I welcome the transparency, but this “I don’t want others to update on this as being much evidence about whether it makes sense to have curi in their communities” seems a bit weird to me. “a propensity for long unproductive discussions, a history of threats against people who engage with him” and “I assign too high of a probability that old patterns will repeat themselves” seem like quite a judgement and why would someone else not update on this? Additionally, I think that while a ban is sometimes necessary (e.g. harassment), a 2-year ban seems like quite a jump. I could think of a number of different sanctions, e.g. blocking someone from commenting in general; giving users the option to block someone from commenting; blocking someone from writing anything; limiting someone’s authority to her own shortform; all of these things for some time.
“I don’t want others to update on this as being much evidence about whether it makes sense to have curi in their communities” seems a bit weird to me. “a propensity for long unproductive discussions, a history of threats against people who engage with him” and “I assign too high of a probability that old patterns will repeat themselves” seem like quite a judgement and why would someone else not update on this?
The key thing I wanted to communicate is that it seems quite plausible to me that these patterns are the result of curi interfacing specifically with the LessWrong culture in unhealthy ways. I can imagine him interfacing with other cultures with much less bad results.
I also said “I don’t want others to think this is much evidence”, not “this is no evidence”. Of course it is some evidence, but I think overall I would expect people to update a bit too much on this, and as I said, I wouldn’t be very surprised to see curi participate well in other online communities.
I also didn’t understand what your sentence was saying. It read to me as “I don’t want people to update on this post”. When you pointed specifically to LW’s culture (which is very argumentative) possibly being a key cause it was clearer what you were saying. Thanks for the clarification (and for trying to avoid negative misinterpretations of your comment).
Additionally, I think that while a ban is sometimes necessary (e.g. harassment), a 2-year ban seems like quite a jump. I could think of a number of different sanctions, e.g. blocking someone from commenting in general; giving users the option to block someone from commenting; blocking someone from writing anything; limiting someone’s authority to her own shortform; all of these things for some time.
I am not sure. I really don’t like the world where someone is banned from commenting on other people’s posts, but can still make top-level posts, or is banned from making top-level posts but can still comment. Both of these end up in really weird equilibria where you sometimes can’t reply to conversations you started and respond to objections other people make to your arguments, and that just seems really bad.
I also don’t really know what those things would have done. I don’t think those things would have reduced the uncertainty of whether curi is a good fit for LessWrong super much, and feel like they could have just dragged things out into a long period of conflict that would have been more stressful for everyone.
The “blocking someone from writing anything” does feel like an option. Like, at least you can still vote and read. I do think that seems potentially like the better option, but I don’t think we currently actually have the technical infrastructure to make that happen. I might consider building that for future occasions like this.
The “blocking someone from writing anything” does feel like an option. Like, at least you can still vote and read. I do think that seems potentially like the better option, but I don’t think we currently actually have the technical infrastructure to make that happen. I might consider building that for future occasions like this.
Blocking from writing but allowing to vote seems like a really bad idea. Being read-only is already available — that’s the capability of anyone without an account.
Generally I’d be against complicated subsets of permissions for various classes of disfavoured members. Simpler to say that someone is either a member, or they’re not.
Sometimes people are warned, and sometimes they aren’t, depending on the circumstances. By volume, the vast majority of our bans are spammers, who aren’t warned. Of users who have posted more than 3 posts to the site, I believe over half (and probably closer to 80%?) are warned, and many are warned and then not banned. [See this list.]
Yeah, almost everyone who we ban who has any real content on the site is warned. It didn’t feel necessary for curi, because he has already received so much feedback about his activity on the site over the years (from many users as well as mods), and I saw very little probability of things changing because of a warning.
Yeah, almost everyone who we ban who has any real content on the site is warned. It didn’t feel necessary for curi, because he has already received so much feedback about his activity on the site over the years (from many users as well as mods), and I saw very little probability of things changing because of a warning.
I think you’re denying him an important chance to do error correction via that decision. (This is a particularly important concept in CR/FI)
curi evidently wanted to change some things about his behaviour, otherwise he wouldn’t have updated his commenting policy. How do you know he wouldn’t have updated it more if you’d warned him? That’s exactly the type of criticism we (CR/FI) think is useful.
That sort of update is exactly the type of thing that would be reasonable to expect next time he came back (considering that he was away for 2 weeks when the ban was announced). He didn’t want to be banned, and he didn’t want to have shitty discussions, either. (I don’t know those things for certain, but I have high confidence.)
What probability would you assign to him continuing just as before if you said something like “If you keep continuing what you’re doing, I will ban you. It’s for these reasons.” Ideally, you could add “Here they are in the rules/faq/whatever”.
Practically, the chance of him changing is lower now because there isn’t any point if he’s never given any chances. So in some ways you were exactly right to think there’s low probability of him changing, it’s just that it was due to your actions. Actions which don’t need to be permanent, might I add.
I think you’re denying him an important chance to do error correction via that decision. (This is a particularly important concept in CR/FI)
I agree that if we wanted to extend him more opportunities/resources/etc., we could, and that a ban is a decision to not do that. But it seems to me like you’re focusing on the benefit to him / “is there any chance he would get better?”, as opposed to the benefit to the community / “is it reasonable to expect that he would get better?”.
As stewards of the community, we need to make decisions taking into account both the direct impact (on curi for being banned or not) and the indirect impact (on other people deciding whether or not to use the site, or their experience being better or worse).
