Edit: Yvain, the great guy that he is, is handling this amazingly. In my eyes, consider this resolved.
(This is an anonymous nick for the moment, but this issue needs to be raised and I’m not comfortable at this point doing it publicly under my own name.)
tl;dr as provided by Daniel_Burfoot: “Yvain is awesome, it’s a shame he locked up his old stuff, let’s lobby him to open it back up”. I heartily endorse this summery, and it pretty much sums up what I have been saying.
[Due to some remarks, have redacted the links to Yvain’s blogs, old and new. This is absurd, in my opinion. Yvain’s new blog is a Rationality Blog in the Recent on Rationality Blogs part of the sidebar, and his old livejournal blog is linked to in many of his old posts. So I do not think that it is even meaningful to redact them. However, in the interest of not inciting argument, I have redacted them regardless.]
All of us here know of Yvain. He has posted much great stuff both here on Less Wrong, and on his blog. Insightful, brilliant stuff. If you go and look at the list of top rated Main posts, Yvain’s stuff top’s the lot.
A year ago, he switched blogs, from [old blog] to [new blog]. Well and fine. He had good reasons for doing so, including a desire for relative anonymity.
This, I do not object to.
However, as of a couple of weeks age, he locked his old blog, locking away many brilliant essays on a wide variety of topics. I view this as bad, to say the least. So much beautiful and brilliant stuff, of great interest to anyone interested in Less Wrong type stuff, never to see the light of day again.
What solutions are there? There are a few. My favorite so far is for Scott to restrict access by LW karma, which would allow him to maintain his privacy against the web, while still not denying those brilliant, humorous, and insightful posts to those who would truly appreciate them.
Or maybe you have another, better, idea? Please, suggest it. And whether or not you do, please, if you value the amazing contents of [old blog], help petition Scott to consider finding a solution. We have to be able to reach some sort of compromise, right?
There has been discussion in the comments section here [link removed; but it is currently the top post in the “Recent on Rationality Blogs” section] about this. Please, weigh in your support.
All right, I’ll look through my old stuff later this week, find a very few embarrassing or controversial things I want to hide, and unlock the rest.
Obvious question: will the Meditations on assorted social subjects (notably including ‘privilege’ and ‘conceptual superweapons’) make the cut? (I could see this going either way, hence I’m asking.)
For the record, Bryan Caplan, of Myth of the Rational Voter fame, recommends one of these posts as “possibly the most reasonable piece I’ve ever read” on the relevant controversy. I tend to ascribe higher relevance to such reactions than the trollish commentary that may be found in some blog comment sections.
This is my point. This a hundred or a thousand times over. That story, and the story of Emily and Control, and all his posts about conceptual superweapons, and the non-central fallacy, and so on and so on for a hundred or a thousand nuggets of awesomeness. That is why I make my plea.
If I understand correctly, one of the posts in the creepiness is male weakness / conceptual superweapons sequence was linked to recently by Marginal Revolution. The comments weren’t kind, and this was the immediate cause of Yvain locking down his blog, even if he had planned to do so for a while.
I wouldn’t want any gender discussion linked to under my Real Name either. As much as I’m disappointed that I can’t read his posts, I can’t say that I would have reacted any differently.
Yes, I know why he locked it. It is a real issue, I agree. I still feel that it shouldn’t impact us from reading those posts, as he did make some quite good points about conceptual superweapons. That’s why I proposed a karma threshold: Established LWers should be able to access it, without the problems that emerge from it being open to the entire internet.
I’m Livejournal friends with Yvain and can see all his archives. If he gives me permission to do so (and not otherwise), I am willing to fetch and carry specific posts that people wish to have dug up out of flocking obscurity so he doesn’t have to deal with the requests.
If he wants to delete his old blog, it’s up to him, he isn’t accountable to anybody. Don’t punish people for posting quality material on the internet.
What solutions are there? There are a few. My favorite so far is for Scott to restrict access by LW karma, which would allow him to maintain his privacy against the web, while still not denying those brilliant, humorous, and insightful posts to those who would truly appreciate them.
Are you willing to fork out the money to hire a programmer to implement something like that? It’s not trivial at all.
Also, Yvain’s policy of reposting worthwhile stuff to his new blog seems like a very sensible solution to what you’re complaining about.
