Did he admit his guilt, or his actions? From the outside, it sounds like the latter.
Although the wording does not explicitly mention downvoting, harassment by downvoting is still harassment.
Begging the question that mass downvoting amounts to harassment. Downvoting is downvoting. Votes can be positive or negative. Would he be similarly banned if he had karma bombed positive votes and it made people feel all warm and fuzzy?
Needless to say, it is not the place of individual users to unilaterally decide that someone else should be “weeded” out of the community.
I assumed it was everyone’s place to decide how to cast their votes. Think globally, act locally, yada yada. Ironically, he was acting in accordance with the widely held view that some people needed to be silenced to improve the atmosphere.
Several users have indicated that they have experienced considerable emotional anguish from the harassment
People told you he “made” them feel bad. I guess “Feel Bad” negative karma votes are ok. And get a lot of action from those with power too.
The fact that Eugine remained quiet about his guilt
He remained silent about how he voted, in line with the privacy configuration for votes, which has now been explicitly violated by those with the power entrusted to them. Bad precedent.
is indicative of him realizing that he was breaking prevailing social norms.
Really? Breaking social norms is now verboten in our community of polyamorous transhumans?
Seems to me he was simply acting in accordance with one prevailing norm (one that I disagree with), by violating another (that I agree with).
Eugine’s actions have worsened the atmosphere of this site
Other people were part of the causal chain of a “worsened atmosphere”. Assigning him as “the cause” is a judgment. Me, I’m not enthusiastic with the prevailing culture of “I’m upset, therefore you’re wrong.”
I asked the community for guidance on dealing with the issue.
And the pitchforks came out. Three years, 9000+ karma. Now, banned for life. The mob is fickle.
Funny thing is, I was equally unimpressed with all the signal to noise complaints. I’ve turned off filtering based on karma. I’d rather filter based on vote count than vote sum.
I find an atmosphere of bad feelings and social shunning rather tiresome all the way around. Buck up and don’t shun—that’s my preferred atmosphere, and that goes for Eugine and the concerns about signal to noise as much as those who would ban him now for hurt feelings.
All indications are his negative votes were for people being MoreWrong, in his opinion. Having people think you’re MoreWrong is unpleasant. I don’t think the ideal answer is to shut up those who share that opinion with you.
Instead of social shunning, would you perhaps prefer the situation where Eugine was allowed to single-handedly send away new users he personally didn’t like? Because that’s what we had here until now. (i.e. Kaj’s solution may not be perfect, but it’s a huge improvement.)
I consider mass-downvoting of new users to be much worse than mass-downvoting of old users. Old users usually (1) have enough karma to survive the attack, (2) understand what’s going on, even if they don’t know who exactly did it, and (3) if they complain, they are guaranteed to have our sympathies, and they know it. New users don’t have a clue; they may believe they are disliked by the whole community.
Imagine if Ander, instead of complaining publicly, just walked away. Should we feel less sorry for him than we feel for Eugine? Also, some other users may have had the same experience and just walked away silently; we wouldn’t know about this.
Eugine expressed that he found certain people MoreWrong. As far as I know, that’s it. Isn’t something of the point of this place, to distinguish LessWrong from MoreWrong? But not if some people feel uncomfortable thereby?
Instead of social shunning
But I was incorrect.
Eugine engaged in a very weak and cowardly shunning—anonymous karma bombing.
But he hasn’t really been shunned in turn, because people don’t seem to have the stomach for it. He’s been banished through technical means, and had his “anonymous” karma votes similarly exposed through technical means. Instead of shunning, power was used against him because people said they felt bad from being downvoted.
Is that the kind of list you’d like, people complain about their hurt feelings from someone else’s evaluation of them, and he’s banished?
Think you never “make” people feel bad?
If people wanted to shun him, and ignore with a public plonk, that would have been fine with me. Good, in fact. Call him out for being an ass, if you think he was one. Great. But instead, let’s not actually deal with the person, let’s just excommunicate him if we have the ear and sympathy of he who wields the kill switch.
Seems to me that there are some very different cultures here on the list.
We can cut each other some slack, or we can fight for control of that kill switch.
Imagine if Ander, instead of complaining publicly, just walked away.
The world is full of people who were never here in the first place. I don’t lose sleep over it.
And if some guy leaves because he can’t handle the thought of someone thinking him incorrect, I can live with that too, as I doubt that he has the right stuff to benefit much from this place, or benefit others here much in turn.
But note that I, softy that I am, wasn’t thereby telling him or anyone to get lost, I was trying to encourage him and others to get over their dismay at being thought wrong by others, which, IMO, would be good for them personally, and good for the function of the list generally.
But apparently that suggestion makes me a horrible person in the eyes of many. Fine. People have different values. Their values aren’t mine either.
Eugine was allowed to single-handedly send away new users he personally didn’t like
He had no power to send people away. People who left, chose to leave. The continued formulations of this episode which portray his targets as helpless victims lacking agency are dysfunctional. They act and chose too.
New users don’t have a clue; they may believe they are disliked by the whole community.
New users should have some clue on what to expect on the internet, including encountering jerks. And they should have some expectation at LessWrong that someone may express that they are MoreWrong.
But again, I’m a softy, and generally cut extra slack for newbies. I’ve already expressed that I disapprove of karma bombing. I disapprove of plenty in this thread as well. But I haven’t seen anything that would have me reaching for the kill switch.
Eugine expressed that he found certain people MoreWrong.
And the proper way to expose the fallacies in someone’s opinions is downvoting all their comments, both those that contain the fallacies, and those that don’t? Even including, if I remember correctly, meetup announcements?
And if perchance I disagree with Eugine’s opinion about a user X, the proper way to express my disagreement would be to upvote all their comments, both those smart and those not smart; because otherwise my vote has smaller value than Eugine’s? And then if we all adopt this norm, we will keep upvoting and downvoting comments according to the users’ popularity, regardless of the merits of specific comments? Why not simplify the whole system and upvote and downvote users directly? -- Do you have the same political opinion as I do? Upvoted. The opposite opinion? Downvoted. Certainly there is a lesson somewhere about how this would lead to increased rationality.
