The most common pattern I run into, where I’m not sure what to do, is patterns of comments from a given user that are either just barely over the line, or where each given comment is under the line, but so close to a line that repetition of it adds up to serious damage – making LW either not fun, or not safe feeling.
What I used to do on the #lesswrong IRC was put every time I see someone make a comment like this into a journal, and then once I find myself really annoyed with them I open the journal to help establish the pattern. I’d also look at peoples individual chat history to see if there’s a consistent pattern of them doing the thing routinely, or if it’s a thing they just sometimes happen to do.
I definitely agree this is one of the hardest challenges of moderation, and I pretty much always see folks fail it. IMO, it’s actually more important than dealing with the egregious violations, since those are usually fairly legible and just require having a spine.
My most important advice would be don’t ignore it. Do not just shrug it off and say “well nothing I can do, it’s not like I can tell someone off for being annoying”. You most certainly can and should for many kinds of ‘annoying’. The alternative is that the vigor of a space slowly gets sucked out by not-quite-bad-actors.
What I used to do on the #lesswrong IRC was put every time I see someone make a comment like this into a journal, and then once I find myself really annoyed with them I open the journal to help establish the pattern. I’d also look at peoples individual chat history to see if there’s a consistent pattern of them doing the thing routinely, or if it’s a thing they just sometimes happen to do.
I definitely agree this is one of the hardest challenges of moderation, and I pretty much always see folks fail it. IMO, it’s actually more important than dealing with the egregious violations, since those are usually fairly legible and just require having a spine.
My most important advice would be don’t ignore it. Do not just shrug it off and say “well nothing I can do, it’s not like I can tell someone off for being annoying”. You most certainly can and should for many kinds of ‘annoying’. The alternative is that the vigor of a space slowly gets sucked out by not-quite-bad-actors.