I don’t think the rule right now prevents any spoilage.
Unless you argue that it actually causes spoilage (which is implausible), it’s highly implausible that it’s effect is exactly zero.
Such guidelines as you suggest are perhaps nice to be followed voluntarily, but obliging people to follow them would impose an additional cost and burden—when it seems that atleast two people in this thread have a problem with the rule being as much of a burden on them as it currently is.
Unless you argue that it actually causes spoilage (which is implausible)...
I’ll argue that it causes spoilage.
Create a new account. On the day after a chapter goes up, post a complaint about someone saying that Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg and ask how anyone knows. Even if all the replies to you are ciphered, you will still know that people know. And if you were not already-in-the-know, you would be spoiled. And any non-posting lurker who has already seen this happen a half donzen times but was not in the know and did not decipher anything also has been spoiled.
The cipher rule makes people comfortable talking about spoilers, so they do talk about spoilers. But the rule doesn’t prevent the spoilage that occurs because of the talk about spoilers, just what occurs because of the spoilers themselves.
Sensitization is complicated. That’s one reason censorship is so popular.
I completely agree with the plausibility of your scenario, but think that on net it causes less spoilage than no policy at all.
My original stance was that spoily things shouldn’t be talked about at all in the clear, but that was overruled by majority plus Eliezer. That policy resulted in much more time spent correcting / arguing about corrections than the current policy, so I agree it was worse on net.
I refrained from making this argument (even though it is in essence the same as my argument that it prevents nothing) specifically because it only makes the case as compared to a general rule against posting spoilers, not as compared to a general rule allowing it. Is your contention that in the absence of any rule on the subject people would tend to self-censor spoilers (even this one, out of all spoilers)? I wasn’t comfortable making that claim.
OH, COME ON! What’d I say HERE that earned a downvote?
Is your contention that in the absence of any rule on the subject people would tend to self-censor spoilers (even this one, out of all spoilers)
The rule on Less Wrong aside from HP:MOR threads is that you shouldn’t spoil anything unless you’re really sure it’s common knowledge, and anyone claiming it’s not common knowledge is usually good enough evidence that it’s not common knowledge. So you can say “C3P0 is Luke Skywalker’s father” in a post about rationality, but if anyone complains then it should probably be changed to “Spoiler for Empire Strikes Back (ROT13): blahblahblah”, and “last week’s episode of Buffy” should always be concealed.
This rule is directly enforced by Eliezer when necessary; he is very anti-spoilers. Unfortunately, I don’t think the policy is stated directly anywhere other than here.
Unless you argue that it actually causes spoilage (which is implausible), it’s highly implausible that it’s effect is exactly zero.
Such guidelines as you suggest are perhaps nice to be followed voluntarily, but obliging people to follow them would impose an additional cost and burden—when it seems that atleast two people in this thread have a problem with the rule being as much of a burden on them as it currently is.
I’ll argue that it causes spoilage.
Create a new account. On the day after a chapter goes up, post a complaint about someone saying that Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg and ask how anyone knows. Even if all the replies to you are ciphered, you will still know that people know. And if you were not already-in-the-know, you would be spoiled. And any non-posting lurker who has already seen this happen a half donzen times but was not in the know and did not decipher anything also has been spoiled.
The cipher rule makes people comfortable talking about spoilers, so they do talk about spoilers. But the rule doesn’t prevent the spoilage that occurs because of the talk about spoilers, just what occurs because of the spoilers themselves.
Sensitization is complicated. That’s one reason censorship is so popular.
I completely agree with the plausibility of your scenario, but think that on net it causes less spoilage than no policy at all.
My original stance was that spoily things shouldn’t be talked about at all in the clear, but that was overruled by majority plus Eliezer. That policy resulted in much more time spent correcting / arguing about corrections than the current policy, so I agree it was worse on net.
I agree that there is almost certainly less spoilage with this policy than there would be with no policy at all.
I refrained from making this argument (even though it is in essence the same as my argument that it prevents nothing) specifically because it only makes the case as compared to a general rule against posting spoilers, not as compared to a general rule allowing it. Is your contention that in the absence of any rule on the subject people would tend to self-censor spoilers (even this one, out of all spoilers)? I wasn’t comfortable making that claim.
OH, COME ON! What’d I say HERE that earned a downvote?
No. People do self-censor, but I’ll be damned if I can tell when.
I’m arguing that the rot13 rule leads to spoilage in a way that a no-spoilers-full-stop rule would not.
The rule on Less Wrong aside from HP:MOR threads is that you shouldn’t spoil anything unless you’re really sure it’s common knowledge, and anyone claiming it’s not common knowledge is usually good enough evidence that it’s not common knowledge. So you can say “C3P0 is Luke Skywalker’s father” in a post about rationality, but if anyone complains then it should probably be changed to “Spoiler for Empire Strikes Back (ROT13): blahblahblah”, and “last week’s episode of Buffy” should always be concealed.
This rule is directly enforced by Eliezer when necessary; he is very anti-spoilers. Unfortunately, I don’t think the policy is stated directly anywhere other than here.
This.
More fun with pictures!