Thanks for posting this, I think this is a very useful conversation to have. Even though I have my doubts about the delete without trace option, I actually think that an off-topic section could be quite useful.
One annoyance I had on Less Wrong before was that a some people object to any discussion of hypotheticals that they see as unrealistic (in contrast, most philosophers and logicians see these as useful for testing whether you have proposed a theory that could in principle be perfectly correct). That’s a reasonable discussion to have—maybe our understanding of cases far removed from everyday reality are so limited that they don’t constitute a counter-example—but having that discussion each and every time was a major annoyance and definitely limited productive conversation. Ideally, I’d have one thread for everyone to have this discussion about hypotheticals and people would either comment on it directly or create a new post link to it in the comment. If someone had a comment about hypotheticals that was actually unique to that specific post, as opposed to being a general argument that belonged more in the hypothetical thread, I’d be happy to make an exception for that. Anyway, that’s just how I’d use the moderation feature.
But as for what islands I’d like to see, I think that many of the channels on the LW Slack would make good islands. However, they wouldn’t be good for the front page, so I don’t think that will happen until we get some kind of sub-group or sub-reddit feature.
Thanks for posting this, I think this is a very useful conversation to have. Even though I have my doubts about the delete without trace option, I actually think that an off-topic section could be quite useful.
One annoyance I had on Less Wrong before was that a some people object to any discussion of hypotheticals that they see as unrealistic (in contrast, most philosophers and logicians see these as useful for testing whether you have proposed a theory that could in principle be perfectly correct). That’s a reasonable discussion to have—maybe our understanding of cases far removed from everyday reality are so limited that they don’t constitute a counter-example—but having that discussion each and every time was a major annoyance and definitely limited productive conversation. Ideally, I’d have one thread for everyone to have this discussion about hypotheticals and people would either comment on it directly or create a new post link to it in the comment. If someone had a comment about hypotheticals that was actually unique to that specific post, as opposed to being a general argument that belonged more in the hypothetical thread, I’d be happy to make an exception for that. Anyway, that’s just how I’d use the moderation feature.
But as for what islands I’d like to see, I think that many of the channels on the LW Slack would make good islands. However, they wouldn’t be good for the front page, so I don’t think that will happen until we get some kind of sub-group or sub-reddit feature.