You know, in the political debates I often had a similar position like Eugine. But I didn’t mass-downvote my opponents, and as far as I know, none of them mass-downvoted me. Something like implicit cooperation in a prisonners’ dilemma. Which allowed the debates to be much more civilized than most of the internet. Which I enjoyed. I partially blame Eugine for destroying this possibility of having civilized political debates on LW. It’s hard to have a respectful debate, when one of participants is systematically downvoted regardless of whether they made a smart or stupid comment, whether they made a fallacy or exposed their opponent’s fallacy. How are people supposed to learn and change their minds in such a debate? Isn’t that one of the purposes of Less Wrong?
In the past I have explicitly objected against trying to bring new members based on their political opinion, to create a “balance”. But removing new members based on their political opinion, that’s even worse. At least the former contributes to the growth of the community, and there is a chance that those people might changed their opinions when exposed to intelligent arguments against. The latter just promotes one view; and if someone would update in the wrong direction, well, they might suddenly find their karma disappearing miraculously.
But he hasn’t really been shunned in turn, because people don’t seem to have the stomach for it. He’s been banished through technical means, and had his “anonymous” karma votes similarly exposed through technical means. Instead of shunning, power was used against him because people said they felt bad from being downvoted.
Which I believe is a great thing! Eugine’s actions did not start an arms race of mutual mass-downvoting. Not even on a website where many people have the ability to write a script for doing it, so such warfare wouldn’t cost them too much energy. (For example, I probably would be able to writte one. I have previously used Perl scripts to scrape content from some websites; maybe it would be relatively easy to customize them for LW. I didn’t try.)
Is that the kind of list you’d like, people complain about their hurt feelings from someone else’s evaluation of them, and he’s banished? Think you never “make” people feel bad?
Here you use too general terms. There are many ways to make people “feel bad”; but we are talking specifically about mass-downvoting here. People were making each other feel bad by posting comments the other side didn’t agree with, politically, pretty often. No one was ever banned for that.
Call him out for being an ass, if you think he was one. Great.
We had a few threads complaining about the mass-downvoting (although the identity of the downvoter wasn’t confirmed then), so it kinda happened.
Seems to me that there are some very different cultures here on the list. We can cut each other some slack, or we can fight for control of that kill switch.
Just to be sure how deep is the cultural difference: does mass-downvoting of new users belong to the “cut each other some slack” category? Should we aim for a balance of “I will mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on your side, and in turn you can mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on my side, and perhaps we can try destroying each other by downvoting scripts, but no one will call the moderator to intervene”?
And the proper way to expose the fallacies in someone’s opinions is downvoting all their comments, both those that contain the fallacies, and those that don’t?
No, that would communicate a more general evaluation on a person’s body of work.
the proper way to express my disagreement would be to upvote all their comments
Perhaps not all their comments, but have you never sought to right some karma wrong with compensatory votes of your own to bring more balance to the Force? I occasionally do.
according to the users’ popularity, regardless of the merits of specific comments?
I’ve never said karma vote according to popularity, Eugine didn’t, and your scenario didn’t either.
MoreWrong +1.
Why not simplify the whole system and upvote and downvote users directly?
Karma votes can certainly be interpreted that way, or voted that way. That’s apparently how Eugine was voting.
People were making each other feel bad by posting comments the other side didn’t agree with, politically, pretty often. No one was ever banned for that.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first. I think I’d be in the lead today, but I’m sure you’ll take the lead on other days.
I think Eugine is still on the list if his downvotes had been upvotes. The horrific consequence of his downvoting was “people felt bad and so stopped posting”. That can happen from any expressed opinion. Likely many of yours. And mine. And I believe some people had expressed that many opinions I believe you and I hold are simply beyond the pale and should not be “tolerated”.
“First they came for Eugine, and I thought he was a dick, so I did not speak out...”
Somebody I can’t recall ever having heard of thinks I “insulted” them—I’m guessing for my comment on dysfunction, though they weren’t specific. Let’s not talk about winning or losing anymore, what is functional and dysfunctional, because someone might feel insulted if the shoe fits.
It’s hard to have a respectful debate, when one of participants is systematically downvoted regardless of whether they made a smart or stupid comment, whether they made a fallacy or exposed their opponent’s fallacy.
No it’s not.
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. If you saw that happening, you could have rectified the horror of Karma −1 with your own vote. We’re talking about a single karma point here, per post, which needn’t have put someone in a tizzy in the first place.
Life isn’t so difficult, even when people disagree with you.
I will mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on your side,
Mischaracteriztion. He is reported to have said:
users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
No talk of “sides” here, just rationality.
MoreWrong +1
does mass-downvoting of new users belong to the “cut each other some slack” category?
MoreWrong +1. I’ve frequently said I’m opposed to mass downvoting.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first.
I don’t care about the conditional probability P( me gets banned for my opinions | someone gets banned for their opinion ) if the probability P( someone gets banned for their opinion ) is extremely low, which I believe it is. Actually, I don’t even believe the conditional probability is so high for me; though it could be a bit higher for you, but anyway...
I believe the probability of either of us getting banned on LW during the next five years, assuming we continue writing our comments more or less the same way we do now (which I intend to) and don’t participate in any activity such as mass-downvoting; and assuming that MIRI and CFAR will continue to exist and be connected with LW… is less than 2%.
And I believe some people had expressed that many opinions I believe you and I hold are simply beyond the pale and should not be “tolerated”.
I agree with you in this. I just believe those people don’t have enough power to enforce their threats here, and they are more likely to leave this web disappointed than remain here long enough to gain that power. Also, contrarianism works against them.
He is reported to have said:
users who he did not think displayed sufficient rationality.
No talk of “sides” here, just rationality.
My model of him says that he detected “insufficient rationality” when people disagreed with him politically. What you quoted is how it felt to him from inside. (I admit I cannot prove this.)
I just believe those people don’t have enough power to enforce their threats here,
Today. But it’s rather telling that the threats were made and discussed seriously.
