I think I’ve dealt with enough shit on Wikipedia—over the Bogdanov affair, if nothing else, maybe you’ve heard of it? - to be able to tell you that you brought a lot of this shit on your own head, which was my original point before we began swinging moderator-dicks around.
Shit has increased by maybe 20% since l’affaire B. I think this may be partially due to the poor design of LW which makes deletions visible. I’m really impressed by Facebook’s lovely user experience—when I get a troll comment I just click the x, block the user and it’s gone without a trace and never recurs.
What I’d really like to do is to be able to move whole comment threads to a /meta subreddit, thereby banishing them from the flow of productive discussion without destroying information. Then it would also be easy and safe to give all posters the ability to banish comments from their posts, including comments complaining about their moderation and so on, and not have to worry about it if they didn’t want to. I don’t know if we’ll ever have the programming resources for that.
I think this may be partially due to the poor design of LW which makes deletions visible.
Maybe, but it’s probably also going to be the userbase causing an extremer form of the Streisand effect. I mean, deleting comments? You might as well wave a red flag and say ‘hey nerdy libertarian free-speech guys—please pattern-match onto censorship to be righteously opposed, thanks!’ Facebook is a different interface, but also a different userbase with a different set of expectations.
I’ve certainly learned my lesson about the Streisand effect. With respect to everything else, I think I can manage to not care where they scream so long as they’re not doing it anywhere it’s visible to an LW user who doesn’t make a special effort to see it.
Then it would also be easy and safe to give all posters the ability to banish comments from their posts … I don’t know if we’ll ever have the programming resources for that.
Since you’ve mentioned this before, here’s an offhand idea for how to maybe get some: put an announcement on the sidebar or banner asking for developers (and maybe noting that LW is open source—so it’s ok to ask people to work for free), that’s visible on every page and that links to a page with your list of wanted features and instructions for how to get involved. There could be a bunch of potential developers that don’t even know LW needs them, since the subject has only come up in some comment threads. Maybe you guys have already thought of this or know of a reason it wouldn’t work, just wanted to put it out there.
How gnarly is the reddit/lesswrong codebase? $5000 worth sounds terrifying to one with a shaky, Learn Python the Hard Way knowledge of programming and very basic familiarity with html, css and sql. But I’m probably going to be taking 4 hours a day five days a week for a month this summer to try and make myself hirable as a junior programmet this summer and work that valuable would make an awesome portfolio piece, paid or not. It would certainly make one a shoo in for Hacker School.
Some people who work professionally with Python found it too difficult. I tried to find someone who would be able to make a few small changes so that I can use it for my website… but at this moment I believe that rewriting the whole thing from scratch would be at least 10 times easier.
I think I’ve dealt with enough shit on Wikipedia—over the Bogdanov affair, if nothing else, maybe you’ve heard of it? - to be able to tell you that you brought a lot of this shit on your own head, which was my original point before we began swinging moderator-dicks around.
Shit has increased by maybe 20% since l’affaire B. I think this may be partially due to the poor design of LW which makes deletions visible. I’m really impressed by Facebook’s lovely user experience—when I get a troll comment I just click the x, block the user and it’s gone without a trace and never recurs.
What I’d really like to do is to be able to move whole comment threads to a /meta subreddit, thereby banishing them from the flow of productive discussion without destroying information. Then it would also be easy and safe to give all posters the ability to banish comments from their posts, including comments complaining about their moderation and so on, and not have to worry about it if they didn’t want to. I don’t know if we’ll ever have the programming resources for that.
Maybe, but it’s probably also going to be the userbase causing an extremer form of the Streisand effect. I mean, deleting comments? You might as well wave a red flag and say ‘hey nerdy libertarian free-speech guys—please pattern-match onto censorship to be righteously opposed, thanks!’ Facebook is a different interface, but also a different userbase with a different set of expectations.
I’ve certainly learned my lesson about the Streisand effect. With respect to everything else, I think I can manage to not care where they scream so long as they’re not doing it anywhere it’s visible to an LW user who doesn’t make a special effort to see it.
Thank Cthulhu for small favors.
Since you’ve mentioned this before, here’s an offhand idea for how to maybe get some: put an announcement on the sidebar or banner asking for developers (and maybe noting that LW is open source—so it’s ok to ask people to work for free), that’s visible on every page and that links to a page with your list of wanted features and instructions for how to get involved. There could be a bunch of potential developers that don’t even know LW needs them, since the subject has only come up in some comment threads. Maybe you guys have already thought of this or know of a reason it wouldn’t work, just wanted to put it out there.
How gnarly is the reddit/lesswrong codebase? $5000 worth sounds terrifying to one with a shaky, Learn Python the Hard Way knowledge of programming and very basic familiarity with html, css and sql. But I’m probably going to be taking 4 hours a day five days a week for a month this summer to try and make myself hirable as a junior programmet this summer and work that valuable would make an awesome portfolio piece, paid or not. It would certainly make one a shoo in for Hacker School.
...it’s probably gnarlier than a month of work when you’ve just read one book on Python, I’m afraid.
Some people who work professionally with Python found it too difficult. I tried to find someone who would be able to make a few small changes so that I can use it for my website… but at this moment I believe that rewriting the whole thing from scratch would be at least 10 times easier.