I think that the council situation is totally fine, if there’s a public process of decision-making. Perhaps the law gets argued out in the town hall / courts, and all people have the option to provide counterarguments, or in a larger country elect people to represent their interests to provide arguments. In general, if the decision-making happens in public, then I think the people involved speaking honestly about their opinions is far better, allows more opportunities for others to correct them, and generally increases the informativeness of the system.
Currently, the main place on LW where law gets formed is in actual decision announcements, and key decisions in that realm are always public, explained, and have comment sections, and everyone is allowed to write comments and posts critiquing those decisions.
I think it can be more clear and easier to interface with, and I’ve had a bunch of moderation posts I’ve wanted to write for a while, and that should improve things.
I strongly believe that “Thinking out loud” is one of the key virtues to cultivate in the technological era we’re in, and has major positive externalities, and any moves to hide discussion and thought, especially when simultaneously centralising power, often have surprisingly disastrous consequences.
I think that the council situation is totally fine, if there’s a public process of decision-making. [emphasis added]
I can imagine a system where individual council members speak their mind freely yet the subjects of the realm know that no law gets passed without appropriate process to possibly work quite well, but that “if” is doing a lot of work, and I think it currently does not hold of the LW team.
Certain topics get debated from time to time, but so far as I can recall, not in the context of “we’re laying down the law now, come weigh in.” I fear that people get anxious whenever those topics come up because they feel it might be their fleeting chance to make things go right.
Currently, the main place on LW where law gets formed is in actual decision announcements, and key decisions in that realm are always public, explained, and have comment sections, and everyone is allowed to write comments and posts critiquing those decisions.
I think this is false. For the most part, we have little announced law. We’ve got a few posts on Frontpage vs Personal blogposts, we’ve got the Frontpage guidelines, but nothing that much broader about what’s okay vs not okay communication, what happens if we don’t like something you’re doing, etc. Though individual team members operate in accordance with a number of solid underlying principles, they’re not really publicly or in agreement across the team, and so I’d venture that many decisions seem quite ad hoc.
Most moderation decisions get made behind the proverbial closed doors (in practice we keep our door open to keep CO2 down, but you know– proverbial), and I wouldn’t even call those decisions even law, though maybe they count as precedent.
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I’m optimistic we can rectify this and I think most of the team think it’s likely a top priority for Q1. Yet till we do so, I’m feeling that until such a time as we build trust (and this is difficult to do) and firmly establish a process of law getting developed in public, we don’t necessarily get to have the privilege of sharing random thoughts here and there that are of pretty large significance.
You might be right, the thing I said was oversimplified.
we don’t necessarily get to have the privilege of sharing random thoughts here and there that are of pretty large significance.
Let me be clear, that I am mostly modelling this as having strong positive externalities, distributed amongst many other people, not as being ‘personally easy’. I don’t find it as hard to do nowadays as I’ve practised it a lot, but my internal motivation isn’t just fun or ease or something like that.
Everything quoted below seems pretty plausible, but I’d be keen to get more gears.
I strongly believe that “Thinking out loud” is one of the key virtues to cultivate in the technological era we’re in, and has major positive externalities,
Is it a virtue because of the positive externalities, or for other reasons? How does “technological era” factor in?
and any moves to hide discussion and thought, especially when simultaneously centralising power, often have surprisingly disastrous consequences.
There’s probably something to that, but just because there’s a rock on one side doesn’t mean there isn’t a hard place in on the other.
There are also details which affect the situation, such as there are different ways you might have people share their thinking:
1) Everyone shares thoughts whenever they feel like it, even when it’s likely to misconstrued and be difficult to correct.
2) Everyone shares their individual thoughts, but only after care has been taking to ensure there’s no misunderstanding, e.g. sharing a group statement about moderation to which individuals appends their individual thinking.
The latter does add some friction and is stifling, but for some topics that might just be the correct balance? It’s not clear to me yet that your considerations outweigh the others.
I’ve had a bunch of moderation posts I’ve wanted to write for a while, and that should improve things.
This makes me a bit anxious. My inner story is that you’ll post various posts about moderation policy, intending them as “thinking aloud”, but many people will relate to them as official announcement since they come from a LW mod. I’ll then feel compelled to weigh in where I disagree and have a lengthy comment exchange trying to clarify the overall [incomplete] state of thinking of the team. And it’ll be exhausting and stressful. And I imagine it feeling unilateralist curse-y too, because in your mind it was fine to do and in my mind it wasn’t, but now I’m committed to this conversation when I’d have preferred a higher bandwidth, in-person one first.