You’re not from the US, right?
Things have been pretty wacky here in the last year, with numerous high profile cases of people losing their jobs/status/property for Thoughtcrime. I would have considered these highly unlikely just a year ago.
My model of him …
My prior would put that as fairly likely. Without going through the posts of the people involved, and I won’t, it’s hard to know. I have a vague “reasonable guy” tag in my head for him. Could be for similar reasons.
No, I’m not from US. But I read internet, so I am probably aware of some things.
it’s rather telling that the threats were made and discussed seriously.
And they achieved zero success. Because this is Sparta… ahem, Less Wrong.
And if they tried the same thing next time, there even wouldn’t be so much drama again, because we are already inoculated. “There are more nerd boys than nerd girls, therefore nerds are sexists!” Yeah, already heard it, not impressed.
numerous high profile cases of people losing their jobs/status/property for Thoughtcrime
This deserves a longer debate (and LW is probably not the right place to have it) about specific details. I would guess that in most of these cases, those people were thrown overboard by their colleagues, in an effort to protect money from government or wide public. Less Wrong does not take government money, and our public supporters are mostly contrarians by nature. In other words, we are not a university, and we cannot be destroyed by a Twitter campaign.
Most importantly, I don’t believe Eliezer would jump on a political correctness bandwagon. Also, there are already many “shocking” news about LW (basilisk, polyamory, etc.); it would be too late to try a PR coverup.
I would guess that in most of these cases, those people were thrown overboard by their colleagues, in an effort to protect money from government or wide public.
Yes. People cave. Much easier for everyone to throw someone to the mob than to fight. That’s the magic of people who mean it. Small groups of motivated people who mean it can easily cow larger groups who don’t want a fight.
Most importantly, I don’t believe Eliezer would jump on a political correctness bandwagon.
If he has meant at all what he has said about UFAI, he’ll turn over the keys of LessWrong to the Thought Police in a second if it further the efforts for FAI, for much the same reasons that everyone else caves.
I began to weigh those who followed me, balancing
them one against another, asking who I would risk, and who I would
sacrifice, to what end. It was strange how many fewer pieces I lost, once
I knew what they were worth.
Even a small, motivated group can destroy value. Everyone caves, unless they’re equally looney.
I have 12 500 or so Karma. That gives me around 50 000 downvotes. That’s enough to zero out tens if not hundreds of contributors, especially if I concentrated on newbies. I could literally zero them out—keep them at zero, whatever they posted (and prevent them from posting top level comments), and either break them or the Karma system. Then once they’d left, I could reverse all my downvotes, and apply them to someone else.
If I was that cruel, and willing to ignore people’s opinions, then shunning would have no effect on me, nor would it reduce my power to cause destruction. At some point, something other that social means would be needed to stop me.
Exactly. “At some point.” We were a good ways away from the hypothetical you described. Social response should be commensurate with the social problem.
The example given is some guy who lost like 40 points? Let’s say that was the scale of the issue for a dozen people. This is a trivial problem for any individual, save for their propensity to curl up in a fetal position when someone on the internet expresses through those 40 points that he thinks their posts aren’t up to snuff.
I think I’ve lost more karma responding to this nonsense, and spent much time responding as well, because I find the response a little out of proportion, a little unfair, and worst of all, an empowering of the “you hurt my feelings, shut up” principle.
The social problem he was responding to was a perceived worsening of the signal to noise ratio, and a sizable chunk of the list seemed to share that opinion, and share that karma feedback was an appropriate response for the desired end state of shutting some people up, though I think that individual karma bombing has limited support.
I believe the solution I had suggested was for the moderators to contact the karma bomber and tell him “hey, you’re causing a problem, can you knock it off?”
That might have ended it without further escalation, and we could have all go on our merry way.
I don’t know the details of the discussion between Kaj and Eugine. Maybe that was it.
Solution if he won’t knock it off?
I’m torn. Which is the bigger problem—people taking action to protect their tender ears from the “noise” of posts they don’t like, or people taking action to protect their tender feelings from being hurt when someone expresses disapproval? Both are quite disruptive and tiresome, IMO.
First, there should be pretty easy technical countermeasures that would limit the power of any karma bombing campaign. Limiting all votes to your karma limit would be a nice start, particularly compelling to the signal to noise enthusiasts.
Second, often these “I’ve been karma bombed” threads provoke a karma telethon, where the target gets karma back and “validation” from interested parties. User affirmed, gets karma back, and widespread condemnation of karma bombing educates users on the problem of karma bombing and the general disapproval of it. Probably a necessary price to pay periodically.
Third, if the list wants to make an explicit policy against karma bombing, fine, let them do it, but applying it retroactively is bad form, IMO. The policy could be made after a thread inviting opinions on the policy, where people could discuss the general issue of policy somewhat divorced from their interest in a particular instance. This is a price I’d hope we could have avoided.
Fourth—I think there is widespread disapproval of karma bombing, even from the signal to noise purifiers. If the behavior continues in the face of explicit policy, then you can kick him off while mitigating any backlash and mollifying people with more concern for due process.
You make some valid points. And possibly I’d have done things differently, were I a moderator. Possibly.
But this kind of phrasing isn’t helpful:
people taking action to protect their tender ears from the “noise” of posts they don’t like, or people taking action to protect their tender feelings from being hurt when someone expresses disapproval?
Either the overall Karma system does its job (by using feelings, or reputation, or whatever), or it doesn’t. It doesn’t, no one would care. Clearly, they do care, so it is doing some of its job. Yay!
Eugine exploited a technical and social loophole, and threatened to destroy the whole system. Hyperbole? Do you really want to see competitive karma bombing, rushing to nuke your opponent’s score before they can do it to you? Reducing this level of misbehaviour to “feelings were hurt” is entirely misleading. Eugine cheated (exploited what was self evidently a difficult to close loophole), people got angry at being cheated (a useful evolutionary response) and the cheating could have irreparably damaged the website.
Then again, I think a lot of other people’s phrasing isn’t helpful. I think many of their ideas are positively harmful. But in any group, I don’t always expect to get my way.
