Hmm, some of these reacts seem kind of passive-aggressive to me, the “Not planning to respond” and “I already addressed this” in particular just close off conversational doors in a fairly rude way. How do you respond to someone saying “I already addressed this” to a long paragraph of yours in such a low-effort way? It’s like texting “ok” to a long detailed message.
I sometimes literally have to say this in long threads. Sometimes in a thread of conversation, my interlocutor simple has too big an inferential gap for me to help them cross, and the kind but maybe not maximally nice thing to do is stop wasting both of our times. This happens for a variety of reasons, and being able to express something about it is useful.
In everyday conversation we have norms against this because they are status moves to shut down conversations, and taking such a move here does risk a status hit if others think you are making a gambit to give up a line of conversation that is proving you wrong, for example. But ultimately there’s nothing in the reacts you can’t just say with a comment.
Anyone writing an effortful response to the original post should be presumed to have good faith to some reasonable degree, and any point that you think they ignored was probably either misunderstood, or the relevance of the point is not obvious to the author of the comment. By responding in a harsh way to what might be a non-obvious misunderstanding, you’re essentially adopting the conflict side of the “mistake vs conflict theory” side of things.
Any comments which aren’t effortful and are easily seen to have an answer in the original post will probably just be downvoted anyway, and the proper response from OP is to just not respond at all.
To be clear, I think that the community here is probably kind enough so that these aren’t big problems, but it still kind of irks me to make it slightly easier to be unkind.
My feeling is this is optimistic. There are people who will fire off a lot of words without having read carefully, so the prior isn’t that strong that there’s good faith, and unfortunately, I don’t think the downvote response is always clear enough to make it feel ok to an author to leave unresponded to. Especially if a comment is lengthy, not as many people will read and downvote it.
I agree that getting a low-effort emoji in response to a lot of good faith effort sucks. But I think that scenario is already pretty well handled with normal replies. There are enough cases that aren’t handled well by replies, and might be really well handled by reacts, that I’m glad they’re making them. But it’s still important to track costs like the one you’re bringing up.
Not sure how many posts you’ve made here or elsewhere, but as someone who has done a lot of public writing this seems like a godsend. It will reflect poorly on someone who deploys those a lot in a passive aggressive way, but we’ve all seen threads that are exhausting to the original poster.
This seems particularly useful for when someone makes a thoughtful but controversial point that spurs a lot of discussion. The ability to acknowledge you read someone’s comment without deeply engaging with it is particularly useful in those cases.
I agree that some of these are a bit harsh or cold and can be used in a mean way. At first I was thinking to not include them, but I decided that since this is an experiment, I’d include them and see how they get used in practice.
”Not planning to respond” was requested by Wei Dai among others because he disliked when people just left conversations.
“I already addressed this” is intended for authors who put a lot of effort into a post and then have people and raise objections to think that were already addressed (which is pretty frustrating for the author). That react theoretically gives them a low effort way to to respond to low effort readers. (It sucks if you’re required to respond with a lot of effort to people who put in little.)
Hypothetical: Adam writes a couple pages of initial post, Bella writes a page long reply, Adam writes a page long reply to that, Bella writes a page long reply to that, Adam reacts “not going to respond” and moves on.
That seems fine to me? Like, the norm in face to face conversation is (I think) that you’re not expected to spend more than a few minutes on most replies.
Hmm, some of these reacts seem kind of passive-aggressive to me, the “Not planning to respond” and “I already addressed this” in particular just close off conversational doors in a fairly rude way. How do you respond to someone saying “I already addressed this” to a long paragraph of yours in such a low-effort way? It’s like texting “ok” to a long detailed message.
I sometimes literally have to say this in long threads. Sometimes in a thread of conversation, my interlocutor simple has too big an inferential gap for me to help them cross, and the kind but maybe not maximally nice thing to do is stop wasting both of our times. This happens for a variety of reasons, and being able to express something about it is useful.
In everyday conversation we have norms against this because they are status moves to shut down conversations, and taking such a move here does risk a status hit if others think you are making a gambit to give up a line of conversation that is proving you wrong, for example. But ultimately there’s nothing in the reacts you can’t just say with a comment.
What do you think is the right way to handle someone writing long paragraphs that ignore a point you made in the original post?
Anyone writing an effortful response to the original post should be presumed to have good faith to some reasonable degree, and any point that you think they ignored was probably either misunderstood, or the relevance of the point is not obvious to the author of the comment. By responding in a harsh way to what might be a non-obvious misunderstanding, you’re essentially adopting the conflict side of the “mistake vs conflict theory” side of things.
Any comments which aren’t effortful and are easily seen to have an answer in the original post will probably just be downvoted anyway, and the proper response from OP is to just not respond at all.
To be clear, I think that the community here is probably kind enough so that these aren’t big problems, but it still kind of irks me to make it slightly easier to be unkind.
My feeling is this is optimistic. There are people who will fire off a lot of words without having read carefully, so the prior isn’t that strong that there’s good faith, and unfortunately, I don’t think the downvote response is always clear enough to make it feel ok to an author to leave unresponded to. Especially if a comment is lengthy, not as many people will read and downvote it.
I agree that getting a low-effort emoji in response to a lot of good faith effort sucks. But I think that scenario is already pretty well handled with normal replies. There are enough cases that aren’t handled well by replies, and might be really well handled by reacts, that I’m glad they’re making them. But it’s still important to track costs like the one you’re bringing up.
Not sure how many posts you’ve made here or elsewhere, but as someone who has done a lot of public writing this seems like a godsend. It will reflect poorly on someone who deploys those a lot in a passive aggressive way, but we’ve all seen threads that are exhausting to the original poster.
This seems particularly useful for when someone makes a thoughtful but controversial point that spurs a lot of discussion. The ability to acknowledge you read someone’s comment without deeply engaging with it is particularly useful in those cases.
I agree that some of these are a bit harsh or cold and can be used in a mean way. At first I was thinking to not include them, but I decided that since this is an experiment, I’d include them and see how they get used in practice.
”Not planning to respond” was requested by Wei Dai among others because he disliked when people just left conversations.
“I already addressed this” is intended for authors who put a lot of effort into a post and then have people and raise objections to think that were already addressed (which is pretty frustrating for the author). That react theoretically gives them a low effort way to to respond to low effort readers. (It sucks if you’re required to respond with a lot of effort to people who put in little.)
I see it as a structured form of saying goodbye. Better than silently leaving.
Hypothetical: Adam writes a couple pages of initial post, Bella writes a page long reply, Adam writes a page long reply to that, Bella writes a page long reply to that, Adam reacts “not going to respond” and moves on.
That seems fine to me? Like, the norm in face to face conversation is (I think) that you’re not expected to spend more than a few minutes on most replies.