When there is no transparency about why people exit discussions, it allows for them to leave due to bias, dodging, bad reasons, etc., and it’s not very provable. Your response is: they didn’t explain that they left for bad reasons, so you (curi) can’t really prove anything! Indeed. It’s ambiguous. That’s a large part of the problem.
I could go into detail about some of the specifics that I didn’t reply to, explain why I think some of the things people wrote were low quality, argue my case, answer every question, etc. but I don’t have a reasonable expectation that they would be responsive to the discussion. Different discussion norms or explicit request could change that.
My sense is that you’re trying to hold people to standards you fall short of.
I proposed that if both people want a serious discussion that tries to make progress and doesn’t end arbitrarily, then here’s some stuff you can do. I also proposed that the general norms here could be improved.
Me responding more energetically and thoroughly to people with different preferred discussion norms than me will not solve the problem. And yes I’ve already tried it (thousands of times).
I could also reply to people and say why I think their messages (as a whole or specific parts) are low quality so I don’t want to reply, but please correct me if my analysis is wrong. I have tried this too but people mostly rather dislike it. I am open to doing it by request.
I could also reply to people asking if they want a substantive discussion. I have tried that too. Yes answers are rare and doing it a lot here would annoy people.
So I’ve put in my bio here a note that people can make a request if they want a substantive discussion with me, and I’ve talked some about the general issue. I also have more detailed policies posted on my websites, including public promises re how anyone can get my attention and get responses, and I have established different discussion norms at my own forums.
When there is no transparency about why people exit discussions, it allows for them to leave due to bias, dodging, bad reasons, etc., and it’s not very provable.
Right, so my very first comment in this thread pointed out a way you could collect evidence on this question. You can look for patterns. If a particular user has a habit of dropping out of threads when they seem to be “losing”, then that’s evidence that they’re doing so to evade arguments and dodge questions. If LW users as a group have a habit of doing that, it’s also evidence that that’s a common reason people do it.
But as far as I can tell you haven’t looked for evidence like that, either for individual users or for LW as a whole. When I asked if we have this problem, you didn’t point to patterns. You just pointed to individual instances of people stopping replying for unclear reasons. But there are plenty of reasons someone might stop replying.
And so I still have to wonder: do we in practice have this problem on LW? Is it in fact common here for people to leave discussions to evade arguments and dodge questions? You’ve given me no reason to think it is.
(Of course it would be super duper surprising if no one had ever done that. So perhaps we should be asking questions like “how often does it happen here, how bad is it when it happens, what does it trade off against, how much would it be worth to make a marginal improvement”. Maybe your full post is more nuanced about things like that, but your description of the problem so far has seemed fairly… black-and-white? When remizidae pointed out that there were tradeoffs, you asked them if they could propose solutions. Whether they can propose solutions or not doesn’t change the fact that there are tradeoffs. So far in this thread I haven’t seen you acknowledge the tradeoffs.)
Something I notice is that… so far, this subthread seems to have been entirely useless, and it’s taking a lot more energy than most of the comments I write on LW. I’ll still give one more response, but...
This feels mean, and I don’t like that, but it also feels like an important part of what’s going on for me right now and relevant to the conversation and I don’t want to dance around it, so, uh, here goes I guess: to be frank, I don’t blame people for stopping replying to you.
When there is no transparency about why people exit discussions, it allows for them to leave due to bias, dodging, bad reasons, etc., and it’s not very provable. Your response is: they didn’t explain that they left for bad reasons, so you (curi) can’t really prove anything! Indeed. It’s ambiguous. That’s a large part of the problem.
I could go into detail about some of the specifics that I didn’t reply to, explain why I think some of the things people wrote were low quality, argue my case, answer every question, etc. but I don’t have a reasonable expectation that they would be responsive to the discussion. Different discussion norms or explicit request could change that.
I proposed that if both people want a serious discussion that tries to make progress and doesn’t end arbitrarily, then here’s some stuff you can do. I also proposed that the general norms here could be improved.
Me responding more energetically and thoroughly to people with different preferred discussion norms than me will not solve the problem. And yes I’ve already tried it (thousands of times).
I could also reply to people and say why I think their messages (as a whole or specific parts) are low quality so I don’t want to reply, but please correct me if my analysis is wrong. I have tried this too but people mostly rather dislike it. I am open to doing it by request.
I could also reply to people asking if they want a substantive discussion. I have tried that too. Yes answers are rare and doing it a lot here would annoy people.
So I’ve put in my bio here a note that people can make a request if they want a substantive discussion with me, and I’ve talked some about the general issue. I also have more detailed policies posted on my websites, including public promises re how anyone can get my attention and get responses, and I have established different discussion norms at my own forums.
Right, so my very first comment in this thread pointed out a way you could collect evidence on this question. You can look for patterns. If a particular user has a habit of dropping out of threads when they seem to be “losing”, then that’s evidence that they’re doing so to evade arguments and dodge questions. If LW users as a group have a habit of doing that, it’s also evidence that that’s a common reason people do it.
But as far as I can tell you haven’t looked for evidence like that, either for individual users or for LW as a whole. When I asked if we have this problem, you didn’t point to patterns. You just pointed to individual instances of people stopping replying for unclear reasons. But there are plenty of reasons someone might stop replying.
And so I still have to wonder: do we in practice have this problem on LW? Is it in fact common here for people to leave discussions to evade arguments and dodge questions? You’ve given me no reason to think it is.
(Of course it would be super duper surprising if no one had ever done that. So perhaps we should be asking questions like “how often does it happen here, how bad is it when it happens, what does it trade off against, how much would it be worth to make a marginal improvement”. Maybe your full post is more nuanced about things like that, but your description of the problem so far has seemed fairly… black-and-white? When remizidae pointed out that there were tradeoffs, you asked them if they could propose solutions. Whether they can propose solutions or not doesn’t change the fact that there are tradeoffs. So far in this thread I haven’t seen you acknowledge the tradeoffs.)
Something I notice is that… so far, this subthread seems to have been entirely useless, and it’s taking a lot more energy than most of the comments I write on LW. I’ll still give one more response, but...
This feels mean, and I don’t like that, but it also feels like an important part of what’s going on for me right now and relevant to the conversation and I don’t want to dance around it, so, uh, here goes I guess: to be frank, I don’t blame people for stopping replying to you.