Most people who commented on this post seemed to recognise it from their experience and get a general idea of what the different cultures look like (although some people differ on the details, see later). This is partly because it is explained well but also because I think the names were chosen well.
Here are a few people saying that they have used/referenced it: 1, 2, 3 plus me.
From a LW standpoint thinking about this framing helps me to not be offended by blunt comments. My family was very combat culture but in life in general I find people are unwilling to say “you’re wrong” so it now comes as a bit of a shock. Now when someone says something blunt on LW I just picture it being said by my older brother and realise that probably no offense is meant.
Outside of LW, this post has caused me to add a bit into my induction of new employees at work. I encourage a fairly robust combat culture in my department but I realise that some people aren’t used to this so I try to give people a warning up front and make sure they know that no offense is meant.
***
There were a few examples in the comments where it seemed like the distinction between the two cultures wasn’t quite as clear as it could be.
Ruby updated the original distinction into two dimensions in a later comment – the “adversarial-collaborative” dimension and the “emotional concern and effort” dimension. The central combat culture was “adversarial + low emotional effort” and nurture was “collaborative + high emotional effort”. However there are cultures which fit in the other 2 possible pairings and the original framing suppressed that somewhat.
I personally would like to see a version of the OP which includes that distinction and think that it would likely be a good fit for the 2018 review. Short of making that distinction, the OP allows for people to fit, say, “collaborative + low emotional effort” into either the nurture or combat culture category. If the combat-nurture distinction is to be used as common knowledge then I worry that this will cause confusion between people with different interpretations.
My other worry about including this in the 2018 review is a claim of what the default should be. If the post claims that nurture culture should be the default, does that then seem like this is how LW should be? This counts even more as the post is by a member of the LW team.
Finally, in my mind if this post (or a version of it) was included in the 2018 review then it would benefit from including something like the excellent section which Ruby later moved into the comments. For the post it made sense to move it to the comments but it would be shame to miss it out entirely for the review.
My other worry about including this in the 2018 review is a claim of what the default should be. If the post claims that nurture culture should be the default, does that then seem like this is how LW should be? This counts even more as the post is by a member of the LW team.
I agree it should be clear about which normative stances taken in the post are statements about what should be true of LW.
At the time I wrote this post, I’d begun discussions about joining the LW team and had done maybe a couple dozen hours of remote analytics work, and I began a full-time trial but I didn’t become a full-time team member until March 2019. I’d be more careful now.
The LW team doesn’t currently have a firm stance on where LW should fall on the dimensions outlined in the OP/discussion, that’s something we’re likely to work on in the next quarter. We’ve got the Frontpage commenting guidelines so far, but that doesn’t really state things in these the terms of Combat/Nurture.
My own thinking on the topic has been enriched by my much greater participation in LW discussion, including discussion around communication styles. I’d begun typing a paragraph here of some of my current thoughts, but probably it’s best to hold off till I’ve thought more at length and am speaking alongside the rest of team. (An update in recent discussions of moderation and conversation norms is that the team should be careful to not confuse people by saying different things individually.)
I think it is safe for me to say that while I still think that something in the Nurture cluster is a good default for most contexts, that doesn’t mean that LW might not have good reasons to deviate from that default.
but probably it’s best to hold off till I’ve thought more at length and am speaking alongside the rest of team.
I was gonna leave a comment reminding you that you should always feel free to speak for yourself, and then I hit
(An update in recent discussions of moderation and conversation norms is that the team should be careful to not confuse people by saying different things individually.)
If I read you right, this hasn’t been my own update, so I guess I’ll tell you to be careful what you say on behalf of the team without checking for consensus ;-) I agree some users have been confused, but the result mustn’t be to retreat to only saying consensus things. I might be open to adding more disclaimers or something, but overall I really care that I don’t give up the ability to just think for myself out loud on LW on basically all topics relating to LW.
I agree writing about moderation in particular is an unusually careful topic where I want to take extra care to signal what is consensus/actionable and what is me just thinking aloud. But I still stand by that you should share your own thoughts, saying “I” everywhere (I just edited this very comment to own all of my thoughts more), is still pretty great and it’d be bad if you felt the general need to get team consensus.
