By default, the rate limit applies to all posts, unless we’ve made an exception for it. There are two exceptions to it:
1. I just shipped the “ignore rate limits” flag on posts, which authors or admins can set so that a given post allows rate-limited comments to comment without restriction.
2. I haven’t shipped yet, but expect within the next day to ship “rate-limited authors can comment on their own posts without restriction.” (for the immediate future this just applies to authors, I expect to ship something that makes it work for coauthors)
In general, we are starting by rolling out the simplest versions of the rate-limiting feature (which is being used on many users, not just you), and solving problems as we notice them. I acknowledge this makes for some bad experiences along the way. I think I stand by that decision because I’m not even sure rate limits will turn out to work as a moderator tool, and investing like 3 months of upfront work ironing out the bugs first doesn’t seem like the right call.
For the general question of “whether a given such-and-such post will be rate limited”, the answer will route through “will individual authors choose to do set “ignoreRateLimit”, and/or will site admins choose to do it?”.
Ruby and I have some disagreements on how important it is to set the flag on moderation posts. I personally think it makes sense to be extra cautious about limiting people’s ability to speak in discussions that will impact their future ability to speak, since those can snowball and I think people are rightly wary of that. There are some other tradeoffs important to @Ruby, which I guess he can elaborate on if he wants.
Re: Open threads – I haven’t made a call yet, but I’m leaving the flag disabled/rate-limited-normally for now.
There is no limit to rate-limited-people editing their own comments. We might revisit it if it’s a problem but my current guess is rate-limitees editing their comments is pretty fine.
The check happens based on the timestamp of your last comment (it works via fetching comments within the time window and seeing if there are more than the allotted amount)
On LessWrong.com (but presumably not greaterwrong, atm) it should inform you that you’re not able to comment before you get started.
On LessWrong.com, it will probably (later, but not yet, not sure whether we’ll get to it this week), show an indicator that a commenter has been rate limited. (It’s fairly easy to do this when you open a comment-box to reply to them, there are some performance concerns for checking-to-display it on
I plan to add a list of rate-limited users to lesswrong.com/moderation. I think there’s a decent chance that goes live within a day or so.
Ruby and I have some disagreements on how important it is to set the flag on moderation posts.
A lot of this is that the set of “all moderation posts” covers a wide range of topics and the potential set “all rate limited users” might include a wide diversity of users, making me reluctant to commit upfront to not rate limits apply blanketly across the board on moderation posts.
The concern about excluding people from conversations that affect whether they get to speak is a valid consideration, but I think there are others too. Chiefly, people are likely rate limited primarily because they get in the way of productive conversation, and in so far as I care about moderation conversations going well, I might want to continue to exclude rate limited users there.
Note that there are ways, albeit with friction, for people to get to weigh in on moderation questions freely. If it seemed necessary, I’d be down with creating special un-rate-limited side-posts for moderation posts.
I am realizing that what seems reasonable here will depend on your conception of rate limits. A couple of conceptions you might have:
You’re currently not producing stuff that meets the bar for LessWrong, but you’re writing a lot, so we’ll rate limit you as a warning with teeth to up your quality.
We would have / are close to banning you, however we think rate limits might serve either as
a sufficient disincentive against the actions we dislike
a restriction that simply stops you getting into unproductive things, e.g. Demon Threads
Regarding 2., a banned user wouldn’t get to participate in moderation discussions either, so under that frame, it’s not clear rate limited users should get to. I guess it really depends if it was more of a warning / light rate ban or something more severe, close to an actual ban.
I can say more here, not exactly a complete thought. Will do so if people are interested.
Answering some other questions:
By default, the rate limit applies to all posts, unless we’ve made an exception for it. There are two exceptions to it:
1. I just shipped the “ignore rate limits” flag on posts, which authors or admins can set so that a given post allows rate-limited comments to comment without restriction.
2. I haven’t shipped yet, but expect within the next day to ship “rate-limited authors can comment on their own posts without restriction.” (for the immediate future this just applies to authors, I expect to ship something that makes it work for coauthors)
In general, we are starting by rolling out the simplest versions of the rate-limiting feature (which is being used on many users, not just you), and solving problems as we notice them. I acknowledge this makes for some bad experiences along the way. I think I stand by that decision because I’m not even sure rate limits will turn out to work as a moderator tool, and investing like 3 months of upfront work ironing out the bugs first doesn’t seem like the right call.
For the general question of “whether a given such-and-such post will be rate limited”, the answer will route through “will individual authors choose to do set “ignoreRateLimit”, and/or will site admins choose to do it?”.
Ruby and I have some disagreements on how important it is to set the flag on moderation posts. I personally think it makes sense to be extra cautious about limiting people’s ability to speak in discussions that will impact their future ability to speak, since those can snowball and I think people are rightly wary of that. There are some other tradeoffs important to @Ruby, which I guess he can elaborate on if he wants.
For now, I’m toggling on the ignoreRateLimits flag on most of my own moderation posts (I’ve currently done so for LW Team is adjusting moderation policy and “Rate limiting” as a mod tool)
Other random questions:
Re: Open threads – I haven’t made a call yet, but I’m leaving the flag disabled/rate-limited-normally for now.
There is no limit to rate-limited-people editing their own comments. We might revisit it if it’s a problem but my current guess is rate-limitees editing their comments is pretty fine.
The check happens based on the timestamp of your last comment (it works via fetching comments within the time window and seeing if there are more than the allotted amount)
On LessWrong.com (but presumably not greaterwrong, atm) it should inform you that you’re not able to comment before you get started.
On LessWrong.com, it will probably (later, but not yet, not sure whether we’ll get to it this week), show an indicator that a commenter has been rate limited. (It’s fairly easy to do this when you open a comment-box to reply to them, there are some performance concerns for checking-to-display it on
I plan to add a list of rate-limited users to lesswrong.com/moderation. I think there’s a decent chance that goes live within a day or so.
A lot of this is that the set of “all moderation posts” covers a wide range of topics and the potential set “all rate limited users” might include a wide diversity of users, making me reluctant to commit upfront to not rate limits apply blanketly across the board on moderation posts.
The concern about excluding people from conversations that affect whether they get to speak is a valid consideration, but I think there are others too. Chiefly, people are likely rate limited primarily because they get in the way of productive conversation, and in so far as I care about moderation conversations going well, I might want to continue to exclude rate limited users there.
Note that there are ways, albeit with friction, for people to get to weigh in on moderation questions freely. If it seemed necessary, I’d be down with creating special un-rate-limited side-posts for moderation posts.
I am realizing that what seems reasonable here will depend on your conception of rate limits. A couple of conceptions you might have:
You’re currently not producing stuff that meets the bar for LessWrong, but you’re writing a lot, so we’ll rate limit you as a warning with teeth to up your quality.
We would have / are close to banning you, however we think rate limits might serve either as
a sufficient disincentive against the actions we dislike
a restriction that simply stops you getting into unproductive things, e.g. Demon Threads
Regarding 2., a banned user wouldn’t get to participate in moderation discussions either, so under that frame, it’s not clear rate limited users should get to. I guess it really depends if it was more of a warning / light rate ban or something more severe, close to an actual ban.
I can say more here, not exactly a complete thought. Will do so if people are interested.