I actually agree with you: He is under no obligations whatsoever. None. But I still am allowed to plead my case to him, for him to decide as he wills, and to spread the issue and discuss it so that the best possible solution can be reached.
As to programming something like that: I am willing to personally implement something like that if asked, although I was more thinking of the manual method of those who want access PMing Yvain or his designated representative and asking for access. Again, I am willing to have the burden of such a task placed on my own shoulders, should Yvain agree. I honestly am trying to find a solution, and am willing to invest a fair amount of personal effort in this.
About the reposting: Yes, I agree. However, there was a lot of stuff on the old blog. Literally thousands of posts, and it would be impractical to repost them one by one. A possible alternative though is for Yvain to repost them en masse, simply redacting the few that he doesn’t want around. That is actually a workable solution, if Yvain agrees, all we need is for this to come to his attention. (And again, if that takes grunt work and effort, I am willing to invest it.)
A possible alternative though is for Yvain to repost them en masse, simply redacting the few that he doesn’t want around.
This seems like the best current solution to me.
The karma requirement needs the person who wants to read it to not only have the amount of Karma, but also know that the links are available to them. If he uses a non-automated method, Yvain also has to take the effort to respond to every request as well.
Literally thousands of posts, and it would be impractical to repost them one by one.
On the other hand, anyone could volunteer to help with the repost, and more people can split the task, but the programming requires some skill level, and splitting the task further complicates it. Also, it is not necessary to restore all articles; we could start by the most popular ones and finish when the volunteers run out of interest.
But before proposing solutions we should make clear which goals are we optimizing for.
As readers, we want to be able to read the beautiful articles written by Yvain, and forward them to our friends. In this regard, some articles are more important that the others.
Yvain desires a relative anonymity, probably (my guess) for firewalling his professional life from some of the topics mentioned in his articles.
Hiding the articles from people who don’t have high LW karma (or other technical obstacle) does not let me send the link to someone else. I think it would be better to have those articles freely available; just remove any traces to Yvain. And that cannot be done automatically, because some articles may contain personal information. So the exposed articles need to be checked by humans, and modified to hide the personal details, if necessary.
I am not sure about exactly what level of anonymity Yvain wants. Perfect anonymity is not available if the articles remain available; all the discussions on LW, including this very thread, provide connection between the author and the articles. But my guess (which has zero value unless explicitly confirmed by Yvain) is that he simply wants to prevent a possibility of his colleague randomly connecting him to the articles, using only five minutes of googling, without actually trying hard.
I mean, if the colleague is a LW reader, then Yvain is already exposed to them. But suppose that the colleague does not read LW, only finds a link to some “sensitive” article posted on their friend’s Twitter; and he considers the article very interesting; let’s say interesting in a wrong way—he is so offended by reading the article that he thinks: “This scum deserves to be fired, because he violated my precious taboo!” Let’s suppose the colleague does not work for NSA, but can use google. So he puts “Yvain” in the google, and keeps following the links… How can we prevent him from getting to Yvain’s identity?
One necessary step in anonymisation would be to invent a completely new nickname, which would not be used anywhere else. Not even in LW discussions. Otherwise the link will be created retroactively. -- Unfortunately, I think this is very likely to happen; I mean, Yvain’s first name was already mentioned in the very thread that discusses his need for anonymity. So even if we report his old blogs under new nickname, let’s say “Papa Smurf”, it is only a question of time until someone writes on LW: “I enjoyed reading ‘Papa Smurf and his opinion on some social taboos’; John Doe is such a great writer!” Do this repeatedly, and it’s a question of time until you write “Papa Smurf and his opinion on some social taboos” and get “John Doe” mentioned in one of the first three hits.
For what it’s worth, the reason the earlier blog was locked wasn’t to maintain a personal/professional wall. It was the commentariat at a respectable blog (one where I think the comments have gone downhill quite a bit) being nasty about some personal information in the earlier blog.
No, Scott has stated many times that the reason is to avoid connection to his real name, including the recent change. Scott claimed that being told about the link and commentary was a reminder to make changes. It is not entirely clear to me that he even knew that the comments were nasty.
This comment makes you seem crazy. You should have just said “Yvain is awesome, it’s a shame he locked up his old stuff, let’s lobby him to open it back up”.
