How frequent are moderation actions? Is this discussion about saving moderator effort (by banning someone before you have to remove the rate-limited quantity of their bad posts), or something else? I really worry about “quality improvement by prior restraint”—both because low-value posts aren’t that harmful, they get downvoted and ignored pretty easily, and because it can take YEARS of trial-and-error for someone to become a good participant in LW-style discussions, and I don’t want to make it impossible for the true newbies (young people discovering this style for the first time) to try, fail, learn, try, fail, get frustrated, go away, come back, and be slightly-above-neutral for a bit before really hitting their stride.
Relatedly: I’m struck that it seems like half or more of posts get promoted to frontpage (if the /allPosts list is categorizing correctly, at least). I can’t see how many posts are deleted, of course, but I wonder if, rather than moderation, a bit more option in promotion/depromotion would help. If we had another category (frontpage, personal, and random), and mods moved things both up and down pretty easily, it would make for lower-stakes decisionmaking, and you wouldn’t have to ban anyone unless they’re making lots of work for mods even after being warned (or are just pure spam, which doesn’t seem to be the question triggering this discussion).
How frequent are moderation actions? Is this discussion about saving moderator effort (by banning someone before you have to remove the rate-limited quantity of their bad posts), or something else? I really worry about “quality improvement by prior restraint”—both because low-value posts aren’t that harmful, they get downvoted and ignored pretty easily, and because it can take YEARS of trial-and-error for someone to become a good participant in LW-style discussions, and I don’t want to make it impossible for the true newbies (young people discovering this style for the first time) to try, fail, learn, try, fail, get frustrated, go away, come back, and be slightly-above-neutral for a bit before really hitting their stride.
I agree with Dagon here.
Six years ago after discovering HPMOR and reading part (most?) of the Sequences, I was a bad participant in old LW and rationalist subreddits.
I would probably have been quickly banned on current LW.
It really just takes a while for people new to LW like norms to adjust.
How frequent are moderation actions? Is this discussion about saving moderator effort (by banning someone before you have to remove the rate-limited quantity of their bad posts), or something else? I really worry about “quality improvement by prior restraint”—both because low-value posts aren’t that harmful, they get downvoted and ignored pretty easily, and because it can take YEARS of trial-and-error for someone to become a good participant in LW-style discussions, and I don’t want to make it impossible for the true newbies (young people discovering this style for the first time) to try, fail, learn, try, fail, get frustrated, go away, come back, and be slightly-above-neutral for a bit before really hitting their stride.
Relatedly: I’m struck that it seems like half or more of posts get promoted to frontpage (if the /allPosts list is categorizing correctly, at least). I can’t see how many posts are deleted, of course, but I wonder if, rather than moderation, a bit more option in promotion/depromotion would help. If we had another category (frontpage, personal, and random), and mods moved things both up and down pretty easily, it would make for lower-stakes decisionmaking, and you wouldn’t have to ban anyone unless they’re making lots of work for mods even after being warned (or are just pure spam, which doesn’t seem to be the question triggering this discussion).
I agree with Dagon here.
Six years ago after discovering HPMOR and reading part (most?) of the Sequences, I was a bad participant in old LW and rationalist subreddits.
I would probably have been quickly banned on current LW.
It really just takes a while for people new to LW like norms to adjust.