In my experience the evolution of demon threads is moderately dependent on the mechanics of commenting, and (to extend the demonic metaphor) “exorcism comments” work differently depending on the mechanical position of new comments.
No matter how commenting works, a comment that “fixes” the bulk of the demon aspects of the larger conversation needs to have clean and coherent insight into whatever the issue is. You shouldn’t worry too much about writing such a post unless you are moderately confident that you could pass an ideological turing test for all the major postions being espoused.
The thing that changes with different commenting systems is how much you can fix it and what the “shape” of the resulting conversation looks like if you “succeed”.
With “unthreaded, most recent comment at the top” there is no hope.
No matter how excellent your writing, the content will drop lower in the queue and eventually be forgotten. This kind of commenting system is basically an anti-pattern used by manipulative propagandists.
Closely related: the last time I held my nose and visited Facebook it appeared to only show fresh/recent comments for any given item in the feed, and you had to choose to click to get the javascipt to load older comments above the recent comments that start out visible. Ouch! (At this point I consider Facebook to basically just be a propaganda honeypot.)
With “unthreaded, most recent at the bottom” (as with oldschool phpBB systems and the original OvercomingBias setup) a single perfect comment is incapable of totally changing the meaning of the seed. This helps the OP maintain a position of some structural authority...
What you can do, however, is wait for 5-30 posts (partly this depends on pagination—if pagination kicks in within less than 40 posts then wait until page two to attempt an exorcism), and then post a comment that offers a structural correction that praises previous comments, but points out something everyone seems to be missing, that really honestly matters to everyone, and that cuts to the very essence of the issue and deflates it.
This won’t totally kill the thread, but it should dramatically change the tone to something more productive, and the tonal state transition will persist for many followups, hopefully leading to the drying up of conversation.
The danger here is that it doesn’t really work in very large communities. Readers might be tempted to read the first three comments, then jump to the last page of comments to get the last three comments, then wade in themselves without readin the middle. If there are hundreds of pages of comments your attempted exorcism at the bottom of page 2 simply can’t do the job.
With reddit style commenting (as with modern LW and HN) you have the most hope.
The depth of threading is strongly related to the amount of “punch/counterpunch dynamic” that is happening. A given “seed” will have many “child posts” and each of the child posts will sprawl quite deeply. Deep sprawl is only potentially a serious problem in the highest voted first level response. For subsequent comment it isn’t actually a problem (at least I don’t think?) because the only people who read that far down are the ones who actually enjoy a rhetorical ruckus.
A perfect exorcism in this sort of threading system arrives late enough for the default assumptions to become clear, and then responds to the original seed in a basically flawless way, being fairminded to both sides (often by going meta somehow) and then managing to get upvotes so that it is the first thing people see when they start reading the seed and “check the comments”. After reading the “exorcising response” all the lower (and earlier written) comments should hopefully seem less critically in need of reponse because it looks like quibbling compared to a proper response.
The exorcising comment needs to hit the central issue directly and with some novelty so that it really functions as signal rather than noise. For example, use a scientific phrase that no one has so far used that reveals a deep literature.
It needs to avoid subtopics that could raise quibbling responses. Any “rough edges” that allow room for someone to respond will lead to even more surface area for quibbling attacks, and tertiary responses will tend to be even lower quality and more inflamitory, and the fire will get larger rather than smaller. Thus, an exocism must be close to flawless.
It helps to have a bit of a “moral tone” so that good people would feel guilty disturbing the purity of the signal. However too much moral tone can raise a “who the fuck do you think you are?!” sort of crticism, so go light with it. Also it helps a lot to “end on a high note”, so that “knee jerk voters” will finish reading it it and click “UP” almost without thinking :-)
You might note that I used the “end on a high note” pattern in this very comment, because I re-ordered my discussion of commenting systems to discuss the one most amenable to being fixed last, which happens to be the one LW uses, because we are awesome. Putting good stuff last and explicitly flattering the entire community is sort of part of the formula ;-)
(EDIT: Added underlines at the suggestion of mr-hire and Raemon below.)
Meta: There’s a really cool point in here about HOW TO EXORCISE DEMONS FROM THREADS, without ending the thread. But people may miss it because the bolded text and first few sentences mostly seem to be about technical ideas on commenting. Recommend reading this comment if you skimmed it previously.
Non-Meta: I too have noticed a certain tone that’s factual, friendly, and non-combative that can seem to take the wind out of demon threads because it somehow disables everyone’s defensiveness centers. I think this is probably the best solution to demon threads, and also reflectively useful in that if people get great at this tone, demon threads are less likely to happen in the first place.
Oh, I too had read the first three things, and I think read the paragraph after “reddit style commenting” and then sort of thought I was done reading and apparently stopped.
I think having a fourth bold title highlighting the exorcising comment concept would have helped.