OK, fine. I guess I got carried away in the heat of the moment. I do suppose I got a bit to worked up over this. I will go back and edit it state this a bit more calmly.
It was my impression that he didn’t really want these blogs or identities associated so strongly. Respecting his wishes for increased privacy-by-obscurity would suggest not discussing these blogs by name openly.
[Edit: My points still stand, but this isn’t an issue worth fighting over. I’ve gone back and edited my post.]
Good point, although I think that by this point that ship has already sailed. That said, if people really think that it is an issue I will redact the name of his old blog. Note, however, that Yvain’s old Less Wrong posts are heavily sprinkled with links to things on his blog, so its not like they are remotely unconnected.
That said, if people really think that it is an issue
This response strikes me as a bit odd.
It reminds me of calling up an ISP and reporting a service outage, only to be told, “We don’t have any reports of an outage in that service area.”
Or bringing up a newly-arisen relationship problem with a partner, only to be told, “Why didn’t you tell me!?”
Or telling someone their floral perfume is making your face swell up, only to be told, “I’ve never heard of anyone being allergic to perfume!”
For some reason, it seems that people exclude the conversation they are now having from the set of all conversations. It seems like a failure to apply the self-sampling assumption or something. Maybe it’s a short-term/long-term memory thing.
In case it’s not clear: Yes, I (who am a person) do really think that your comment above disrespects the apparent wishes of the person whose writing you’re talking about.
No, I think it’s more of an issue of refusing to generalize from a single data point. It is entirely correct to say “This conversation is a starting piece of evidence for your position, but I need to wait to gather more evidence.”
You are a person, but not all people. Not even two people. So I do not wish to act on your say so alone. That said, I will repeat my earlier statement: If people [people in general, that is] really think that it is an issue I will redact the name of his old blog.
Perhaps. Do note that it is listed in the Recent On Rationality Blogs sidebar, so its not really that secret at all. Nevertheless, I have redacted the relevant parts, in order to avoid unseemly bickering, as this discussion has little to no relevance to my main thesis.
If you really want to read content that was posted years in the past there archive.org to your service. As long as Yvain’s doesn’t try to get the archive.org archive of his site taken down all should be fine.
Not true. While archive.org is great, it is missing huge chunks of the blog. Sad, but true. It doesn’t succeed at archiving everything. And while having half is great, that says nothing about the other half. See here the listing of all pages on squid314.livejournal.com that were captured by the wayback machine.
Yvain has explicitly asked people not to link to his new blog publicly, including on LessWrong. Please remove the link from your post.
ETA: Apparently he has not actually explicitly requested this, although I do believe that he is trying to maintain some degree of anonymity, which associating his old and new blogs publicly makes somewhat more difficult.
Sorry about that, I apparently mis-remembered. Although I do believe he is trying to maintain some degree of anonymity, and did ask when closing his old blog that it not be associated too strongly with his new blog (unless I’m also misremembering that?).
[Edit: My points still stand, but this isn’t an issue worth fighting over. I’ve gone back and edited my post.]
Look for the bar at the right side of the page. Look down to the part where it says “Recent on Rationality Blogs”. The current top link there is the same link as what I gave. I therefore disbelieve that he asked that he asked not to link to it from Less Wrong, or that he still supports such a request if he did make it, because Less Wrong itself links to it in the sidebar! If it is true that we shouldn’t link to his new blog, shouldn’t the site itself be abiding by that as well? I trust the administrators of Less Wrong to not go against Yvain on that.
Speaking of the sidebar, is there any way to make it optional whether a post goes up there? Maybe by including [LW] in the title or something? I enjoy blogging about rationality, but I also enjoy blogging about random things that go on in my personal life, and it’s kind of embarrassing to have those show up on the LW sidebar.
Better and easier than cluttering the title, you should just be able to choose a tag for the purpose: WordPress provides feeds for posts with specific tags, so you could ask Tricycle to use that tag-specific feed’s URL in the sidebar configuration instead of the entire-blog feed.
Edit: Yvain, the great guy that he is, is handling this amazingly. In my eyes, consider this resolved.