It’s funny that all the people bemoaning his karma bombing of others where he perceives their irrationality, have little compunction about karma bombing my posts here so that I have to spend karma to not be rude and leave people hanging who took the time and effort to respond to me.
I’ve made arguments all the way through here. Anyone here saying I’m simply irrational? Not making any points? Can’t put an argument together?
Not that I’ve seen. It’s all tone. It’s all about hurt feelings. It’s all about having different values. If I were karma voting on those terms, I’d get carpal tunnel syndrome in a week. Click click click click click.
Look upthread at my −6, followed by your 100% +9. So, in your estimate, is that an accurate evaluation of our comparative rationality in those two posts? I was abysmally irrational, and you’re pristinely rational and insightful?
Looking at the pattern of votes, I think it’s unlikely that even the majority of my downvotes came from people who actually read each of my posts. A lot of people are just signaling disapproval. Like Eugine was doing.
Eugine is at least downvoting people on his perception of their rationality quotient.
Who’s really cheating here?
But is there anyone sharpening the tines of their pitchforks for these new cheaters? Strange how the pitchforks magically align to ideological north, instead of cheating north.
Reducing this level of misbehaviour to “feelings were hurt” is entirely misleading.
Hurt feelings are the crux of the matter. The “cheating” business is a minor transgression serving as rationalization for the picthforks, and as we’ve seen, a rationalization hardly consistently applied.
Turn all of Eugine’s downvotes to upvotes. Still “cheating”. Should provoke the same outrage, if the outrage was really about cheating. Do you maintain upvotes would have provoked the same outrage?
I think, people would have disapproved a little, but there would have nowhere near the level of stink about it, and he would not have been banned.
Hyperbole?
Yep. He was a minor annoyance that people blew up into major drama that was much more destructive.
Meanwhile, he was also a poster with 9000 karma. Seems like he was producing a good deal of value for some people. Not anymore.
As to what I’d really want—to be God Emperor, of course, but the Universe shows no sign of obliging any time soon. So I’m putting those plans on hold for the near future, and likewise don’t expect a list with a lot of people with very different values and preferences than mine to conform themselves to what I really want. Or even kind of want.
And that’s the difference. Live and let live. Even with assholes, who largely are just people with different values. I thought Eugine was being a dick, but . The world is an imperfect place. Other people are being karma dicks here, but . I’d rather we kept our powder dry for things that really mattered.
I do see a problem with that strategy, but I don’t know that you’re going to like the solution. Basically, people who give others slack are great when they get together. They have a nice buffer from real conflict. Throw in a few random slack takers, and they’re annoying, but the preponderance of slackers can easily mitigate the damage and dissuade the assholes through numbers, if not intensity.
But when with enough slack takers, and particularly those pulling in the same direction, slack givers are just giving out more and more slack until the slack takers hang them with it. A few random slack takers like Eugine aren’t a problem, but a large contingent of slack takers pulling in the same direction are. Against them, slack givers may have to hold the line on slack.
Again, not what I really want, but maybe what I should be doing.
He had no power to send people away. People who left, chose to leave. The continued formulations of this episode which portray his targets as helpless victims lacking agency are dysfunctional. They act and chose too.
And if some guy leaves because he can’t handle the thought of someone thinking him incorrect, I can live with that too, as I doubt that he has the right stuff to benefit much from this place, or benefit others here much in turn.
But note that I, softy that I am, wasn’t thereby telling him or anyone to get lost, I was trying to encourage him and others to get over their dismay at being thought wrong by others, which, IMO, would be good for them personally, and good for the function of the list generally.
You do realize that karma is more than just a feel-good point system, right? If your karma is low enough, it materially hinders your ability to participate on this site. You can’t make discussion posts, or top-level comments, and you have a limited ability to reply to comments. All of this actively discourages low-karma users from participating, not just by making them feel bad, but by actually making participation a hassle.
So a newbie who has been karma-bombed may not be leaving simply because he can’t handle the heat; he may be leaving because, with the ability to meaningfully accrue karma denied to him, he faces numerous annoying technical obstacles to participation (and certain modes of participation are effectively closed off to him).
It’s extra important to police the social norms of a community that’s about breaking the prevailing social norms, if you want to have a community at all. The norms you police are the borders of your community.
Begging the question that mass downvoting amounts to harassment.
He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.
Eugine would have had the possibility to respond to Kaj with an apology and a promise to not engage in this activity again in the future. From Kaj summary it looks like he didn’t. While I would have prefered a solution where he could have stayed, I think strong moderation is valuable and I therefore support Kaj’s decision.
He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.
It’s good for the forum to drive some people out. The question is in correctness of particular decisions about driving people out and in acceptability of means of doing so. Applying the concept of harassment is misleading (noncentral), as it suggests incorrect conclusions (e.g. driving people out is undesirable in general), even if some of the other conclusions happen to be correct (e.g. disapproval of Eugine’s behavior).
(One currently accepted method of deciding to drive a user out is to see if most of their comments are significantly downvoted by many users, and if they keep posting similar stuff regardless. If that’s the case, their comments start getting deleted, which is a means of driving them out or motivating them to reduce active participation.)
That is likely to be true, but I’d argue that it’s not good for the forum if a single self-selected mostly-anonymous person is the only one deciding who gets driven out.
‘Single’ implies that consensus among the community is not required; ‘self-selected’ implies that anyone with an end goal different to that of the site can attempt to force their goal on the community; mostly-anonymous implies a lack of accountability for their decisions. These are all red flags.
He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.
Some people describe that as improving the signal to noise ratio. A good many, I believe.
Eugine would have had the possibility to respond to Kaj with an apology
Likely he’s the hero of his own story, and believes he has nothing to apologize for. Never had that lesson in losing against those with power over you.
What a weird system, that he is banned but can still vote.
But maybe someone else took up his sword?
(And no, it wouldn’t be me.)
But back to the issue of his guilt, per the OP, he was confronted and gave his reason. Sounds like he meant it in the first place, and considered it a public service.
