I feel fine doing this because I feel comfortable just ignoring him after he’s said those initial things, when a normal/common social script would consider that somewhat rude. But this requires a significant amount of backbone.
I still wish that LW would try my idea for solving this (and related) problem(s), but it doesn’t seem like that’s ever going to happen. (I’ve tried to remind LW admins about my feature request over the years, but don’t think I’ve ever seen an admin say why it’s not worth trying.) As an alternative, I’ve seen people suggest that it’s fine to ignore comments unless they’re upvoted. That makes sense to me (as a second best solution). What about making that a site-wide norm, i.e., making it explicit that we don’t or shouldn’t consider it rude or otherwise norm-violating to ignore comments unless they’ve been upvoted above some specific karma threshold?
This way authors are less motivated to take steps that discourage criticism (including steps such as not writing things). Criticism should remain convenient, not costly, and directly associated with the criticised thing (instead of getting pushed to be published elsewhere).
Hmm. On one hand, I do think it’s moderately likely we experiment with Reacts, which can partially address your desire here.
But it seems like the problem you’re mostly trying to solve is not that big a problem to me (i.e I think it’s totally fine for conversations to just peter out, nobody is entitled to being responded to. I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more. I personally expect a “there is a norm of responding to upvoted comments” to make the site much worse. “Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
Generally, people are busy, don’t have time to reply to everything, and commenters should just assume they won’t necessarily get a response unless the author/their-conversation-partner continues to thinks a conversation is rewarding.
I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, because when you’re an established / high status member, ignoring other people feels pretty natural and right, and few people ignore you so you don’t notice any problems. I made the request back when I had lower status on this forum. I got ignored by others way more than I do now, and ignored others way less than I do now. (I had higher motivation to “prove” myself to my critics and the audience.)
If I hadn’t written down my request back then, in all likelihood I would have forgotten my old perspective and wouldn’t be talking about this today.
“Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
In my original feature request, I had a couple of “agreement statuses” that require only minimal engagement, like “I don’t understand this. I give up.” and “I disagree, but don’t want to bother writing out why.” We could easily add more, like “I think further engagement won’t be productive.” or “This isn’t material to my main point.” And then we could experiment with setting norms for how much social reward or punishment to give out for such responses (if people’s natural reactions to them cause bad consequences). I wouldn’t be surprised that such a system ends up making authors more willing or more comfortable to engage less with annoying critics, and makes their LW experience better, by making it more explicit that it’s ok to engage with such critics minimally.
We are currently thinking about “reacts” as a way of providing users with an 80:20 for giving feedback on comments, though motivated by a somewhat different set of concerns. It’s a tricky UX problem and not at the very top of our priority list, but it has come up recently.
I still wish that LW would try my idea for solving this (and related) problem(s), but it doesn’t seem like that’s ever going to happen. (I’ve tried to remind LW admins about my feature request over the years, but don’t think I’ve ever seen an admin say why it’s not worth trying.) As an alternative, I’ve seen people suggest that it’s fine to ignore comments unless they’re upvoted. That makes sense to me (as a second best solution). What about making that a site-wide norm, i.e., making it explicit that we don’t or shouldn’t consider it rude or otherwise norm-violating to ignore comments unless they’ve been upvoted above some specific karma threshold?
My guess is that people should be rewarded for ignoring criticism they want to ignore, it should be convenient for them to do so. So I disagree with the caveat.
This way authors are less motivated to take steps that discourage criticism (including steps such as not writing things). Criticism should remain convenient, not costly, and directly associated with the criticised thing (instead of getting pushed to be published elsewhere).
I already wrote a separate reply saying a similar, but I did particularly like your frame here and wanted to +1 it.
Hmm. On one hand, I do think it’s moderately likely we experiment with Reacts, which can partially address your desire here.
But it seems like the problem you’re mostly trying to solve is not that big a problem to me (i.e I think it’s totally fine for conversations to just peter out, nobody is entitled to being responded to. I’d at least want to see a second established user asking for it before I considered prioritizing it more. I personally expect a “there is a norm of responding to upvoted comments” to make the site much worse. “Getting annoying comments that miss the point” is one of the most cited things people dislike about LW, and forcing authors to engage with them seems like it’d exacerbate it.)
Generally, people are busy, don’t have time to reply to everything, and commenters should just assume they won’t necessarily get a response unless the author/their-conversation-partner continues to thinks a conversation is rewarding.
I doubt you’ll ever see this, because when you’re an established / high status member, ignoring other people feels pretty natural and right, and few people ignore you so you don’t notice any problems. I made the request back when I had lower status on this forum. I got ignored by others way more than I do now, and ignored others way less than I do now. (I had higher motivation to “prove” myself to my critics and the audience.)
If I hadn’t written down my request back then, in all likelihood I would have forgotten my old perspective and wouldn’t be talking about this today.
In my original feature request, I had a couple of “agreement statuses” that require only minimal engagement, like “I don’t understand this. I give up.” and “I disagree, but don’t want to bother writing out why.” We could easily add more, like “I think further engagement won’t be productive.” or “This isn’t material to my main point.” And then we could experiment with setting norms for how much social reward or punishment to give out for such responses (if people’s natural reactions to them cause bad consequences). I wouldn’t be surprised that such a system ends up making authors more willing or more comfortable to engage less with annoying critics, and makes their LW experience better, by making it more explicit that it’s ok to engage with such critics minimally.
We are currently thinking about “reacts” as a way of providing users with an 80:20 for giving feedback on comments, though motivated by a somewhat different set of concerns. It’s a tricky UX problem and not at the very top of our priority list, but it has come up recently.