I’m dubious that that constitutes abusing her power; AdvancedAtheist was highly and consistently downvoted for a long period of time before being banned.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important. The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important.
Yes, they are. They set the percedent for which other users get banned.
That’s a big problem. By the verbal standard that Nancy used for banning advancedatheist, I and lots of people here are in danger of being banned. I just argued on SSC that it could be preferable for a country to limit how many refugees it takes in when they are fleeing the Holocaust, thus leaving the remaining ones to die horribly (if the country has taken in as many refugees as it can accommodate, this becomes a case of torture versus dust specks).
Of course, that would extend to banning people for supporting standard torture versus dust specks too.
It’s an important part of rational discussion that we be able to say things that pattern-match to promoting horrible ideas.
There should be a difference between people who post the same controversial opinions over and over again like a broken record and people who write about a wide variety of topics and sometimes post controversial things, e.g. people like you. The latter should be allowed much more and they should not be banned even for the most extreme opinions, because they have a controversial idea because that’s where their reasoning led them to, and not because they simply want to promote their popular pet idea here.
The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
This. If I read the ban announcement legalistically, I disagree with it. But if I read the offending post, together with multiple users’ assurances that AA’s posts were basically all like that—I don’t want that in my garden.
I think there’s been enough time and enough posts that Nancy could have figured out that she misreported her reason and said so, if that was in fact the case.
I haven’t answered your objections to my style of moderation, but it isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can manage the sort of clear boundaries I think you prefer.
The good news is that I’m extremely unlikely to want to ban you. You have a civil approach, and part of what gets people banned is lowering the tone or if you prefer, being a pain in the ass.
The hard thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a good way to discuss the emotional effects of statements—the only way to evaluate emotional effects is by what people say those emotional effects are, and in addition to whether you trust what people say about their emotions, language is ambiguous that there are frequently alternate interpretations, especially when the underlying question is how much of a welcome people feel in a venue. It might be more efficient to say that claims about emotional effect are entangled with implied claims about who’s in charge and who matters.
The bad news is that I’m not at all sure I can formalize this, though my net gain in karma in this discussion suggests that I have an accurate sense of what LW is, even if it’s possible that LW could be improved with a more open attitude about abhorrent viewpoints. (I don’t think it would be an improvement, I’m just saying I acknowledge it’s theoretically possible.)
Just getting a clearer idea of what is abhorrent and what isn’t might help, but I really do think part of the problem is tone. There are policies which are vile no matter how abstractly and politely they’re expressed (for example, slavery on a grand scale), but the amount of hatred added to policy adds an emotional sting.
(EDIT: In case you don’t know, username2 is an anonymous account that anyone can use, created after some jerk changed the password to the Username account formerly used for that purpose.)
I’m well aware. It is therefore even more problematic if this account is abused—note that there have been multiple confirmations that username2 has been used to downvote the same people that VoiceOfRa was downvoting before; in addition, VoiceOfRa has used the username2 account to start arguments with NancyLebovitz in a way that makes it look like a 3rd party is disagreeing with the decision, rather than VoiceOfRa himself. At the very least, it is better if everyone is aware of this situation, and ideally we would come up with a way to prevent such abuse.
Seriously, does your definition of “abuse” cash out as “someone’s saying someone I disagree with”, because that’s certainly the one that best fits your usage?
Where the hell are you getting that from jsteinhardt’s comment? He’s not saying anything about the content of those comments, only on the fact that they might mislead an outside observer in thinking that more distinct people are taking part in a discussion than actually are.
I’m dubious that that constitutes abusing her power; AdvancedAtheist was highly and consistently downvoted for a long period of time before being banned.
That wasn’t the reason she gave for banning him.
If we’re doing the virtue ethical banning, then as long as we agree that the people in question deserved a ban, the specific reasons given for the ban aren’t very important. The moderator may be reacting to a pattern that’s clearly ban-worthy, but nonetheless hard to verbalize exactly, and thus misreport their real reason. Verbal reporting is hard.
It’s reasonable for people to know why someone is banned because they want to know what might get them banned.
