I agree it’s a high-effort, constructive contribution.
I don’t know how to contrast it with making the business of actually writing LW content far worse than it otherwise would be.
I agree it’s a bad idea to ban user A because user B dislikes having them around. I think it’s a good idea to ban user A because users B, C, D, G, L, P, Q, R, and W, all of whom were valued contributors, all cited user A on their way out the door.
Have those people in fact said “I am leaving LW because I dislike interacting with Said”? Or is it something more like “I am leaving LW because I dislike the over-critical culture, of which Said is the clearest example”? Because if it’s the latter then it could be simultaneously true that (1) lots of people abandoning LW gave Said’s interaction style as a reason for leaving and that (2) banning Said wouldn’t actually do much to help.
(I remark that I have no evidence other than your say-so that lots of people have cited Said in explaining why they left LW, and that people’s explanations of such things are not always an accurate reflection of the actual causes. I am not, for the avoidance of doubt, claiming or even conjecturing that either you or they are/were lying.)
Since we’re talking about it, I have also told the mods that Said is one of three people who are readily top of mind at having a net negative impact on my LW experience. I’d just sort of been dealing with it, and personally I do not favor banning people sitewide for making me feel uncomfortable. But one of the mods reached out to me and specifically asked about factors influencing my experience of LessWrong, and the vibe and some of the specific commenters Duncan’s pointing out here are what I had reported was the main negative factor for me.
One of the facets of your comment here is that it puts the emphasis in a frustrating place: instead of saying “ah, n of 1, it’s good to know Said bugs you, I wonder if anybody else feels the same way,” it says “you’re the only person I’ve ever heard of complaining about Said, although I’m not saying you’re lying,” which is like a super negative way of being “neutral” about what Duncan said.
Like, imagine you said that to your significant other if they told you that one of your mutual friends, Bob, bothered your SO a lot during conversations, and that your SO had heard from other friends that Bob was very bothersome as well and made them not want to come and hang out. Would you say something like “I remark that I have no evidence other than your say-so that lots of our mutual friends have cited Bob in explaining why they don’t come to our board game night...?”
That sort of approach is a great way to alienate people and kill relationships. Why not just come right out and say “I don’t trust you enough to update ~at all on your reports about how other people feel about Bob?” That would at least be honest!
I did not intend to say or imply “you’re the only person I’ve ever heard of”, nor to be super-negative, and I don’t think I trust Duncan particularly less (or more) than a typical other prominent LW participant. (But I might trust him less specifically when reporting negative things about Said than I would trust him on other matters, and I would likewise trust Said less specifically when reporting negative things about Duncan.)
If anything I said caused anyone else to trust Duncan less, or caused Duncan any distress, then that was very much not an intended effect and I apologize.
I do, rereading what I wrote, see how it could be interpreted as having a much stronger negative subtext than I intended. What I intended was along the following lines: What Duncan is saying in this thread about “more than a dozen” high-quality ex-LWers citing Said as a major reason for their departure is, unlike the already well-known fact that Duncan himself finds Said intensely unpleasant to interact with, new information for me; but I am aware that when people find one another intensely unpleasant to interact with the things they say about one another are not always perfectly accurate, even when everyone involved is aiming to be truthful and fair, and I want to be cautious in how much I adjust my estimate of Said’s net impact on LW in response to something that comes from a single source I can’t check.
(But, in response to your outright accusation of dishonesty at the end: if I said the thing you would prefer me to say, it would be an untruth; my opinion of Duncan is not what you imply it is. My opinion of my wife, even less so, but I assume the point here is the application to the present case.)
I have heard both, the latter maybe 2x as often as the former?
I think that what’s happening right now, and has been happening over the years, is that the message “this is the kind of engagement we do, here” has been sent over and over again, and the mass of users has responded accordingly. I think if that message stopped being sent, or if a strong countersignal was sent, the mass of users would again respond accordingly.
I agree it’s a high-effort, constructive contribution.
I don’t know how to contrast it with making the business of actually writing LW content far worse than it otherwise would be.