(This is an anonymous nick for the moment, but this issue needs to be raised and I’m not comfortable at this point doing it publicly under my own name.)
tl;dr as provided by Daniel_Burfoot: “Yvain is awesome, it’s a shame he locked up his old stuff, let’s lobby him to open it back up”. I heartily endorse this summery, and it pretty much sums up what I have been saying.
[Due to some remarks, have redacted the links to Yvain’s blogs, old and new. This is absurd, in my opinion. Yvain’s new blog is a Rationality Blog in the Recent on Rationality Blogs part of the sidebar, and his old livejournal blog is linked to in many of his old posts. So I do not think that it is even meaningful to redact them. However, in the interest of not inciting argument, I have redacted them regardless.]
All of us here know of Yvain. He has posted much great stuff both here on Less Wrong, and on his blog. Insightful, brilliant stuff. If you go and look at the list of top rated Main posts, Yvain’s stuff top’s the lot.
A year ago, he switched blogs, from [old blog] to [new blog]. Well and fine. He had good reasons for doing so, including a desire for relative anonymity.
This, I do not object to.
However, as of a couple of weeks age, he locked his old blog, locking away many brilliant essays on a wide variety of topics. I view this as bad, to say the least. So much beautiful and brilliant stuff, of great interest to anyone interested in Less Wrong type stuff, never to see the light of day again.
What solutions are there? There are a few. My favorite so far is for Scott to restrict access by LW karma, which would allow him to maintain his privacy against the web, while still not denying those brilliant, humorous, and insightful posts to those who would truly appreciate them.
Or maybe you have another, better, idea? Please, suggest it. And whether or not you do, please, if you value the amazing contents of [old blog], help petition Scott to consider finding a solution. We have to be able to reach some sort of compromise, right?
There has been discussion in the comments section here [link removed; but it is currently the top post in the “Recent on Rationality Blogs” section] about this. Please, weigh in your support.
All right, I’ll look through my old stuff later this week, find a very few embarrassing or controversial things I want to hide, and unlock the rest.
Is there a means by which one might buy you a virtual beer as thanks for all the writing?
I’ve unlocked my old blog minus five or ten private articles. You should be able to read the rest. If you can’t, let me know.
This is the best Christmas present I’ve had all day.
Obvious question: will the Meditations on assorted social subjects (notably including ‘privilege’ and ‘conceptual superweapons’) make the cut? (I could see this going either way, hence I’m asking.)
For the record, Bryan Caplan, of Myth of the Rational Voter fame, recommends one of these posts as “possibly the most reasonable piece I’ve ever read” on the relevant controversy. I tend to ascribe higher relevance to such reactions than the trollish commentary that may be found in some blog comment sections.
Thanks!
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Merry Christmas!
Thanks Yvain!
Oh. Does that mean I can no longer send people the link to “Last Temptation of Christ”? Yvain, please repost that one!
This is my point. This a hundred or a thousand times over. That story, and the story of Emily and Control, and all his posts about conceptual superweapons, and the non-central fallacy, and so on and so on for a hundred or a thousand nuggets of awesomeness. That is why I make my plea.
If I understand correctly, one of the posts in the creepiness is male weakness / conceptual superweapons sequence was linked to recently by Marginal Revolution. The comments weren’t kind, and this was the immediate cause of Yvain locking down his blog, even if he had planned to do so for a while.
I wouldn’t want any gender discussion linked to under my Real Name either. As much as I’m disappointed that I can’t read his posts, I can’t say that I would have reacted any differently.
Yes, I know why he locked it. It is a real issue, I agree. I still feel that it shouldn’t impact us from reading those posts, as he did make some quite good points about conceptual superweapons. That’s why I proposed a karma threshold: Established LWers should be able to access it, without the problems that emerge from it being open to the entire internet.
I’m Livejournal friends with Yvain and can see all his archives. If he gives me permission to do so (and not otherwise), I am willing to fetch and carry specific posts that people wish to have dug up out of flocking obscurity so he doesn’t have to deal with the requests.
If he wants to delete his old blog, it’s up to him, he isn’t accountable to anybody. Don’t punish people for posting quality material on the internet.
Are you willing to fork out the money to hire a programmer to implement something like that? It’s not trivial at all.
Also, Yvain’s policy of reposting worthwhile stuff to his new blog seems like a very sensible solution to what you’re complaining about.
