The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.
Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?
Because it’s obviously annoying and burning the commons. Imagine if I made a bot that posted the same comment on every post of less wrong, surely that wouldn’t be acceptable behavior.
It’s relatively normal for forums/subreddits to have bots that serve specific functions and post similar comments on posts when they meet certain conditions (like most subreddits I use have some collection of bots, whether it’s a bot that looks up the text of any magic card mentioned, or a bot that automatically reposts the moderation guidelines when there are too many comments, etc.)
Yeah, I’ve been planning on doing something like that. Just every custom UI element tends to introduce complexities in how it interfaces with all adjacent UI elements, but I think we’ll likely do something like that in the long run.
But the automatic pinned comments I see on Reddit have a purpose that is plausibly essential to the subreddit’s having any value to any users at all (usually to remind participants of a plausibly-essential rule that was violated constantly before the introduction of the pinned comment) whereas the annual review (and betting about it on Manifold Markets) are not plausibly essential to LW’s having any value at all (although it is a common human cognitive bias for someone who has put 100s of hours of hard work into something to end up believing it is much more important than it actually is).
The reason spam got named “spam” in the early 1990s is that it tends to be a repetition of the same text over and over (similar to how the word “spam” is repeated over and over in a particular Monty Python skit).
I think if you made a bot that posted the same comment on every post except for, say, a link to a high-quality audio narration of the post, it would probably be acceptable behaviour.
EDIT: Though my true rejection is more like, I wouldn’t rule out the site admins making an auto commenter that reminded people of argumentative norms or something like that. Of course, it seems likely that whatever end the auto commenter was supposed to serve would be better served using a different UI element than a comment (as also seems true here), but it’s not something I would say we should never try.
I think as site admins we should be trying to serve something like the overall health and vision of the site, and not just locally the user’s level of annoyance, though I do think the user’s level of annoyance is a relevant thing to take into account!
There’s something a little loopy here that’s hard to reason about. People might be annoyed because a comment burns the commons. But I think there’s a difference in opinion about whether it’s burning or contributing to the commons. And then, I imagine, those who think it’s burning the commons want to offer their annoyance as proof of the burn. But there’s a circularity there I don’t know quite how to think through.
I probably would have done something similar to a random user, though probably with a more transparent writeup, and/or trying harder to shrink the image or something.
I’ll note that [censored_meme.png] is something Jacob added back in after I removed the image, not something I edited in.
The LessWrong Review runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year.
Hopefully, the review is better than karma at judging enduring value. If we have accurate prediction markets on the review results, maybe we can have better incentives on LessWrong today. Will this post make the top fifty?
Poor Review Bot, why do you get so downvoted? :(
Because it’s obviously annoying and burning the commons. Imagine if I made a bot that posted the same comment on every post of less wrong, surely that wouldn’t be acceptable behavior.
It’s relatively normal for forums/subreddits to have bots that serve specific functions and post similar comments on posts when they meet certain conditions (like most subreddits I use have some collection of bots, whether it’s a bot that looks up the text of any magic card mentioned, or a bot that automatically reposts the moderation guidelines when there are too many comments, etc.)
tbh I typically find those bots annoying too.
Depends on the Subreddit, but definitely agree that they can be pretty annoying.
Could the prediction market for each post be integrated more elegantly into the UI, rather than posted as a comment?
Yeah, I’ve been planning on doing something like that. Just every custom UI element tends to introduce complexities in how it interfaces with all adjacent UI elements, but I think we’ll likely do something like that in the long run.
You don’t want to make it a new element of the menu that appears when the user clicks on the 3 vertical dots in the upper right corner of a comment?
If the ReviewBot comments were collapsed without my having to manually collapse them, they would probably cease to bother me.
Yeah, it’s on my to-do list for next week to revamp these messages, I think they aren’t working as is.
But the automatic pinned comments I see on Reddit have a purpose that is plausibly essential to the subreddit’s having any value to any users at all (usually to remind participants of a plausibly-essential rule that was violated constantly before the introduction of the pinned comment) whereas the annual review (and betting about it on Manifold Markets) are not plausibly essential to LW’s having any value at all (although it is a common human cognitive bias for someone who has put 100s of hours of hard work into something to end up believing it is much more important than it actually is).
The reason spam got named “spam” in the early 1990s is that it tends to be a repetition of the same text over and over (similar to how the word “spam” is repeated over and over in a particular Monty Python skit).
I think if you made a bot that posted the same comment on every post except for, say, a link to a high-quality audio narration of the post, it would probably be acceptable behaviour.
EDIT: Though my true rejection is more like, I wouldn’t rule out the site admins making an auto commenter that reminded people of argumentative norms or something like that. Of course, it seems likely that whatever end the auto commenter was supposed to serve would be better served using a different UI element than a comment (as also seems true here), but it’s not something I would say we should never try.
I think as site admins we should be trying to serve something like the overall health and vision of the site, and not just locally the user’s level of annoyance, though I do think the user’s level of annoyance is a relevant thing to take into account!
There’s something a little loopy here that’s hard to reason about. People might be annoyed because a comment burns the commons. But I think there’s a difference in opinion about whether it’s burning or contributing to the commons. And then, I imagine, those who think it’s burning the commons want to offer their annoyance as proof of the burn. But there’s a circularity there I don’t know quite how to think through.
[censored_meme.png]
I like review bot and think it’s good
mod note: this comment used to have a gigantic image of Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech, which I removed.
context note: Jacob is also a mod/works for LessWrong, kave isn’t doing this to random users.
I probably would have done something similar to a random user, though probably with a more transparent writeup, and/or trying harder to shrink the image or something.
I’ll note that
[censored_meme.png]is something Jacob added back in after I removed the image, not something I edited in.huh. was it the particular meme (brave dude telling the truth), the size, or some third thing?
The size
Size.