Congratulatory comments, even of the empty sort like “Great job!”, serve as positive Pavlovian reinforcement, which helps to motivate/encourage people to post. In addition, they signal appreciation and gratefulness at the fact that someone was willing to make a top-level post in the first place. The fact that the people on LessWrong are at times so damn unfriendly is in my opinion a non-trivial part of the cause of LW’s too often insular atmosphere.
Furthermore, studies consistently show that humans respond better to positive reinforcement than to negative reinforcement, regardless of age. This isn’t about whether we’re “adults who don’t need our hands held”. It’s about how to motivate people to post more. If Jonah gets a torrent of criticisms every time he posts something, that’s going to create an ugh field around the idea of posting. If he then points this out in a comment, and people respond by saying what effectively amounts to “Well, it’s your own fault for not being clear enough,” well, you can imagine how it might feel. This is an issue entirely separate from that of whether the criticisms are right.
The bottom line is that transmission of useful information isn’t the only kind of transmission that occurs in human communication. “This post is so messy and obfuscated as to be nearly unreadable” and “I think your point may benefit from some clarification” are denotationally similar, but connotationally they are very different. If you insist on ignoring this distinction or dismissing it as unimportant (as it seems so many LWers are wont to do), you run the risk of generating an unpleasant social atmosphere.
Seriously. This isn’t rocket science. (See what I did there?)
Congratulatory comments, even of the empty sort like “Great job!”, serve as positive Pavlovian reinforcement, which helps to motivate/encourage people to post. In addition, they signal appreciation and gratefulness at the fact that someone was willing to make a top-level post in the first place. The fact that the people on LessWrong are at times so damn unfriendly is in my opinion a non-trivial part of the cause of LW’s too often insular atmosphere.
Furthermore, studies consistently show that humans respond better to positive reinforcement than to negative reinforcement, regardless of age. This isn’t about whether we’re “adults who don’t need our hands held”. It’s about how to motivate people to post more. If Jonah gets a torrent of criticisms every time he posts something, that’s going to create an ugh field around the idea of posting. If he then points this out in a comment, and people respond by saying what effectively amounts to “Well, it’s your own fault for not being clear enough,” well, you can imagine how it might feel. This is an issue entirely separate from that of whether the criticisms are right.
The bottom line is that transmission of useful information isn’t the only kind of transmission that occurs in human communication. “This post is so messy and obfuscated as to be nearly unreadable” and “I think your point may benefit from some clarification” are denotationally similar, but connotationally they are very different. If you insist on ignoring this distinction or dismissing it as unimportant (as it seems so many LWers are wont to do), you run the risk of generating an unpleasant social atmosphere.
Seriously. This isn’t rocket science. (See what I did there?)