Has Redacted2 broken any explicit site rules? I personally feel that unwritten rules of etiquette are not punishable. For that reason I strongly oppose options 4 and 5. For comparison, if Redacted2 had hacked the site to get around the karma requirements for downvoting that would be very different. As it is Redacted2 clicked the readily-available thumbs down button while following karma requirements. This is not a punishable offense.
That doesn’t make it correct, and it doesn’t mean Less Wrong’s policies can’t change. If the policies change, then options 4 and 5 can be considered for future use.
Strongly disagree. I’ve been involved in user-facing administration before, and binding yourself to a narrow set of policy rules (especially on a site like LW, where they aren’t well documented) is about as useful as drinking antifreeze. It’s tempting, sure, since we’ve all been socialized to believe in the rule of law and no ex post facto punishment and all that good stuff. But the truth is that that only works in government because government runs a well-developed legal framework that’s had centuries to fill in its loopholes and smooth its rough edges. And it still requires a lot of discretion on the part of its various enforcers.
You can’t make loophole-free policy that’s more specific than “don’t be a jerk”, not if users are going to be interacting with each other in a reasonably natural way. You don’t have the time or the expertise. That means you’ll occasionally need to extend or invent policy to deal with cases that aren’t well covered, and that means you’ll occasionally piss people off. It’s okay. It comes with the territory.
That said, block downvoting is common enough behavior that we probably should have policy to deal with it. Ideally policy and code, but that’s probably not going to happen.
I think unwritten rules of etiquette probably are punishable, in the sense that “don’t be an ass” is essentially rule zero of every site … but surely they were acting in good faith here, to discourage low-quality submissions (in however misguided a manner) as the karma system is supposed to?
I really don’t see why this can’t simply be punished going forward. Ideally, the people responsible will know to stop and no-one will ever need to be banned for it. After all, isn’t the main problem that it was driving away users?
Has Redacted2 broken any explicit site rules? I personally feel that unwritten rules of etiquette are not punishable. For that reason I strongly oppose options 4 and 5. For comparison, if Redacted2 had hacked the site to get around the karma requirements for downvoting that would be very different. As it is Redacted2 clicked the readily-available thumbs down button while following karma requirements. This is not a punishable offense.
That doesn’t make it correct, and it doesn’t mean Less Wrong’s policies can’t change. If the policies change, then options 4 and 5 can be considered for future use.
Strongly disagree. I’ve been involved in user-facing administration before, and binding yourself to a narrow set of policy rules (especially on a site like LW, where they aren’t well documented) is about as useful as drinking antifreeze. It’s tempting, sure, since we’ve all been socialized to believe in the rule of law and no ex post facto punishment and all that good stuff. But the truth is that that only works in government because government runs a well-developed legal framework that’s had centuries to fill in its loopholes and smooth its rough edges. And it still requires a lot of discretion on the part of its various enforcers.
You can’t make loophole-free policy that’s more specific than “don’t be a jerk”, not if users are going to be interacting with each other in a reasonably natural way. You don’t have the time or the expertise. That means you’ll occasionally need to extend or invent policy to deal with cases that aren’t well covered, and that means you’ll occasionally piss people off. It’s okay. It comes with the territory.
That said, block downvoting is common enough behavior that we probably should have policy to deal with it. Ideally policy and code, but that’s probably not going to happen.
I think unwritten rules of etiquette probably are punishable, in the sense that “don’t be an ass” is essentially rule zero of every site … but surely they were acting in good faith here, to discourage low-quality submissions (in however misguided a manner) as the karma system is supposed to?
I really don’t see why this can’t simply be punished going forward. Ideally, the people responsible will know to stop and no-one will ever need to be banned for it. After all, isn’t the main problem that it was driving away users?