I did intend them to be official announcements, and planned to make sure each team member saw them (as well as a number of non-team members) and had the space to disagree and talk through them.
I’m glad to hear you planned to run by the team before posting. I know you don’t mean to make them announcements, but my fear is that it might be very hard to make them not come across that way.
I think that the council situation is totally fine, if there’s a public process of decision-making. Perhaps the law gets argued out in the town hall / courts, and all people have the option to provide counterarguments, or in a larger country elect people to represent their interests to provide arguments. In general, if the decision-making happens in public, then I think the people involved speaking honestly about their opinions is far better, allows more opportunities for others to correct them, and generally increases the informativeness of the system.
Currently, the main place on LW where law gets formed is in actual decision announcements, and key decisions in that realm are always public, explained, and have comment sections, and everyone is allowed to write comments and posts critiquing those decisions.
I think it can be more clear and easier to interface with, and I’ve had a bunch of moderation posts I’ve wanted to write for a while, and that should improve things.
I strongly believe that “Thinking out loud” is one of the key virtues to cultivate in the technological era we’re in, and has major positive externalities, and any moves to hide discussion and thought, especially when simultaneously centralising power, often have surprisingly disastrous consequences.
I can imagine a system where individual council members speak their mind freely yet the subjects of the realm know that no law gets passed without appropriate process to possibly work quite well, but that “if” is doing a lot of work, and I think it currently does not hold of the LW team.
Certain topics get debated from time to time, but so far as I can recall, not in the context of “we’re laying down the law now, come weigh in.” I fear that people get anxious whenever those topics come up because they feel it might be their fleeting chance to make things go right.
I think this is false. For the most part, we have little announced law. We’ve got a few posts on Frontpage vs Personal blogposts, we’ve got the Frontpage guidelines, but nothing that much broader about what’s okay vs not okay communication, what happens if we don’t like something you’re doing, etc. Though individual team members operate in accordance with a number of solid underlying principles, they’re not really publicly or in agreement across the team, and so I’d venture that many decisions seem quite ad hoc.
Most moderation decisions get made behind the proverbial closed doors (in practice we keep our door open to keep CO2 down, but you know– proverbial), and I wouldn’t even call those decisions even law, though maybe they count as precedent.
-------------
I’m optimistic we can rectify this and I think most of the team think it’s likely a top priority for Q1. Yet till we do so, I’m feeling that until such a time as we build trust (and this is difficult to do) and firmly establish a process of law getting developed in public, we don’t necessarily get to have the privilege of sharing random thoughts here and there that are of pretty large significance.
You might be right, the thing I said was oversimplified.
Let me be clear, that I am mostly modelling this as having strong positive externalities, distributed amongst many other people, not as being ‘personally easy’. I don’t find it as hard to do nowadays as I’ve practised it a lot, but my internal motivation isn’t just fun or ease or something like that.
Everything quoted below seems pretty plausible, but I’d be keen to get more gears.
Is it a virtue because of the positive externalities, or for other reasons? How does “technological era” factor in?
There’s probably something to that, but just because there’s a rock on one side doesn’t mean there isn’t a hard place in on the other.
There are also details which affect the situation, such as there are different ways you might have people share their thinking:
1) Everyone shares thoughts whenever they feel like it, even when it’s likely to misconstrued and be difficult to correct.
2) Everyone shares their individual thoughts, but only after care has been taking to ensure there’s no misunderstanding, e.g. sharing a group statement about moderation to which individuals appends their individual thinking.
The latter does add some friction and is stifling, but for some topics that might just be the correct balance? It’s not clear to me yet that your considerations outweigh the others.
This makes me a bit anxious. My inner story is that you’ll post various posts about moderation policy, intending them as “thinking aloud”, but many people will relate to them as official announcement since they come from a LW mod. I’ll then feel compelled to weigh in where I disagree and have a lengthy comment exchange trying to clarify the overall [incomplete] state of thinking of the team. And it’ll be exhausting and stressful. And I imagine it feeling unilateralist curse-y too, because in your mind it was fine to do and in my mind it wasn’t, but now I’m committed to this conversation when I’d have preferred a higher bandwidth, in-person one first.
I did intend them to be official announcements, and planned to make sure each team member saw them (as well as a number of non-team members) and had the space to disagree and talk through them.
I’m glad to hear you planned to run by the team before posting. I know you don’t mean to make them announcements, but my fear is that it might be very hard to make them not come across that way.
To be clear, did you read that I said “did” in that sentence?