Yes, they are. They set the percedent for which other users get banned.
That’s a big problem. By the verbal standard that Nancy used for banning advancedatheist, I and lots of people here are in danger of being banned. I just argued on SSC that it could be preferable for a country to limit how many refugees it takes in when they are fleeing the Holocaust, thus leaving the remaining ones to die horribly (if the country has taken in as many refugees as it can accommodate, this becomes a case of torture versus dust specks).
Of course, that would extend to banning people for supporting standard torture versus dust specks too.
It’s an important part of rational discussion that we be able to say things that pattern-match to promoting horrible ideas.
There should be a difference between people who post the same controversial opinions over and over again like a broken record and people who write about a wide variety of topics and sometimes post controversial things, e.g. people like you. The latter should be allowed much more and they should not be banned even for the most extreme opinions, because they have a controversial idea because that’s where their reasoning led them to, and not because they simply want to promote their popular pet idea here.
I think you misunderstand virtue-ethical banning. It’s not about what you say, it’s about who you are. “Precedents” are a deontological idea.
Yes, and in particular it matters which aspect of who you are is the one that got you banned?
This. If I read the ban announcement legalistically, I disagree with it. But if I read the offending post, together with multiple users’ assurances that AA’s posts were basically all like that—I don’t want that in my garden.
I think there’s been enough time and enough posts that Nancy could have figured out that she misreported her reason and said so, if that was in fact the case.
I haven’t answered your objections to my style of moderation, but it isn’t because I haven’t been thinking about them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can manage the sort of clear boundaries I think you prefer.
The good news is that I’m extremely unlikely to want to ban you. You have a civil approach, and part of what gets people banned is lowering the tone or if you prefer, being a pain in the ass.
The hard thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a good way to discuss the emotional effects of statements—the only way to evaluate emotional effects is by what people say those emotional effects are, and in addition to whether you trust what people say about their emotions, language is ambiguous that there are frequently alternate interpretations, especially when the underlying question is how much of a welcome people feel in a venue. It might be more efficient to say that claims about emotional effect are entangled with implied claims about who’s in charge and who matters.
The bad news is that I’m not at all sure I can formalize this, though my net gain in karma in this discussion suggests that I have an accurate sense of what LW is, even if it’s possible that LW could be improved with a more open attitude about abhorrent viewpoints. (I don’t think it would be an improvement, I’m just saying I acknowledge it’s theoretically possible.)
Just getting a clearer idea of what is abhorrent and what isn’t might help, but I really do think part of the problem is tone. There are policies which are vile no matter how abstractly and politely they’re expressed (for example, slavery on a grand scale), but the amount of hatred added to policy adds an emotional sting.
So basically what you’re saying is that your emotional unqualified to be a moderator.
BTW, you’re doing a remarkably good job of demonstrating advancedatheist’s claim that women can’t be trusted with positions of power.
I’m 85% sure that you’re VoiceOfRa.
So what?
(EDIT: In case you don’t know,
username2is an anonymous account that anyone can use, created after some jerk changed the password to theUsernameaccount formerly used for that purpose.)I’m well aware. It is therefore even more problematic if this account is abused—note that there have been multiple confirmations that username2 has been used to downvote the same people that VoiceOfRa was downvoting before; in addition, VoiceOfRa has used the username2 account to start arguments with NancyLebovitz in a way that makes it look like a 3rd party is disagreeing with the decision, rather than VoiceOfRa himself. At the very least, it is better if everyone is aware of this situation, and ideally we would come up with a way to prevent such abuse.
Seriously, does your definition of “abuse” cash out as “someone’s saying someone I disagree with”, because that’s certainly the one that best fits your usage?
Where the hell are you getting that from jsteinhardt’s comment? He’s not saying anything about the content of those comments, only on the fact that they might mislead an outside observer in thinking that more distinct people are taking part in a discussion than actually are.
The sudden very positive karma is extremely suspicious.
I was 85% sure at the time that username2′s comment was posted. I’m now 98% sure for a variety of reasons.
I’m only 75% sure that the upvotes on “username2”/VoiceOfRa’s comments above are from sockpuppets.