The context you’re missing is that I have asked SilasBarta not to reply directly to my comments or PM me (summarized as “leave me alone”). Occasionally he does anyway
And up to here (and only up to here) this is entirely appropriate. I can think of half a dozen commenters that I would like to prevent from being able to reply to me (either because they are bad at thinking or tend to behave as social adversaries), but that is not a privilege that we have, and that is a good thing. Being able to influence the public discourse while picking and choosing which replies may be heard would be a mind killing disaster!
Replies to a comment aren’t like talking to the author of the parent. In this comment, for example, I am not addressing Alicorn at all. I am commenting to the blog about something that is prompted by what happens to be in a comment made by Alicorn. If this were a literal historic forum with Romans and togas I would not be facing Alicorn I would be directing my voice to whichever element of the crowd I was most interested in engaging with or influencing.
referring to it sarcastically as an “act of terrorism” or similar
But that part is foolish and impractical. All the worse because I know I personally have explained to Silas several times why buying into the villain frame and then getting sarcastic about it is shooting himself in both feet.
If we had a decently sophisticated comment system (trn!trn!), it would be feasible for people to choose to not see comments (and answers to those comments) from posters they wanted to avoid.
As far as I can tell, that sort of feature didn’t damage usenet, though killfiling trolls means that a newsgroup (forum) could be made tolerable for existing members while becoming increasingly unattractive to new members.
If we had a decently sophisticated comment system (trn! trn!), it would be feasible for people to choose to not see comments (and answers to those comments) from posters they wanted to avoid.
Yes, writing a greasemonkey script for that purpose is on my todo list. It wouldn’t even be that complicated. A few lines added to and remove from the old kibitzer script would do it. But I’ll probably not bother until the next obnoxious person gets on my nerves.
.… Wait.… did I just give anyone who wants that feature a motive to flame me? Bother.
Incidentally I would probably include an extra category for people whose comments I want to see except for when they are replying for me. In some cases people can be good at coming up with their own ideas but poor at understanding and replying to those of others. In those cases a coarse mechanism to pick the potentially best without expecting the frustration of predictable straw men would be handy.
I think that the one of the best meta-parts of LW is that we deal with differences in temper and disagreement in a way that always tries to take into account Rationality even when its unattainable. This tool would avoid disagreement for some but wouldn’t really limit much on a wide scale.
And up to here (and only up to here) this is entirely appropriate. I can think of half a dozen commenters that I would like to prevent from being able to reply to me (either because they are bad at thinking or tend to behave as social adversaries), but that is not a privilege that we have, and that is a good thing. Being able to influence the public discourse while picking and choosing which replies may be heard would be a mind killing disaster!
Replies to a comment aren’t like talking to the author of the parent. In this comment, for example, I am not addressing Alicorn at all. I am commenting to the blog about something that is prompted by what happens to be in a comment made by Alicorn. If this were a literal historic forum with Romans and togas I would not be facing Alicorn I would be directing my voice to whichever element of the crowd I was most interested in engaging with or influencing.
But that part is foolish and impractical. All the worse because I know I personally have explained to Silas several times why buying into the villain frame and then getting sarcastic about it is shooting himself in both feet.
If something doesn’t work don’t do it!
If we had a decently sophisticated comment system (trn! trn!), it would be feasible for people to choose to not see comments (and answers to those comments) from posters they wanted to avoid.
As far as I can tell, that sort of feature didn’t damage usenet, though killfiling trolls means that a newsgroup (forum) could be made tolerable for existing members while becoming increasingly unattractive to new members.
Yes, writing a greasemonkey script for that purpose is on my todo list. It wouldn’t even be that complicated. A few lines added to and remove from the old kibitzer script would do it. But I’ll probably not bother until the next obnoxious person gets on my nerves.
.… Wait.… did I just give anyone who wants that feature a motive to flame me? Bother.
Incidentally I would probably include an extra category for people whose comments I want to see except for when they are replying for me. In some cases people can be good at coming up with their own ideas but poor at understanding and replying to those of others. In those cases a coarse mechanism to pick the potentially best without expecting the frustration of predictable straw men would be handy.
I think that the one of the best meta-parts of LW is that we deal with differences in temper and disagreement in a way that always tries to take into account Rationality even when its unattainable. This tool would avoid disagreement for some but wouldn’t really limit much on a wide scale.
I cringed.
Spam filters aren’t intended to prevent spam from happening. They just keep it out of your inbox.
;)