Unfortunately, it looks like while a ban prevents posting, it does not actually block a user from casting votes. I have asked jackk to look into the matter and find a way to actually stop the downvoting. Jack indicated earlier on that it would be technically straightforward to apply a negative karma modifier to Eugine’s account, and wiping out Eugine’s karma balance would prevent him from casting future downvotes. Whatever the easiest solution is, it will be applied as soon as possible.
Votes can be positive or negative. Would he be similarly banned if he had karma bombed positive votes and it made people feel all warm and fuzzy?
Karmacampaigning is an interesting case—it doesn’t seem likely to cause damage in the same way that karmabombing does.
Sometimes I’ll find my karma going up, and it’s hard to find out which comment or post is attracting karma. A karma dif option (probably with a time frame) would be nice, but I don’t know how hard it would be to add.
Kaj’s political views likely played a part in how he saw this, as would anyone’s, but I don’t get the sense of “I’m gonna stick it to the other team” from Kaj here.
EDIT:
BUT, I think political views likely played a part in the more general reaction, and thereby the resulting punishment.
Personally, I’m glad Eugine is gone, because even without the downvoting he was an asshole. And having anti-feminist or biorealist assholes running around is a great way to drive off women and minorities.
differences between eugine’s and kaj’s political views
That’s something that irked me as well: I would have preferred the ban to be performed by somebody other than a self-identified feminist.
OTOH, I have seen no evidence that Kaj’s political views had anything to do with his decision (I just have a sizeable prior for it because he’s human), and I can’t even recall him ever talking about politics on LW off the top of my head (I only know about his political views from his comments on Slate Star Codex, and the idea of holding people accountable for things they’ve said in a different venue, well..., it reminds me of something.)
Did he admit his guilt, or his actions? From the outside, it sounds like the latter.
Begging the question that mass downvoting amounts to harassment. Downvoting is downvoting. Votes can be positive or negative. Would he be similarly banned if he had karma bombed positive votes and it made people feel all warm and fuzzy?
I assumed it was everyone’s place to decide how to cast their votes. Think globally, act locally, yada yada. Ironically, he was acting in accordance with the widely held view that some people needed to be silenced to improve the atmosphere.
People told you he “made” them feel bad. I guess “Feel Bad” negative karma votes are ok. And get a lot of action from those with power too.
He remained silent about how he voted, in line with the privacy configuration for votes, which has now been explicitly violated by those with the power entrusted to them. Bad precedent.
Really? Breaking social norms is now verboten in our community of polyamorous transhumans?
Seems to me he was simply acting in accordance with one prevailing norm (one that I disagree with), by violating another (that I agree with).
Other people were part of the causal chain of a “worsened atmosphere”. Assigning him as “the cause” is a judgment. Me, I’m not enthusiastic with the prevailing culture of “I’m upset, therefore you’re wrong.”
And the pitchforks came out. Three years, 9000+ karma. Now, banned for life. The mob is fickle.
Funny thing is, I was equally unimpressed with all the signal to noise complaints. I’ve turned off filtering based on karma. I’d rather filter based on vote count than vote sum.
I find an atmosphere of bad feelings and social shunning rather tiresome all the way around. Buck up and don’t shun—that’s my preferred atmosphere, and that goes for Eugine and the concerns about signal to noise as much as those who would ban him now for hurt feelings.
All indications are his negative votes were for people being MoreWrong, in his opinion. Having people think you’re MoreWrong is unpleasant. I don’t think the ideal answer is to shut up those who share that opinion with you.
Instead of social shunning, would you perhaps prefer the situation where Eugine was allowed to single-handedly send away new users he personally didn’t like? Because that’s what we had here until now. (i.e. Kaj’s solution may not be perfect, but it’s a huge improvement.)
I consider mass-downvoting of new users to be much worse than mass-downvoting of old users. Old users usually (1) have enough karma to survive the attack, (2) understand what’s going on, even if they don’t know who exactly did it, and (3) if they complain, they are guaranteed to have our sympathies, and they know it. New users don’t have a clue; they may believe they are disliked by the whole community.
Imagine if Ander, instead of complaining publicly, just walked away. Should we feel less sorry for him than we feel for Eugine? Also, some other users may have had the same experience and just walked away silently; we wouldn’t know about this.
Eugine expressed that he found certain people MoreWrong. As far as I know, that’s it. Isn’t something of the point of this place, to distinguish LessWrong from MoreWrong? But not if some people feel uncomfortable thereby?
But I was incorrect.
Eugine engaged in a very weak and cowardly shunning—anonymous karma bombing.
But he hasn’t really been shunned in turn, because people don’t seem to have the stomach for it. He’s been banished through technical means, and had his “anonymous” karma votes similarly exposed through technical means. Instead of shunning, power was used against him because people said they felt bad from being downvoted.
Is that the kind of list you’d like, people complain about their hurt feelings from someone else’s evaluation of them, and he’s banished?
Think you never “make” people feel bad?
If people wanted to shun him, and ignore with a public plonk, that would have been fine with me. Good, in fact. Call him out for being an ass, if you think he was one. Great. But instead, let’s not actually deal with the person, let’s just excommunicate him if we have the ear and sympathy of he who wields the kill switch.
Seems to me that there are some very different cultures here on the list.
We can cut each other some slack, or we can fight for control of that kill switch.
The world is full of people who were never here in the first place. I don’t lose sleep over it.
And if some guy leaves because he can’t handle the thought of someone thinking him incorrect, I can live with that too, as I doubt that he has the right stuff to benefit much from this place, or benefit others here much in turn.
But note that I, softy that I am, wasn’t thereby telling him or anyone to get lost, I was trying to encourage him and others to get over their dismay at being thought wrong by others, which, IMO, would be good for them personally, and good for the function of the list generally.
But apparently that suggestion makes me a horrible person in the eyes of many. Fine. People have different values. Their values aren’t mine either.
He had no power to send people away. People who left, chose to leave. The continued formulations of this episode which portray his targets as helpless victims lacking agency are dysfunctional. They act and chose too.