I’m not sure about other cases, but in this case curi wasn’t warned. If you’re interested, he and I discuss the ban in the first 30 mins of this stream
Whether someone is “good fit” already should be visible by the Karma (and I think Karma then translates into Karma points per Vote?) and I don’t see why that should additionally lead to a ban or something. A ban, or a writing ban, could result for destructive behavior.
I think there is no real point in having people blocked from reading. Writing—ok (though after all things start out as personal blog posts in any case and don’t have to be made frontpage posts).
I welcome the transparency, but this “I don’t want others to update on this as being much evidence about whether it makes sense to have curi in their communities” seems a bit weird to me. “a propensity for long unproductive discussions, a history of threats against people who engage with him” and “I assign too high of a probability that old patterns will repeat themselves” seem like quite a judgement and why would someone else not update on this? Additionally, I think that while a ban is sometimes necessary (e.g. harassment), a 2-year ban seems like quite a jump. I could think of a number of different sanctions, e.g. blocking someone from commenting in general; giving users the option to block someone from commenting; blocking someone from writing anything; limiting someone’s authority to her own shortform; all of these things for some time.
The key thing I wanted to communicate is that it seems quite plausible to me that these patterns are the result of curi interfacing specifically with the LessWrong culture in unhealthy ways. I can imagine him interfacing with other cultures with much less bad results.
I also said “I don’t want others to think this is much evidence”, not “this is no evidence”. Of course it is some evidence, but I think overall I would expect people to update a bit too much on this, and as I said, I wouldn’t be very surprised to see curi participate well in other online communities.
I also didn’t understand what your sentence was saying. It read to me as “I don’t want people to update on this post”. When you pointed specifically to LW’s culture (which is very argumentative) possibly being a key cause it was clearer what you were saying. Thanks for the clarification (and for trying to avoid negative misinterpretations of your comment).
I am not sure. I really don’t like the world where someone is banned from commenting on other people’s posts, but can still make top-level posts, or is banned from making top-level posts but can still comment. Both of these end up in really weird equilibria where you sometimes can’t reply to conversations you started and respond to objections other people make to your arguments, and that just seems really bad.
I also don’t really know what those things would have done. I don’t think those things would have reduced the uncertainty of whether curi is a good fit for LessWrong super much, and feel like they could have just dragged things out into a long period of conflict that would have been more stressful for everyone.
The “blocking someone from writing anything” does feel like an option. Like, at least you can still vote and read. I do think that seems potentially like the better option, but I don’t think we currently actually have the technical infrastructure to make that happen. I might consider building that for future occasions like this.
Blocking from writing but allowing to vote seems like a really bad idea. Being read-only is already available — that’s the capability of anyone without an account.
Generally I’d be against complicated subsets of permissions for various classes of disfavoured members. Simpler to say that someone is either a member, or they’re not.
Additionally, I’d like to know whether people are warned before they are banned, and whether they are asked about their own view of the matter.
Sometimes people are warned, and sometimes they aren’t, depending on the circumstances. By volume, the vast majority of our bans are spammers, who aren’t warned. Of users who have posted more than 3 posts to the site, I believe over half (and probably closer to 80%?) are warned, and many are warned and then not banned. [See this list.]
Yeah, almost everyone who we ban who has any real content on the site is warned. It didn’t feel necessary for curi, because he has already received so much feedback about his activity on the site over the years (from many users as well as mods), and I saw very little probability of things changing because of a warning.
I think you’re denying him an important chance to do error correction via that decision. (This is a particularly important concept in CR/FI)
curi evidently wanted to change some things about his behaviour, otherwise he wouldn’t have updated his commenting policy. How do you know he wouldn’t have updated it more if you’d warned him? That’s exactly the type of criticism we (CR/FI) think is useful.
That sort of update is exactly the type of thing that would be reasonable to expect next time he came back (considering that he was away for 2 weeks when the ban was announced). He didn’t want to be banned, and he didn’t want to have shitty discussions, either. (I don’t know those things for certain, but I have high confidence.)
What probability would you assign to him continuing just as before if you said something like “If you keep continuing what you’re doing, I will ban you. It’s for these reasons.” Ideally, you could add “Here they are in the rules/faq/whatever”.
Practically, the chance of him changing is lower now because there isn’t any point if he’s never given any chances. So in some ways you were exactly right to think there’s low probability of him changing, it’s just that it was due to your actions. Actions which don’t need to be permanent, might I add.
I agree that if we wanted to extend him more opportunities/resources/etc., we could, and that a ban is a decision to not do that. But it seems to me like you’re focusing on the benefit to him / “is there any chance he would get better?”, as opposed to the benefit to the community / “is it reasonable to expect that he would get better?”.
As stewards of the community, we need to make decisions taking into account both the direct impact (on curi for being banned or not) and the indirect impact (on other people deciding whether or not to use the site, or their experience being better or worse).
I’m not sure about other cases, but in this case curi wasn’t warned. If you’re interested, he and I discuss the ban in the first 30 mins of this stream
I agree to your first paragraph.
Whether someone is “good fit” already should be visible by the Karma (and I think Karma then translates into Karma points per Vote?) and I don’t see why that should additionally lead to a ban or something. A ban, or a writing ban, could result for destructive behavior.
I think there is no real point in having people blocked from reading. Writing—ok (though after all things start out as personal blog posts in any case and don’t have to be made frontpage posts).