In my experience the evolution of demon threads is moderately dependent on the mechanics of commenting, and (to extend the demonic metaphor) “exorcism comments” work differently depending on the mechanical position of new comments.
No matter how commenting works, a comment that “fixes” the bulk of the demon aspects of the larger conversation needs to have clean and coherent insight into whatever the issue is. You shouldn’t worry too much about writing such a post unless you are moderately confident that you could pass an ideological turing test for all the major postions being espoused.
The thing that changes with different commenting systems is how much you can fix it and what the “shape” of the resulting conversation looks like if you “succeed”.
With “unthreaded, most recent comment at the top” there is no hope.
No matter how excellent your writing, the content will drop lower in the queue and eventually be forgotten. This kind of commenting system is basically an anti-pattern used by manipulative propagandists.
Closely related: the last time I held my nose and visited Facebook it appeared to only show fresh/recent comments for any given item in the feed, and you had to choose to click to get the javascipt to load older comments above the recent comments that start out visible. Ouch! (At this point I consider Facebook to basically just be a propaganda honeypot.)
With “unthreaded, most recent at the bottom” (as with oldschool phpBB systems and the original OvercomingBias setup) a single perfect comment is incapable of totally changing the meaning of the seed. This helps the OP maintain a position of some structural authority...
What you can do, however, is wait for 5-30 posts (partly this depends on pagination—if pagination kicks in within less than 40 posts then wait until page two to attempt an exorcism), and then post a comment that offers a structural correction that praises previous comments, but points out something everyone seems to be missing, that really honestly matters to everyone, and that cuts to the very essence of the issue and deflates it.
This won’t totally kill the thread, but it should dramatically change the tone to something more productive, and the tonal state transition will persist for many followups, hopefully leading to the drying up of conversation.
The danger here is that it doesn’t really work in very large communities. Readers might be tempted to read the first three comments, then jump to the last page of comments to get the last three comments, then wade in themselves without readin the middle. If there are hundreds of pages of comments your attempted exorcism at the bottom of page 2 simply can’t do the job.
With reddit style commenting (as with modern LW and HN) you have the most hope.
The depth of threading is strongly related to the amount of “punch/counterpunch dynamic” that is happening. A given “seed” will have many “child posts” and each of the child posts will sprawl quite deeply. Deep sprawl is only potentially a serious problem in the highest voted first level response. For subsequent comment it isn’t actually a problem (at least I don’t think?) because the only people who read that far down are the ones who actually enjoy a rhetorical ruckus.
A perfect exorcism in this sort of threading system arrives late enough for the default assumptions to become clear, and then responds to the original seed in a basically flawless way, being fairminded to both sides (often by going meta somehow) and then managing to get upvotes so that it is the first thing people see when they start reading the seed and “check the comments”. After reading the “exorcising response” all the lower (and earlier written) comments should hopefully seem less critically in need of reponse because it looks like quibbling compared to a proper response.
The exorcising comment needs to hit the central issue directly and with some novelty so that it really functions as signal rather than noise. For example, use a scientific phrase that no one has so far used that reveals a deep literature.
It needs to avoid subtopics that could raise quibbling responses. Any “rough edges” that allow room for someone to respond will lead to even more surface area for quibbling attacks, and tertiary responses will tend to be even lower quality and more inflamitory, and the fire will get larger rather than smaller. Thus, an exocism must be close to flawless.
It helps to have a bit of a “moral tone” so that good people would feel guilty disturbing the purity of the signal. However too much moral tone can raise a “who the fuck do you think you are?!” sort of crticism, so go light with it. Also it helps a lot to “end on a high note”, so that “knee jerk voters” will finish reading it it and click “UP” almost without thinking :-)
You might note that I used the “end on a high note” pattern in this very comment, because I re-ordered my discussion of commenting systems to discuss the one most amenable to being fixed last, which happens to be the one LW uses, because we are awesome. Putting good stuff last and explicitly flattering the entire community is sort of part of the formula ;-)
(EDIT: Added underlines at the suggestion of mr-hire and Raemon below.)
Meta: There’s a really cool point in here about HOW TO EXORCISE DEMONS FROM THREADS, without ending the thread. But people may miss it because the bolded text and first few sentences mostly seem to be about technical ideas on commenting. Recommend reading this comment if you skimmed it previously.
Non-Meta: I too have noticed a certain tone that’s factual, friendly, and non-combative that can seem to take the wind out of demon threads because it somehow disables everyone’s defensiveness centers. I think this is probably the best solution to demon threads, and also reflectively useful in that if people get great at this tone, demon threads are less likely to happen in the first place.
Agreed with the tone-thing.
Re: meta:
Oh, I too had read the first three things, and I think read the paragraph after “reddit style commenting” and then sort of thought I was done reading and apparently stopped.
I think having a fourth bold title highlighting the exorcising comment concept would have helped.
Thank you both for the feedback. I’ve taken the liberty of adding underlining in a second pass edit.