New users should have some clue on what to expect on the internet, including encountering jerks. And they should have some expectation at LessWrong that someone may express that they are MoreWrong.
But again, I’m a softy, and generally cut extra slack for newbies. I’ve already expressed that I disapprove of karma bombing. I disapprove of plenty in this thread as well. But I haven’t seen anything that would have me reaching for the kill switch.
And the proper way to expose the fallacies in someone’s opinions is downvoting all their comments, both those that contain the fallacies, and those that don’t? Even including, if I remember correctly, meetup announcements?
And if perchance I disagree with Eugine’s opinion about a user X, the proper way to express my disagreement would be to upvote all their comments, both those smart and those not smart; because otherwise my vote has smaller value than Eugine’s? And then if we all adopt this norm, we will keep upvoting and downvoting comments according to the users’ popularity, regardless of the merits of specific comments? Why not simplify the whole system and upvote and downvote users directly? -- Do you have the same political opinion as I do? Upvoted. The opposite opinion? Downvoted. Certainly there is a lesson somewhere about how this would lead to increased rationality.
You know, in the political debates I often had a similar position like Eugine. But I didn’t mass-downvote my opponents, and as far as I know, none of them mass-downvoted me. Something like implicit cooperation in a prisonners’ dilemma. Which allowed the debates to be much more civilized than most of the internet. Which I enjoyed. I partially blame Eugine for destroying this possibility of having civilized political debates on LW. It’s hard to have a respectful debate, when one of participants is systematically downvoted regardless of whether they made a smart or stupid comment, whether they made a fallacy or exposed their opponent’s fallacy. How are people supposed to learn and change their minds in such a debate? Isn’t that one of the purposes of Less Wrong?
In the past I have explicitly objected against trying to bring new members based on their political opinion, to create a “balance”. But removing new members based on their political opinion, that’s even worse. At least the former contributes to the growth of the community, and there is a chance that those people might changed their opinions when exposed to intelligent arguments against. The latter just promotes one view; and if someone would update in the wrong direction, well, they might suddenly find their karma disappearing miraculously.
Which I believe is a great thing! Eugine’s actions did not start an arms race of mutual mass-downvoting. Not even on a website where many people have the ability to write a script for doing it, so such warfare wouldn’t cost them too much energy. (For example, I probably would be able to writte one. I have previously used Perl scripts to scrape content from some websites; maybe it would be relatively easy to customize them for LW. I didn’t try.)
Here you use too general terms. There are many ways to make people “feel bad”; but we are talking specifically about mass-downvoting here. People were making each other feel bad by posting comments the other side didn’t agree with, politically, pretty often. No one was ever banned for that.
We had a few threads complaining about the mass-downvoting (although the identity of the downvoter wasn’t confirmed then), so it kinda happened.
Just to be sure how deep is the cultural difference: does mass-downvoting of new users belong to the “cut each other some slack” category? Should we aim for a balance of “I will mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on your side, and in turn you can mass-downvote the new users who seem to be on my side, and perhaps we can try destroying each other by downvoting scripts, but no one will call the moderator to intervene”?
No, that would communicate a more general evaluation on a person’s body of work.
Perhaps not all their comments, but have you never sought to right some karma wrong with compensatory votes of your own to bring more balance to the Force? I occasionally do.
I’ve never said karma vote according to popularity, Eugine didn’t, and your scenario didn’t either.
MoreWrong +1.
Karma votes can certainly be interpreted that way, or voted that way. That’s apparently how Eugine was voting.
Not yet that I am aware. But you (or I) would certainly be in the running to be the first. I think I’d be in the lead today, but I’m sure you’ll take the lead on other days.
I think Eugine is still on the list if his downvotes had been upvotes. The horrific consequence of his downvoting was “people felt bad and so stopped posting”. That can happen from any expressed opinion. Likely many of yours. And mine. And I believe some people had expressed that many opinions I believe you and I hold are simply beyond the pale and should not be “tolerated”.
“First they came for Eugine, and I thought he was a dick, so I did not speak out...”
Somebody I can’t recall ever having heard of thinks I “insulted” them—I’m guessing for my comment on dysfunction, though they weren’t specific. Let’s not talk about winning or losing anymore, what is functional and dysfunctional, because someone might feel insulted if the shoe fits.
No it’s not.
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. If you saw that happening, you could have rectified the horror of Karma −1 with your own vote. We’re talking about a single karma point here, per post, which needn’t have put someone in a tizzy in the first place.
Life isn’t so difficult, even when people disagree with you.
Mischaracteriztion. He is reported to have said:
No talk of “sides” here, just rationality.
MoreWrong +1
MoreWrong +1. I’ve frequently said I’m opposed to mass downvoting.
I don’t care about the conditional probability P( me gets banned for my opinions | someone gets banned for their opinion ) if the probability P( someone gets banned for their opinion ) is extremely low, which I believe it is. Actually, I don’t even believe the conditional probability is so high for me; though it could be a bit higher for you, but anyway...
I believe the probability of either of us getting banned on LW during the next five years, assuming we continue writing our comments more or less the same way we do now (which I intend to) and don’t participate in any activity such as mass-downvoting; and assuming that MIRI and CFAR will continue to exist and be connected with LW… is less than 2%.
I agree with you in this. I just believe those people don’t have enough power to enforce their threats here, and they are more likely to leave this web disappointed than remain here long enough to gain that power. Also, contrarianism works against them.
My model of him says that he detected “insufficient rationality” when people disagreed with him politically. What you quoted is how it felt to him from inside. (I admit I cannot prove this.)
Today. But it’s rather telling that the threats were made and discussed seriously.
You’re not from the US, right?
Things have been pretty wacky here in the last year, with numerous high profile cases of people losing their jobs/status/property for Thoughtcrime. I would have considered these highly unlikely just a year ago.
My prior would put that as fairly likely. Without going through the posts of the people involved, and I won’t, it’s hard to know. I have a vague “reasonable guy” tag in my head for him. Could be for similar reasons.
No, I’m not from US. But I read internet, so I am probably aware of some things.