I agree it’s a bad idea to ban user A because user B dislikes having them around. I think it’s a good idea to ban user A because users B, C, D, G, L, P, Q, R, and W, all of whom were valued contributors, all cited user A on their way out the door.
Have those people in fact said “I am leaving LW because I dislike interacting with Said”? Or is it something more like “I am leaving LW because I dislike the over-critical culture, of which Said is the clearest example”? Because if it’s the latter then it could be simultaneously true that (1) lots of people abandoning LW gave Said’s interaction style as a reason for leaving and that (2) banning Said wouldn’t actually do much to help.
(I remark that I have no evidence other than your say-so that lots of people have cited Said in explaining why they left LW, and that people’s explanations of such things are not always an accurate reflection of the actual causes. I am not, for the avoidance of doubt, claiming or even conjecturing that either you or they are/were lying.)
Since we’re talking about it, I have also told the mods that Said is one of three people who are readily top of mind at having a net negative impact on my LW experience. I’d just sort of been dealing with it, and personally I do not favor banning people sitewide for making me feel uncomfortable. But one of the mods reached out to me and specifically asked about factors influencing my experience of LessWrong, and the vibe and some of the specific commenters Duncan’s pointing out here are what I had reported was the main negative factor for me.
One of the facets of your comment here is that it puts the emphasis in a frustrating place: instead of saying “ah, n of 1, it’s good to know Said bugs you, I wonder if anybody else feels the same way,” it says “you’re the only person I’ve ever heard of complaining about Said, although I’m not saying you’re lying,” which is like a super negative way of being “neutral” about what Duncan said.
Like, imagine you said that to your significant other if they told you that one of your mutual friends, Bob, bothered your SO a lot during conversations, and that your SO had heard from other friends that Bob was very bothersome as well and made them not want to come and hang out. Would you say something like “I remark that I have no evidence other than your say-so that lots of our mutual friends have cited Bob in explaining why they don’t come to our board game night...?”
That sort of approach is a great way to alienate people and kill relationships. Why not just come right out and say “I don’t trust you enough to update ~at all on your reports about how other people feel about Bob?” That would at least be honest!
Did you know about the option to ban people from your posts? If yes, may I ask why you didn’t ban Said?
I didn’t know about that until I saw somebody mention it in another comment today. I will probably start doing this.
I did not intend to say or imply “you’re the only person I’ve ever heard of”, nor to be super-negative, and I don’t think I trust Duncan particularly less (or more) than a typical other prominent LW participant. (But I might trust him less specifically when reporting negative things about Said than I would trust him on other matters, and I would likewise trust Said less specifically when reporting negative things about Duncan.)
If anything I said caused anyone else to trust Duncan less, or caused Duncan any distress, then that was very much not an intended effect and I apologize.
I do, rereading what I wrote, see how it could be interpreted as having a much stronger negative subtext than I intended. What I intended was along the following lines: What Duncan is saying in this thread about “more than a dozen” high-quality ex-LWers citing Said as a major reason for their departure is, unlike the already well-known fact that Duncan himself finds Said intensely unpleasant to interact with, new information for me; but I am aware that when people find one another intensely unpleasant to interact with the things they say about one another are not always perfectly accurate, even when everyone involved is aiming to be truthful and fair, and I want to be cautious in how much I adjust my estimate of Said’s net impact on LW in response to something that comes from a single source I can’t check.
(But, in response to your outright accusation of dishonesty at the end: if I said the thing you would prefer me to say, it would be an untruth; my opinion of Duncan is not what you imply it is. My opinion of my wife, even less so, but I assume the point here is the application to the present case.)
That’s fair—I should not have accused you of dishonesty, and I apologize.
I have heard both, the latter maybe 2x as often as the former?
I think that what’s happening right now, and has been happening over the years, is that the message “this is the kind of engagement we do, here” has been sent over and over again, and the mass of users has responded accordingly. I think if that message stopped being sent, or if a strong countersignal was sent, the mass of users would again respond accordingly.