FWIW, I agree that it is good/important for mods to be able to state their own opinions freely. My only worry was that a book form of the review might lose this nuance if this is not stated explicitly.
Most people who commented on this post seemed to recognise it from their experience and get a general idea of what the different cultures look like (although some people differ on the details, see later). This is partly because it is explained well but also because I think the names were chosen well.
Here are a few people saying that they have used/referenced it: 1, 2, 3 plus me.
From a LW standpoint thinking about this framing helps me to not be offended by blunt comments. My family was very combat culture but in life in general I find people are unwilling to say “you’re wrong” so it now comes as a bit of a shock. Now when someone says something blunt on LW I just picture it being said by my older brother and realise that probably no offense is meant.
Outside of LW, this post has caused me to add a bit into my induction of new employees at work. I encourage a fairly robust combat culture in my department but I realise that some people aren’t used to this so I try to give people a warning up front and make sure they know that no offense is meant.
***
There were a few examples in the comments where it seemed like the distinction between the two cultures wasn’t quite as clear as it could be.
Ruby updated the original distinction into two dimensions in a later comment – the “adversarial-collaborative” dimension and the “emotional concern and effort” dimension. The central combat culture was “adversarial + low emotional effort” and nurture was “collaborative + high emotional effort”. However there are cultures which fit in the other 2 possible pairings and the original framing suppressed that somewhat.
I personally would like to see a version of the OP which includes that distinction and think that it would likely be a good fit for the 2018 review. Short of making that distinction, the OP allows for people to fit, say, “collaborative + low emotional effort” into either the nurture or combat culture category. If the combat-nurture distinction is to be used as common knowledge then I worry that this will cause confusion between people with different interpretations.
My other worry about including this in the 2018 review is a claim of what the default should be. If the post claims that nurture culture should be the default, does that then seem like this is how LW should be? This counts even more as the post is by a member of the LW team.
Finally, in my mind if this post (or a version of it) was included in the 2018 review then it would benefit from including something like the excellent section which Ruby later moved into the comments. For the post it made sense to move it to the comments but it would be shame to miss it out entirely for the review.
Just to keep this up-to-date, I think V2 of this post addresses my concerns and I consider this an excellent fit for the 2018 review.
I agree it should be clear about which normative stances taken in the post are statements about what should be true of LW.
At the time I wrote this post, I’d begun discussions about joining the LW team and had done maybe a couple dozen hours of remote analytics work, and I began a full-time trial but I didn’t become a full-time team member until March 2019. I’d be more careful now.
The LW team doesn’t currently have a firm stance on where LW should fall on the dimensions outlined in the OP/discussion, that’s something we’re likely to work on in the next quarter. We’ve got the Frontpage commenting guidelines so far, but that doesn’t really state things in these the terms of Combat/Nurture.
My own thinking on the topic has been enriched by my much greater participation in LW discussion, including discussion around communication styles. I’d begun typing a paragraph here of some of my current thoughts, but probably it’s best to hold off till I’ve thought more at length and am speaking alongside the rest of team. (An update in recent discussions of moderation and conversation norms is that the team should be careful to not confuse people by saying different things individually.)
I think it is safe for me to say that while I still think that something in the Nurture cluster is a good default for most contexts, that doesn’t mean that LW might not have good reasons to deviate from that default.
I was gonna leave a comment reminding you that you should always feel free to speak for yourself, and then I hit
If I read you right, this hasn’t been my own update, so I guess I’ll tell you to be careful what you say on behalf of the team without checking for consensus ;-) I agree some users have been confused, but the result mustn’t be to retreat to only saying consensus things. I might be open to adding more disclaimers or something, but overall I really care that I don’t give up the ability to just think for myself out loud on LW on basically all topics relating to LW.
I agree writing about moderation in particular is an unusually careful topic where I want to take extra care to signal what is consensus/actionable and what is me just thinking aloud. But I still stand by that you should share your own thoughts, saying “I” everywhere (I just edited this very comment to own all of my thoughts more), is still pretty great and it’d be bad if you felt the general need to get team consensus.
FWIW, I agree that it is good/important for mods to be able to state their own opinions freely. My only worry was that a book form of the review might lose this nuance if this is not stated explicitly.