And they achieved zero success. Because this is Sparta… ahem, Less Wrong.
And if they tried the same thing next time, there even wouldn’t be so much drama again, because we are already inoculated. “There are more nerd boys than nerd girls, therefore nerds are sexists!” Yeah, already heard it, not impressed.
This deserves a longer debate (and LW is probably not the right place to have it) about specific details. I would guess that in most of these cases, those people were thrown overboard by their colleagues, in an effort to protect money from government or wide public. Less Wrong does not take government money, and our public supporters are mostly contrarians by nature. In other words, we are not a university, and we cannot be destroyed by a Twitter campaign.
Most importantly, I don’t believe Eliezer would jump on a political correctness bandwagon. Also, there are already many “shocking” news about LW (basilisk, polyamory, etc.); it would be too late to try a PR coverup.
Well...
(I agree with the rest of your comment.)
I think many would not characterize that action as jumping on the political correctness bandwagon.
Yes. People cave. Much easier for everyone to throw someone to the mob than to fight. That’s the magic of people who mean it. Small groups of motivated people who mean it can easily cow larger groups who don’t want a fight.
If he has meant at all what he has said about UFAI, he’ll turn over the keys of LessWrong to the Thought Police in a second if it further the efforts for FAI, for much the same reasons that everyone else caves.
Even a small, motivated group can destroy value. Everyone caves, unless they’re equally looney.
I see your points, but...
But what if shunning didn’t work?
I have 12 500 or so Karma. That gives me around 50 000 downvotes. That’s enough to zero out tens if not hundreds of contributors, especially if I concentrated on newbies. I could literally zero them out—keep them at zero, whatever they posted (and prevent them from posting top level comments), and either break them or the Karma system. Then once they’d left, I could reverse all my downvotes, and apply them to someone else.
If I was that cruel, and willing to ignore people’s opinions, then shunning would have no effect on me, nor would it reduce my power to cause destruction. At some point, something other that social means would be needed to stop me.
Thank you for listening to them.
Exactly. “At some point.” We were a good ways away from the hypothetical you described. Social response should be commensurate with the social problem.
The example given is some guy who lost like 40 points? Let’s say that was the scale of the issue for a dozen people. This is a trivial problem for any individual, save for their propensity to curl up in a fetal position when someone on the internet expresses through those 40 points that he thinks their posts aren’t up to snuff.
I think I’ve lost more karma responding to this nonsense, and spent much time responding as well, because I find the response a little out of proportion, a little unfair, and worst of all, an empowering of the “you hurt my feelings, shut up” principle.
The social problem he was responding to was a perceived worsening of the signal to noise ratio, and a sizable chunk of the list seemed to share that opinion, and share that karma feedback was an appropriate response for the desired end state of shutting some people up, though I think that individual karma bombing has limited support.
I believe the solution I had suggested was for the moderators to contact the karma bomber and tell him “hey, you’re causing a problem, can you knock it off?”
That might have ended it without further escalation, and we could have all go on our merry way.
I don’t know the details of the discussion between Kaj and Eugine. Maybe that was it.
Solution if he won’t knock it off?
I’m torn. Which is the bigger problem—people taking action to protect their tender ears from the “noise” of posts they don’t like, or people taking action to protect their tender feelings from being hurt when someone expresses disapproval? Both are quite disruptive and tiresome, IMO.
First, there should be pretty easy technical countermeasures that would limit the power of any karma bombing campaign. Limiting all votes to your karma limit would be a nice start, particularly compelling to the signal to noise enthusiasts.
Second, often these “I’ve been karma bombed” threads provoke a karma telethon, where the target gets karma back and “validation” from interested parties. User affirmed, gets karma back, and widespread condemnation of karma bombing educates users on the problem of karma bombing and the general disapproval of it. Probably a necessary price to pay periodically.
Third, if the list wants to make an explicit policy against karma bombing, fine, let them do it, but applying it retroactively is bad form, IMO. The policy could be made after a thread inviting opinions on the policy, where people could discuss the general issue of policy somewhat divorced from their interest in a particular instance. This is a price I’d hope we could have avoided.
Fourth—I think there is widespread disapproval of karma bombing, even from the signal to noise purifiers. If the behavior continues in the face of explicit policy, then you can kick him off while mitigating any backlash and mollifying people with more concern for due process.
You make some valid points. And possibly I’d have done things differently, were I a moderator. Possibly.
But this kind of phrasing isn’t helpful:
Either the overall Karma system does its job (by using feelings, or reputation, or whatever), or it doesn’t. It doesn’t, no one would care. Clearly, they do care, so it is doing some of its job. Yay!
Eugine exploited a technical and social loophole, and threatened to destroy the whole system. Hyperbole? Do you really want to see competitive karma bombing, rushing to nuke your opponent’s score before they can do it to you? Reducing this level of misbehaviour to “feelings were hurt” is entirely misleading. Eugine cheated (exploited what was self evidently a difficult to close loophole), people got angry at being cheated (a useful evolutionary response) and the cheating could have irreparably damaged the website.
Yeah, I get that a lot.
Then again, I think a lot of other people’s phrasing isn’t helpful. I think many of their ideas are positively harmful. But in any group, I don’t always expect to get my way.
It’s funny that all the people bemoaning his karma bombing of others where he perceives their irrationality, have little compunction about karma bombing my posts here so that I have to spend karma to not be rude and leave people hanging who took the time and effort to respond to me.
I’ve made arguments all the way through here. Anyone here saying I’m simply irrational? Not making any points? Can’t put an argument together?
Not that I’ve seen. It’s all tone. It’s all about hurt feelings. It’s all about having different values. If I were karma voting on those terms, I’d get carpal tunnel syndrome in a week. Click click click click click.
Look upthread at my −6, followed by your 100% +9. So, in your estimate, is that an accurate evaluation of our comparative rationality in those two posts? I was abysmally irrational, and you’re pristinely rational and insightful?
Looking at the pattern of votes, I think it’s unlikely that even the majority of my downvotes came from people who actually read each of my posts. A lot of people are just signaling disapproval. Like Eugine was doing.