I actually agree with you: He is under no obligations whatsoever. None. But I still am allowed to plead my case to him, for him to decide as he wills, and to spread the issue and discuss it so that the best possible solution can be reached.
As to programming something like that: I am willing to personally implement something like that if asked, although I was more thinking of the manual method of those who want access PMing Yvain or his designated representative and asking for access. Again, I am willing to have the burden of such a task placed on my own shoulders, should Yvain agree. I honestly am trying to find a solution, and am willing to invest a fair amount of personal effort in this.
About the reposting: Yes, I agree. However, there was a lot of stuff on the old blog. Literally thousands of posts, and it would be impractical to repost them one by one. A possible alternative though is for Yvain to repost them en masse, simply redacting the few that he doesn’t want around. That is actually a workable solution, if Yvain agrees, all we need is for this to come to his attention. (And again, if that takes grunt work and effort, I am willing to invest it.)
This seems like the best current solution to me.
The karma requirement needs the person who wants to read it to not only have the amount of Karma, but also know that the links are available to them. If he uses a non-automated method, Yvain also has to take the effort to respond to every request as well.
On the other hand, anyone could volunteer to help with the repost, and more people can split the task, but the programming requires some skill level, and splitting the task further complicates it. Also, it is not necessary to restore all articles; we could start by the most popular ones and finish when the volunteers run out of interest.
But before proposing solutions we should make clear which goals are we optimizing for.
As readers, we want to be able to read the beautiful articles written by Yvain, and forward them to our friends. In this regard, some articles are more important that the others.
Yvain desires a relative anonymity, probably (my guess) for firewalling his professional life from some of the topics mentioned in his articles.
Hiding the articles from people who don’t have high LW karma (or other technical obstacle) does not let me send the link to someone else. I think it would be better to have those articles freely available; just remove any traces to Yvain. And that cannot be done automatically, because some articles may contain personal information. So the exposed articles need to be checked by humans, and modified to hide the personal details, if necessary.
I am not sure about exactly what level of anonymity Yvain wants. Perfect anonymity is not available if the articles remain available; all the discussions on LW, including this very thread, provide connection between the author and the articles. But my guess (which has zero value unless explicitly confirmed by Yvain) is that he simply wants to prevent a possibility of his colleague randomly connecting him to the articles, using only five minutes of googling, without actually trying hard.
I mean, if the colleague is a LW reader, then Yvain is already exposed to them. But suppose that the colleague does not read LW, only finds a link to some “sensitive” article posted on their friend’s Twitter; and he considers the article very interesting; let’s say interesting in a wrong way—he is so offended by reading the article that he thinks: “This scum deserves to be fired, because he violated my precious taboo!” Let’s suppose the colleague does not work for NSA, but can use google. So he puts “Yvain” in the google, and keeps following the links… How can we prevent him from getting to Yvain’s identity?
One necessary step in anonymisation would be to invent a completely new nickname, which would not be used anywhere else. Not even in LW discussions. Otherwise the link will be created retroactively. -- Unfortunately, I think this is very likely to happen; I mean, Yvain’s first name was already mentioned in the very thread that discusses his need for anonymity. So even if we report his old blogs under new nickname, let’s say “Papa Smurf”, it is only a question of time until someone writes on LW: “I enjoyed reading ‘Papa Smurf and his opinion on some social taboos’; John Doe is such a great writer!” Do this repeatedly, and it’s a question of time until you write “Papa Smurf and his opinion on some social taboos” and get “John Doe” mentioned in one of the first three hits.
For what it’s worth, the reason the earlier blog was locked wasn’t to maintain a personal/professional wall. It was the commentariat at a respectable blog (one where I think the comments have gone downhill quite a bit) being nasty about some personal information in the earlier blog.
No, Scott has stated many times that the reason is to avoid connection to his real name, including the recent change. Scott claimed that being told about the link and commentary was a reminder to make changes. It is not entirely clear to me that he even knew that the comments were nasty.
This comment makes you seem crazy. You should have just said “Yvain is awesome, it’s a shame he locked up his old stuff, let’s lobby him to open it back up”.
OK, fine. I guess I got carried away in the heat of the moment. I do suppose I got a bit to worked up over this. I will go back and edit it state this a bit more calmly.
It just makes him seem hyperbolic to me.
