Meta: I disagree with Alex’s decision to delete Gwern’s comment on this answer. People can reasonably disagree about the optimal balance between ‘more dickish’ (leaves more room for candor, bluntness, and playfulness in discussions) and ‘less dickish’ (encourages calm and a focus on content) in an intellectual community. And on LW, relatively high-karma users like Alex are allowed to moderate discussion of their posts, so Alex is free to promote the balance he thinks is best here.
But regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, I think LW should have a soft norm that substance trumps style, content is king, argument will be taken seriously on its own terms even if it’s not optimally packaged and uses the wrong shibboleths or whatever.
Deleting substantive, relevant content entirely should mostly not be one of the ‘game moves’ people use in advancing their side of the Dickishness Debate—it’s not worth it on its own terms, it’s not worth it as a punishment for the other side (even if the other side is in fact wrong and you’re right), and it erodes an important thing about LW.
Gwern’s comment had tons of content beyond that one sentence that was phrased a bit rudely; and it spawned a bunch of discussion that’s now hard to follow, on a topic that actually matters. Deleting the whole comment, without copy-pasting all or most of it anywhere, seems bad to me.
I’m interested in responding to you, Rob, because I already know you to be an entirely reasonable person, and also because I think this is somewhat of a continuation of a difference between you and me in real life. I might bail at any time though, because the fact that posters can have their own custom moderation policy means that I don’t feel particularly obligated to justify myself.
(For context for the rest of this comment, the line I had a problem with was, “‘noun phrases’ is an odd typo for ‘sentences’. They’re not even close to each other on the keyboard.”)
But regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, I think LW should have a soft norm that substance trumps style, content is king, argument will be taken seriously on its own terms even if it’s not optimally packaged and uses the wrong shibboleths or whatever.
I agree with this, and I think it’s already true. But I also think you worded it too softly to be in contradiction to my comment deletion (and more generally the implicit policy in my head). LW definitely does have said soft norm; I think allowing users to moderate their own posts, and users occasionally doing so, preserves that norm! Never deleting a comment, no matter where it lay on the dickish spectrum, would I think constitute a hard norm. The line I had a problem with was far beyond “not optimally packaged” and had nothing to do with using a “wrong shibboleths”.
Deleting substantive, relevant content entirely should mostly not be one of the ‘game moves’ people use in advancing their side of the Dickishness Debate—it’s not worth it on its own terms, it’s not worth it as a punishment for the other side (even if the other side is in fact wrong and you’re right), and it erodes an important thing about LW.
I’ll note that I gave them plenty of time and opportunity to edit the comment; I requested it in the comments, I requested it in a PM, and I saw that they made other comments on the same post much later.
and it spawned a bunch of discussion that’s now hard to follow, on a topic that actually matters. Deleting the whole comment, without copy-pasting all or most of it anywhere, seems bad to me.
It spawned two comments (which you can still read, though I agree they’re harder to follow). I agree that the rest of said content was substantive and relevant. If there had actually been a whole lot more, I probably wouldn’t have deleted the parent. I just don’t think it was enough to tip the scale. And there’s tons of other similar discussion all over the comments, especially by Gwern. And like, everyone involved is free to reiterate the substantive and relevant content. (The option of copy-pasting someone’s comment feels weird to me, for reasons that I haven’t quite explicated and don’t feel super relevant.)
Gwern’s comment had tons of content beyond that one sentence that was phrased a bit rudely
It really wasn’t that big of a comment. But also, I think our core disagreement might be here under “phrased a bit rudely”. I think the criterion I’m using implicitly here is that, if the entire purpose of the statement is to insult someone, then it’s out. That sentence did not have any other purpose. It’s not just phrasing that comes a bit too harsh. It was equivalent to, “You’re an idiot”. This is far from the side of the spectrum that requires finicky social norms. I’m not asking that people make sure that no one could be offended by what they’re saying. I’m not even saying that people shouldn’t say true, useful negative things about others. If it’s important to figuring out AI alignment that we discuss how smart a particular person is, then so be it. That’s a far cry from statements whose only purpose is to insult.
I’d actually be curious to know where the line is for you. If someone literally said, “You’re an idiot”, would you call that too dickish? Or what if someone’s comment had insulting profanities?
