading, skimming, or participating in the discussion.
I don’t really see what people who aren’t in the same social or professional circles as the involved parties have to gain by investing time into these topics. Updating your beliefs about the EA community? Meh, maybe. It seems pretty tough to generalize much about the broader community based on the experiences of the handful of people involved in this incident. But if that is the goal, you can probably take advantage of the Pareto Principle and get perhaps 90% of the benefit with only a few minutes of effort by reading the tl;dr’s and top comment or two.
To be clear, I do think it makes sense for the people involved to be discussing this. Reputation is, in fact, important. I also think it makes sense for leaders in the EA community to want to police things a bit. What I’m proposing is that the 99% for whom this isn’t actually relevant to your life, don’t get sucked in. A few minutes is fine. A few hours probably isn’t.
Idea for how these sorts of “drama posts” might be best handled:
Voting is turned off.
The posts are only available in a special section on LessWrong. They aren’t available in the feed on the main page. This nudges users towards more of a Pit Of Success, yet makes the conversation accessible if you do want to go out of your way to join it.
They are time-boxed. Perhaps a “soft” time-box, perhaps a “hard” one. I’m not sure.
At the end, a moderator (or group of moderators) makes a judgement, writes up a summary, and we move on.
I suppose some sort of appeals process might be needed. I’m not sure. My impression: it’d probably make sense to have one to protect against grievous misjudgement in the initial case, but not as an excuse for dragging the discussion out longer than it deserves.
Edit: I see a lot of smart, high-karma, successful, and impactful people commenting (on Ben’s post) in such a way that makes me thing they’ve spent many hours reading, thinking and writing about this. That makes me sad and frustrated since I believe it is a lot of time and energy that otherwise would be put to quite good use.
Meta: I would like to see these sorts of posts receive substantially less attention.
I see the primary topic as being “drama” (for lack of a better term).
I think drama tends to be pretty mind-killing, which leads to low quality discussion, discussions that last way too long, and discussions that frequently end up being demon threads.
I think it usually leaves people feeling kinda sour and bad after reading, skimming, or participating in the discussion.
I don’t really see what people who aren’t in the same social or professional circles as the involved parties have to gain by investing time into these topics. Updating your beliefs about the EA community? Meh, maybe. It seems pretty tough to generalize much about the broader community based on the experiences of the handful of people involved in this incident. But if that is the goal, you can probably take advantage of the Pareto Principle and get perhaps 90% of the benefit with only a few minutes of effort by reading the tl;dr’s and top comment or two.
To be clear, I do think it makes sense for the people involved to be discussing this. Reputation is, in fact, important. I also think it makes sense for leaders in the EA community to want to police things a bit. What I’m proposing is that the 99% for whom this isn’t actually relevant to your life, don’t get sucked in. A few minutes is fine. A few hours probably isn’t.
Idea for how these sorts of “drama posts” might be best handled:
Voting is turned off.
The posts are only available in a special section on LessWrong. They aren’t available in the feed on the main page. This nudges users towards more of a Pit Of Success, yet makes the conversation accessible if you do want to go out of your way to join it.
They are time-boxed. Perhaps a “soft” time-box, perhaps a “hard” one. I’m not sure.
At the end, a moderator (or group of moderators) makes a judgement, writes up a summary, and we move on.
I suppose some sort of appeals process might be needed. I’m not sure. My impression: it’d probably make sense to have one to protect against grievous misjudgement in the initial case, but not as an excuse for dragging the discussion out longer than it deserves.
Edit: I see a lot of smart, high-karma, successful, and impactful people commenting (on Ben’s post) in such a way that makes me thing they’ve spent many hours reading, thinking and writing about this. That makes me sad and frustrated since I believe it is a lot of time and energy that otherwise would be put to quite good use.