One reason here is that I think it is quite a bit of cognitive overhead for the average commenter to have to memorize the moderation norms of 20 different personal blogs when they want to participate in the discussion on the page. Some subreddits seem to work fine in spite of the reddit frontpage though, so it might actually be more fine than I think.
The second reason is that I do think there is a significant benefit to having a discussion in which you know dissenting views are represented, and where you can get a sense of what the site at large thinks about a topic. There is definitely a chilling effect to any moderation policy. And while it is often the case that that chilling effect promotes content generation, I do think that any piece of content that wants to properly enter the canon of the site should go through a period of public review in which any active user of the site can voice their problems with the content.
The idea that one does not simply comment without knowing the moderation policy seems like an error. That doesn’t mean that there’s no value in knowing the moderation policy, but if 20 posts had 20 different moderation policies and you wanted to write comments, the likely effect is still you write 20 comments and nothing happens to any of them; if 1-2 of them do get minimized, maybe then you look at what happened. Or alternatively, you’d check if and only if you know you’re in a grey area.
I do notice that I might look at the comment policy when deciding whether to read the comments...
it is quite a bit of cognitive overhead for the average commenter to have to memorize the moderation norms of 20 different personal blogs
yeah i’m worried about this…
would like it if there were some obvious indication when someone’s moderation policy significantly deviates from what one would typically expect, such that I will definitely be sure to read theirs if it’s unusual (like the poetry one).
and otherwise, I’d want to encourage ppl to stick to the defaults…
Also seems like, given LW’s structure, it makes way more sense to have “moderation policies for posts” and not “moderation policies for blogs / authors.” I don’t really see the blogs. I see the posts. I really can’t distinguish very well between blogs. So I’m going to check post-level moderation policy and not really track blog-level / author-level moderation policy.
And as an author, I may want each of my posts to have different policies anyway, so I might change them for each post… I dunno how that works right now.
If you’re doing the poetry thing, I think that’s cool/unique enough that you should mention it in the post itself (and the comment section should likely change colors, or something), plus if you read the comments it presumably should be clear something’s going on?
Default can still be, you have different guidelines for different posts, and I only check them when I actively want to comment and am worried about violating the guidelines.
Also seems like, given LW’s structure, it makes way more sense to have “moderation policies for posts” and not “moderation policies for blogs / authors.” I don’t really see the blogs. I see the posts. I really can’t distinguish very well between blogs. So I’m going to check post-level moderation policy and not really track blog-level / author-level moderation policy.
I absolutely agree with this given the current LW2 UI, but note that this situation may be altered by UI changes without modifying the underlying structure / hierarchy of the site.
Blog-level norms show up on each individual post (the issue is just that it’s not as obvious as I’d like where that lives)
Once we implement post-level norms (which we plan to soonish), they’d also show up on the individual post.
FYI, right now my own blog-level-norms specify “I usually have a goal for a given post, will usually explain that goal or it’ll be obvious, and I reserve the right to delete comments that aren’t furthering the goals of the discussion I want”
As Said mentions, this is mostly a UI problem, and while I think it’ll take some more experimentation I think it’s pretty fixable.
One reason here is that I think it is quite a bit of cognitive overhead for the average commenter to have to memorize the moderation norms of 20 different personal blogs when they want to participate in the discussion on the page. Some subreddits seem to work fine in spite of the reddit frontpage though, so it might actually be more fine than I think.
The second reason is that I do think there is a significant benefit to having a discussion in which you know dissenting views are represented, and where you can get a sense of what the site at large thinks about a topic. There is definitely a chilling effect to any moderation policy. And while it is often the case that that chilling effect promotes content generation, I do think that any piece of content that wants to properly enter the canon of the site should go through a period of public review in which any active user of the site can voice their problems with the content.
The idea that one does not simply comment without knowing the moderation policy seems like an error. That doesn’t mean that there’s no value in knowing the moderation policy, but if 20 posts had 20 different moderation policies and you wanted to write comments, the likely effect is still you write 20 comments and nothing happens to any of them; if 1-2 of them do get minimized, maybe then you look at what happened. Or alternatively, you’d check if and only if you know you’re in a grey area.
I do notice that I might look at the comment policy when deciding whether to read the comments...
yeah i’m worried about this…
would like it if there were some obvious indication when someone’s moderation policy significantly deviates from what one would typically expect, such that I will definitely be sure to read theirs if it’s unusual (like the poetry one).
and otherwise, I’d want to encourage ppl to stick to the defaults…
Also seems like, given LW’s structure, it makes way more sense to have “moderation policies for posts” and not “moderation policies for blogs / authors.” I don’t really see the blogs. I see the posts. I really can’t distinguish very well between blogs. So I’m going to check post-level moderation policy and not really track blog-level / author-level moderation policy.
And as an author, I may want each of my posts to have different policies anyway, so I might change them for each post… I dunno how that works right now.
If you’re doing the poetry thing, I think that’s cool/unique enough that you should mention it in the post itself (and the comment section should likely change colors, or something), plus if you read the comments it presumably should be clear something’s going on?
Default can still be, you have different guidelines for different posts, and I only check them when I actively want to comment and am worried about violating the guidelines.
I absolutely agree with this given the current LW2 UI, but note that this situation may be altered by UI changes without modifying the underlying structure / hierarchy of the site.
Blog-level norms show up on each individual post (the issue is just that it’s not as obvious as I’d like where that lives)
Once we implement post-level norms (which we plan to soonish), they’d also show up on the individual post.
FYI, right now my own blog-level-norms specify “I usually have a goal for a given post, will usually explain that goal or it’ll be obvious, and I reserve the right to delete comments that aren’t furthering the goals of the discussion I want”
As Said mentions, this is mostly a UI problem, and while I think it’ll take some more experimentation I think it’s pretty fixable.