Maybe someone can volunteer to host/repost the content of the blog while keeping his name away from the content?
Hey, that’s far from a bad idea. This was the kind of idea I was looking for when I asked for people to post additional ideas.
I offer myself as a willing volunteer to do this, if Yvain is interested.
https://web.archive.org/ still has it.
As I said to ChristianKl, the wayback machine has only a very incomplete archive of it.
It was my impression that he didn’t really want these blogs or identities associated so strongly. Respecting his wishes for increased privacy-by-obscurity would suggest not discussing these blogs by name openly.
[Edit: My points still stand, but this isn’t an issue worth fighting over. I’ve gone back and edited my post.]
Good point, although I think that by this point that ship has already sailed. That said, if people really think that it is an issue I will redact the name of his old blog. Note, however, that Yvain’s old Less Wrong posts are heavily sprinkled with links to things on his blog, so its not like they are remotely unconnected.
This response strikes me as a bit odd.
It reminds me of calling up an ISP and reporting a service outage, only to be told, “We don’t have any reports of an outage in that service area.”
Or bringing up a newly-arisen relationship problem with a partner, only to be told, “Why didn’t you tell me!?”
Or telling someone their floral perfume is making your face swell up, only to be told, “I’ve never heard of anyone being allergic to perfume!”
For some reason, it seems that people exclude the conversation they are now having from the set of all conversations. It seems like a failure to apply the self-sampling assumption or something. Maybe it’s a short-term/long-term memory thing.
In case it’s not clear: Yes, I (who am a person) do really think that your comment above disrespects the apparent wishes of the person whose writing you’re talking about.
No, I think it’s more of an issue of refusing to generalize from a single data point. It is entirely correct to say “This conversation is a starting piece of evidence for your position, but I need to wait to gather more evidence.”
You are a person, but not all people. Not even two people. So I do not wish to act on your say so alone. That said, I will repeat my earlier statement: If people [people in general, that is] really think that it is an issue I will redact the name of his old blog.
it doesn’t really matter if people think it’s an issue as long as yvain does.
Perhaps. Do note that it is listed in the Recent On Rationality Blogs sidebar, so its not really that secret at all. Nevertheless, I have redacted the relevant parts, in order to avoid unseemly bickering, as this discussion has little to no relevance to my main thesis.
If you really want to read content that was posted years in the past there archive.org to your service. As long as Yvain’s doesn’t try to get the archive.org archive of his site taken down all should be fine.
Not true. While archive.org is great, it is missing huge chunks of the blog. Sad, but true. It doesn’t succeed at archiving everything. And while having half is great, that says nothing about the other half. See here the listing of all pages on squid314.livejournal.com that were captured by the wayback machine.
Yvain has explicitly asked people not to link to his new blog publicly, including on LessWrong. Please remove the link from your post.
ETA: Apparently he has not actually explicitly requested this, although I do believe that he is trying to maintain some degree of anonymity, which associating his old and new blogs publicly makes somewhat more difficult.
No, quite the opposite.
Sorry about that, I apparently mis-remembered. Although I do believe he is trying to maintain some degree of anonymity, and did ask when closing his old blog that it not be associated too strongly with his new blog (unless I’m also misremembering that?).
[Edit: My points still stand, but this isn’t an issue worth fighting over. I’ve gone back and edited my post.]
Look for the bar at the right side of the page. Look down to the part where it says “Recent on Rationality Blogs”. The current top link there is the same link as what I gave. I therefore disbelieve that he asked that he asked not to link to it from Less Wrong, or that he still supports such a request if he did make it, because Less Wrong itself links to it in the sidebar! If it is true that we shouldn’t link to his new blog, shouldn’t the site itself be abiding by that as well? I trust the administrators of Less Wrong to not go against Yvain on that.
Speaking of the sidebar, is there any way to make it optional whether a post goes up there? Maybe by including [LW] in the title or something? I enjoy blogging about rationality, but I also enjoy blogging about random things that go on in my personal life, and it’s kind of embarrassing to have those show up on the LW sidebar.
Better and easier than cluttering the title, you should just be able to choose a tag for the purpose: WordPress provides feeds for posts with specific tags, so you could ask Tricycle to use that tag-specific feed’s URL in the sidebar configuration instead of the entire-blog feed.