And I have maybe 85% credence that someone is downvoting old comments of mine (in bulk but fairly slowly). It’s not hard to guess who, if so.
It seems to me that LW moderators should give serious consideration to undoing all the past votes of Eugine’s known accounts, if only to reduce the motivation to do what he does. (And implement a not-too-low karma threshold for downvoting, but that involves actually changing the code rather than “just” tweaking things in the database[1].)
[1] Anyone who has looked at how the DB is organized will understand why I put “just” in quotation marks there.
I don’t think it’s quite WP:BEANS. The things Eugine might do to try to hide aren’t stupid in the way shoving beans up your nose is. It’s possible he hasn’t thought of doing them, but in that case the error is more like “gosh, I hope he doesn’t realise he could just hit me over the head and steal all the money in my wallet” than like “and don’t stick beans up your nose”.
WP:BEANS means not telling X “don’t do Y” where Y is something that X would be unwise to do, but might do just to cause trouble, or for fun and with indifference to the consequences.
Telling Eugine “don’t sacrifice a chicken to the Privacy Gods” (pretending for the sake of argument that that would enable him to avoid being spotted by LW moderators and the like) doesn’t fit that template because (1) avoiding being spotted wouldn’t be unwise for him and (2) his interest in not being spotted isn’t because he wants to cause trouble but because he has particular goals that he can’t achieve as effectively if he’s spotted.
It’s not far off WP:BEANS, and the difference isn’t particularly important, but it doesn’t seem to me like it quite fits.
(Note that the example in WP:BEANS is of something that would “crash Wikipedia”, not e.g. something that would “allow you to modify any page to say anything you like without risk of having it reverted”. It’s aiming at carelessness and trollery rather than at purposeful abuse of the system.)
Suler names six primary factors behind why people sometimes act radically differently on the internet from the way they do in normal face-to-face situations:
One of them is ‘you don’t know me’. I for one value the right to privacy for all LessWrongers, Eugine included.
There are 5 other disinhibiting factors listed on the Wikipedia page. Could we explore those instead?
I have 90% credence that Old_Gold is the new account of Eugine.
And I have maybe 85% credence that someone is downvoting old comments of mine (in bulk but fairly slowly). It’s not hard to guess who, if so.
It seems to me that LW moderators should give serious consideration to undoing all the past votes of Eugine’s known accounts, if only to reduce the motivation to do what he does. (And implement a not-too-low karma threshold for downvoting, but that involves actually changing the code rather than “just” tweaking things in the database[1].)
[1] Anyone who has looked at how the DB is organized will understand why I put “just” in quotation marks there.
Yes, he doesn’t even try to disguise the fact by picking a more neutral username.
This may be a time to exercise the virtue of silence: if he’s trying to hide, perhaps we shouldn’t talk publicly about the ways we identify him.
(I’m not sure he is trying to hide.)
He most definitely isn’t. Otherwise, he would [redacted as per WP:BEANS].
I don’t think it’s quite WP:BEANS. The things Eugine might do to try to hide aren’t stupid in the way shoving beans up your nose is. It’s possible he hasn’t thought of doing them, but in that case the error is more like “gosh, I hope he doesn’t realise he could just hit me over the head and steal all the money in my wallet” than like “and don’t stick beans up your nose”.
I am confused why you think that is not an example of WP:BEANS.
WP:BEANS means not telling X “don’t do Y” where Y is something that X would be unwise to do, but might do just to cause trouble, or for fun and with indifference to the consequences.
Telling Eugine “don’t sacrifice a chicken to the Privacy Gods” (pretending for the sake of argument that that would enable him to avoid being spotted by LW moderators and the like) doesn’t fit that template because (1) avoiding being spotted wouldn’t be unwise for him and (2) his interest in not being spotted isn’t because he wants to cause trouble but because he has particular goals that he can’t achieve as effectively if he’s spotted.
It’s not far off WP:BEANS, and the difference isn’t particularly important, but it doesn’t seem to me like it quite fits.
(Note that the example in WP:BEANS is of something that would “crash Wikipedia”, not e.g. something that would “allow you to modify any page to say anything you like without risk of having it reverted”. It’s aiming at carelessness and trollery rather than at purposeful abuse of the system.)
Online disinhibition effect
One of them is ‘you don’t know me’. I for one value the right to privacy for all LessWrongers, Eugine included.
There are 5 other disinhibiting factors listed on the Wikipedia page. Could we explore those instead?
Hey, it IS just a game.
I mean, there are points and scoring and everything.