(These are all quantitative factors. If Gwern’s overall comment had sucked more, or his sentence had been way more egregious, I’d have objected a lot less to Alex’s call. But it does matter where we put rough quantitative thresholds.)
Meta: I disagree with Alex’s decision to delete Gwern’s comment on this answer. People can reasonably disagree about the optimal balance between ‘more dickish’ (leaves more room for candor, bluntness, and playfulness in discussions) and ‘less dickish’ (encourages calm and a focus on content) in an intellectual community. And on LW, relatively high-karma users like Alex are allowed to moderate discussion of their posts, so Alex is free to promote the balance he thinks is best here.
But regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, I think LW should have a soft norm that substance trumps style, content is king, argument will be taken seriously on its own terms even if it’s not optimally packaged and uses the wrong shibboleths or whatever.
Deleting substantive, relevant content entirely should mostly not be one of the ‘game moves’ people use in advancing their side of the Dickishness Debate—it’s not worth it on its own terms, it’s not worth it as a punishment for the other side (even if the other side is in fact wrong and you’re right), and it erodes an important thing about LW.
Gwern’s comment had tons of content beyond that one sentence that was phrased a bit rudely; and it spawned a bunch of discussion that’s now hard to follow, on a topic that actually matters. Deleting the whole comment, without copy-pasting all or most of it anywhere, seems bad to me.
I appreciate this comment!
I’m interested in responding to you, Rob, because I already know you to be an entirely reasonable person, and also because I think this is somewhat of a continuation of a difference between you and me in real life. I might bail at any time though, because the fact that posters can have their own custom moderation policy means that I don’t feel particularly obligated to justify myself.
(For context for the rest of this comment, the line I had a problem with was, “‘noun phrases’ is an odd typo for ‘sentences’. They’re not even close to each other on the keyboard.”)
I agree with this, and I think it’s already true. But I also think you worded it too softly to be in contradiction to my comment deletion (and more generally the implicit policy in my head). LW definitely does have said soft norm; I think allowing users to moderate their own posts, and users occasionally doing so, preserves that norm! Never deleting a comment, no matter where it lay on the dickish spectrum, would I think constitute a hard norm. The line I had a problem with was far beyond “not optimally packaged” and had nothing to do with using a “wrong shibboleths”.
I’ll note that I gave them plenty of time and opportunity to edit the comment; I requested it in the comments, I requested it in a PM, and I saw that they made other comments on the same post much later.
It spawned two comments (which you can still read, though I agree they’re harder to follow). I agree that the rest of said content was substantive and relevant. If there had actually been a whole lot more, I probably wouldn’t have deleted the parent. I just don’t think it was enough to tip the scale. And there’s tons of other similar discussion all over the comments, especially by Gwern. And like, everyone involved is free to reiterate the substantive and relevant content. (The option of copy-pasting someone’s comment feels weird to me, for reasons that I haven’t quite explicated and don’t feel super relevant.)
It really wasn’t that big of a comment. But also, I think our core disagreement might be here under “phrased a bit rudely”. I think the criterion I’m using implicitly here is that, if the entire purpose of the statement is to insult someone, then it’s out. That sentence did not have any other purpose. It’s not just phrasing that comes a bit too harsh. It was equivalent to, “You’re an idiot”. This is far from the side of the spectrum that requires finicky social norms. I’m not asking that people make sure that no one could be offended by what they’re saying. I’m not even saying that people shouldn’t say true, useful negative things about others. If it’s important to figuring out AI alignment that we discuss how smart a particular person is, then so be it. That’s a far cry from statements whose only purpose is to insult.
I’d actually be curious to know where the line is for you. If someone literally said, “You’re an idiot”, would you call that too dickish? Or what if someone’s comment had insulting profanities?
It might be worth to make sure that the author of a deleted comment can still read it so they can repost it on their shortform or a similar place.
Authors of deleted comments receive the text of the comment in a PM
Commenting to note that I agree (though I would put the matter in much stronger terms).
(These are all quantitative factors. If Gwern’s overall comment had sucked more, or his sentence had been way more egregious, I’d have objected a lot less to Alex’s call. But it does matter where we put rough quantitative thresholds.)