I think there is a simple solution: the people who are currently getting quietly pissed at the Socrati, or who are sucking it up and tolerating them, stop doing so. They start criticizing the criticism, downvoting hard, upvoting the non-Socrati just to correct for the negativity drip, and banning the most prolific Socrati from commenting on their posts.
Instead of laboriously figuring out whether a problem exists, the people for whom Socrati are a problem can use the tools at their disposal to fight back/insulate themselves from worthless and degrading criticism.
Or the Socrati could, you know, listen to the complaints and adjust their behavior. But I don’t see that or some sort of LW research into the true feelings of the frustrated expats actually happening, and I think the best alternative is just to have people like Duncan who are frustrated with the situation just being a lot more vocal and active.
One reason I want more people to know about and use the ban-from-my-post feature is so the mod team* can notice patterns in who gets banned by individuals. Lots of people are disinclined to complain, especially if they believe Socrates is the site culture, censuses of people who quietly left are effort intensive and almost impossible to make representative, but own-post banning is an honest signal that aligns with people’s natural incentives.
*Technically I’m on the mod team but in practice only participate in discussions, rather than take direct action myself.
I think there is a simple solution: the people who are currently getting quietly pissed at the Socrati, or who are sucking it up and tolerating them, stop doing so. They start criticizing the criticism, downvoting hard, upvoting the non-Socrati just to correct for the negativity drip, and banning the most prolific Socrati from commenting on their posts.
Instead of laboriously figuring out whether a problem exists, the people for whom Socrati are a problem can use the tools at their disposal to fight back/insulate themselves from worthless and degrading criticism.
Or the Socrati could, you know, listen to the complaints and adjust their behavior. But I don’t see that or some sort of LW research into the true feelings of the frustrated expats actually happening, and I think the best alternative is just to have people like Duncan who are frustrated with the situation just being a lot more vocal and active.
One reason I want more people to know about and use the ban-from-my-post feature is so the mod team* can notice patterns in who gets banned by individuals. Lots of people are disinclined to complain, especially if they believe Socrates is the site culture, censuses of people who quietly left are effort intensive and almost impossible to make representative, but own-post banning is an honest signal that aligns with people’s natural incentives.
*Technically I’m on the mod team but in practice only participate in discussions, rather than take direct action myself.