I’d be happy to take this to another forum (email, IRC, the comments section of my blog—whatever you prefer). If you’re interested, feel free to email me at myfirstname@myfullname.net
… I’m not sure how I could possibly be construed as not doing that, or as doing anything else. Your comment baffles me… which, of course, seems to point to another pitfall of Raemon’s proposal!
I saw what you said, it’s the motive I’m asking about. That is, did you suggest this with the goal of making the discussion more productive and less demonic? That’s not what it looked like. I got the impression that you disliked LW for some reason, and I never figured out what “moderation policy” had to do with it. It seemed pointless and a pain to do, so I didn’t bother.
Regardless, if you do want to try applying “step 1”, I think you should first clearly state why you think this would be a good idea, and second, take a minute to set up some sort of place for the discussion to continue (e.g. if you have a blog, you could link to it, create a new thread in it, write your reply, etc).
But, more importantly, I still have no idea how “step 1” is supposed to help with anything.
Yes, you’re right that it would be better (for you) if I had first made a blog post, etc., and linked to it… of course, that takes effort from me, expended with no idea if it will be justified (what if you ignore my overture?). And this seems to generalize: of the two participants, one or both must individually expend effort to “take the conversation private”, but what incentive is there to do so, when one does not know if one’s interlocutor will take up the offer?
This would seem to suggest that a “private chat” feature—easy to use, easy to transition to and from, and requiring no setup effort—would, if added to LW2, be beneficial for such purposes. (Even something so simple as an embedded IRC chat frame would suffice.) A smoothly working (and reliable, etc.) private messaging system might also be helpful (though perhaps less so).
Of course, this still leaves the problem you allude to at the end—that it’s not clear how taking a conversation private helps anything. Perhaps lowering the barriers to doing so might alleviate this as well—if it takes little effort, why not try it?—but perhaps not.
As for what my motive was—I don’t want to turn this thread into a debate on LW moderation policy, so I won’t comment much on the matter, except to say that yes, I certainly hoped that a discussion elsewhere might be more productive, for various reasons (I don’t endorse—and don’t really understand—the term ‘demonic’, so no comment there).
of course, that takes effort from me, expended with no idea if it will be justified (what if you ignore my overture?)
That seems like an easy problem. Say “I think it would be <good> to take this discussion private. What do you think? If you agree, I’ll set up a <place>”.
private chat
Now that I think about it, this might be a good idea—switching from a conversation where we exchange multiple paragraphs every few hours into a conversation where we exchange short sentences in real time. Of course, we can’t expect LW to implement that sort of thing when it has dubious value. I wonder if a private chat might be easy to set up elsewhere.
There’s a LW Slack server and an LW Discord server that both can be used. Discord would be preferable if the goal is to leave a permanent record given that this isn’t possible with free Slack accounts.
I wonder if a private chat might be easy to set up elsewhere.
I already have a personal IRC server with a dedicated webchat interface server, so yes, for me, it is very easy. I think that the next time something like this comes up, I will simply link to it.
Of course, we can’t expect LW to implement that sort of thing when it has dubious value.
To be honest, it would be nigh-trivial to do so: simply embed a Freenode webchat widget. It’s literally one line of code.
Do you want to try continuing our utility discussion that way and see if it helps? There may be timezone issues, I’m in europe, I’ll be available about 8 hours from now, for maybe 4 hours in the evening.
I would be willing to try it, certainly. I am on EST, so that time of day is not very convenient for me… but not impossible. I see you wrote this several days ago, so let me know if this offer still stands, and what time would be convenient—though note that I will be out most of the day this weekend, so it would have to be today (Friday), or next week (Monday+).
Given that I literally said
… I’m not sure how I could possibly be construed as not doing that, or as doing anything else. Your comment baffles me… which, of course, seems to point to another pitfall of Raemon’s proposal!
I saw what you said, it’s the motive I’m asking about. That is, did you suggest this with the goal of making the discussion more productive and less demonic? That’s not what it looked like. I got the impression that you disliked LW for some reason, and I never figured out what “moderation policy” had to do with it. It seemed pointless and a pain to do, so I didn’t bother.
Regardless, if you do want to try applying “step 1”, I think you should first clearly state why you think this would be a good idea, and second, take a minute to set up some sort of place for the discussion to continue (e.g. if you have a blog, you could link to it, create a new thread in it, write your reply, etc).
But, more importantly, I still have no idea how “step 1” is supposed to help with anything.
Ah, I understand.
Yes, you’re right that it would be better (for you) if I had first made a blog post, etc., and linked to it… of course, that takes effort from me, expended with no idea if it will be justified (what if you ignore my overture?). And this seems to generalize: of the two participants, one or both must individually expend effort to “take the conversation private”, but what incentive is there to do so, when one does not know if one’s interlocutor will take up the offer?
This would seem to suggest that a “private chat” feature—easy to use, easy to transition to and from, and requiring no setup effort—would, if added to LW2, be beneficial for such purposes. (Even something so simple as an embedded IRC chat frame would suffice.) A smoothly working (and reliable, etc.) private messaging system might also be helpful (though perhaps less so).
Of course, this still leaves the problem you allude to at the end—that it’s not clear how taking a conversation private helps anything. Perhaps lowering the barriers to doing so might alleviate this as well—if it takes little effort, why not try it?—but perhaps not.
As for what my motive was—I don’t want to turn this thread into a debate on LW moderation policy, so I won’t comment much on the matter, except to say that yes, I certainly hoped that a discussion elsewhere might be more productive, for various reasons (I don’t endorse—and don’t really understand—the term ‘demonic’, so no comment there).
That seems like an easy problem. Say “I think it would be <good> to take this discussion private. What do you think? If you agree, I’ll set up a <place>”.
Now that I think about it, this might be a good idea—switching from a conversation where we exchange multiple paragraphs every few hours into a conversation where we exchange short sentences in real time. Of course, we can’t expect LW to implement that sort of thing when it has dubious value. I wonder if a private chat might be easy to set up elsewhere.
There’s a LW Slack server and an LW Discord server that both can be used. Discord would be preferable if the goal is to leave a permanent record given that this isn’t possible with free Slack accounts.
Unfortunately, both Discord and Slack are terrible, terrible chat platforms (Slack is tremendously worse, but Discord is also nigh-intolerable).
Of course, not everyone feels this way. But I certainly would never use either platform.
I already have a personal IRC server with a dedicated webchat interface server, so yes, for me, it is very easy. I think that the next time something like this comes up, I will simply link to it.
To be honest, it would be nigh-trivial to do so: simply embed a Freenode webchat widget. It’s literally one line of code.
The KiwiIRC widget is also one line of code. It’s a lot nicer than Freenode’s own webchat system, but it can still be used with Freenode.
Good point! KiwiIRC is pretty solid as these things go.
Do you want to try continuing our utility discussion that way and see if it helps? There may be timezone issues, I’m in europe, I’ll be available about 8 hours from now, for maybe 4 hours in the evening.
My apologies, I only just saw this comment!
I would be willing to try it, certainly. I am on EST, so that time of day is not very convenient for me… but not impossible. I see you wrote this several days ago, so let me know if this offer still stands, and what time would be convenient—though note that I will be out most of the day this weekend, so it would have to be today (Friday), or next week (Monday+).
The place is chat.myfullname.net.
Ok. To clarify the time, (in EST) I should be mostly available from 10AM to 3PM on weekdays and 3AM to 3PM on weekends.
I will be there at noon EST on Monday, then.