Eugine is at least downvoting people on his perception of their rationality quotient.
Who’s really cheating here?
But is there anyone sharpening the tines of their pitchforks for these new cheaters? Strange how the pitchforks magically align to ideological north, instead of cheating north.
Hurt feelings are the crux of the matter. The “cheating” business is a minor transgression serving as rationalization for the picthforks, and as we’ve seen, a rationalization hardly consistently applied.
Turn all of Eugine’s downvotes to upvotes. Still “cheating”. Should provoke the same outrage, if the outrage was really about cheating. Do you maintain upvotes would have provoked the same outrage?
I think, people would have disapproved a little, but there would have nowhere near the level of stink about it, and he would not have been banned.
Yep. He was a minor annoyance that people blew up into major drama that was much more destructive.
Meanwhile, he was also a poster with 9000 karma. Seems like he was producing a good deal of value for some people. Not anymore.
As to what I’d really want—to be God Emperor, of course, but the Universe shows no sign of obliging any time soon. So I’m putting those plans on hold for the near future, and likewise don’t expect a list with a lot of people with very different values and preferences than mine to conform themselves to what I really want. Or even kind of want.
And that’s the difference. Live and let live. Even with assholes, who largely are just people with different values. I thought Eugine was being a dick, but . The world is an imperfect place. Other people are being karma dicks here, but . I’d rather we kept our powder dry for things that really mattered.
I do see a problem with that strategy, but I don’t know that you’re going to like the solution. Basically, people who give others slack are great when they get together. They have a nice buffer from real conflict. Throw in a few random slack takers, and they’re annoying, but the preponderance of slackers can easily mitigate the damage and dissuade the assholes through numbers, if not intensity.
But when with enough slack takers, and particularly those pulling in the same direction, slack givers are just giving out more and more slack until the slack takers hang them with it. A few random slack takers like Eugine aren’t a problem, but a large contingent of slack takers pulling in the same direction are. Against them, slack givers may have to hold the line on slack.
Again, not what I really want, but maybe what I should be doing.
Karma is supposed to influence behaviour.
You do realize that karma is more than just a feel-good point system, right? If your karma is low enough, it materially hinders your ability to participate on this site. You can’t make discussion posts, or top-level comments, and you have a limited ability to reply to comments. All of this actively discourages low-karma users from participating, not just by making them feel bad, but by actually making participation a hassle.
So a newbie who has been karma-bombed may not be leaving simply because he can’t handle the heat; he may be leaving because, with the ability to meaningfully accrue karma denied to him, he faces numerous annoying technical obstacles to participation (and certain modes of participation are effectively closed off to him).
Yes.
True, but that was how it was expressed (not exactly in those terms, of course).
It’s extra important to police the social norms of a community that’s about breaking the prevailing social norms, if you want to have a community at all. The norms you police are the borders of your community.
He did it with the intention of driving away people from the community. Doing things with the intention of weeding out people is well described as harassment.
Eugine would have had the possibility to respond to Kaj with an apology and a promise to not engage in this activity again in the future. From Kaj summary it looks like he didn’t. While I would have prefered a solution where he could have stayed, I think strong moderation is valuable and I therefore support Kaj’s decision.
It’s good for the forum to drive some people out. The question is in correctness of particular decisions about driving people out and in acceptability of means of doing so. Applying the concept of harassment is misleading (noncentral), as it suggests incorrect conclusions (e.g. driving people out is undesirable in general), even if some of the other conclusions happen to be correct (e.g. disapproval of Eugine’s behavior).
(One currently accepted method of deciding to drive a user out is to see if most of their comments are significantly downvoted by many users, and if they keep posting similar stuff regardless. If that’s the case, their comments start getting deleted, which is a means of driving them out or motivating them to reduce active participation.)
That is likely to be true, but I’d argue that it’s not good for the forum if a single self-selected mostly-anonymous person is the only one deciding who gets driven out.
‘Single’ implies that consensus among the community is not required; ‘self-selected’ implies that anyone with an end goal different to that of the site can attempt to force their goal on the community; mostly-anonymous implies a lack of accountability for their decisions. These are all red flags.
Yeah, I believe even the signal to noise crowd is generally opposed to individual karma bombing.
Some people describe that as improving the signal to noise ratio. A good many, I believe.
Likely he’s the hero of his own story, and believes he has nothing to apologize for. Never had that lesson in losing against those with power over you.
Given that the downvoting continues unabated (just got a couple of dozen drop), he clearly does not think he did anything wrong.
What a weird system, that he is banned but can still vote.
But maybe someone else took up his sword?
(And no, it wouldn’t be me.)
But back to the issue of his guilt, per the OP, he was confronted and gave his reason. Sounds like he meant it in the first place, and considered it a public service.
From OP:
Karmacampaigning is an interesting case—it doesn’t seem likely to cause damage in the same way that karmabombing does.
Sometimes I’ll find my karma going up, and it’s hard to find out which comment or post is attracting karma. A karma dif option (probably with a time frame) would be nice, but I don’t know how hard it would be to add.
I’d like that too.
Perhaps differences between eugine’s and kaj’s political views caused a harsher punishment.
Kaj’s political views likely played a part in how he saw this, as would anyone’s, but I don’t get the sense of “I’m gonna stick it to the other team” from Kaj here.
EDIT: BUT, I think political views likely played a part in the more general reaction, and thereby the resulting punishment.
EDIT2: see http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfq/moderator_action_eugine_nier_is_now_banned_for/b2gp
That’s something that irked me as well: I would have preferred the ban to be performed by somebody other than a self-identified feminist.
OTOH, I have seen no evidence that Kaj’s political views had anything to do with his decision (I just have a sizeable prior for it because he’s human), and I can’t even recall him ever talking about politics on LW off the top of my head (I only know about his political views from his comments on Slate Star Codex, and the idea of holding people accountable for things they’ve said in a different venue, well..., it reminds me of something.)
Then why didn’t you speak up when Kaj asked the community how to deal with the issue?
I wasn’t watching the issue that closely back then.