FYI I appreciate this writeup (an awkward thing about the current situation with moderation is that I do strongly think some significant actions need to be taken, which are going to make some authors/commenters upset. I do care about those authors/commenters’ experience – it’s a major aspect of the overall site experience which is normally something I’d like to get user-interview feedback on, but there’s something awkward about asking “hey, we think you should somehow comment less, and we want to build tools that handle this semi-automatically because we’re busy… uh, which way of doing this feels least bad to you?”)
Some notes for now:
Our current (this week) set of moderation practices are a combination of “an experiment” and “a compromise with our current degree of tooling.” We’re building out new tools as we go. Right now we don’t have a distinction between rate-limiting posts and rate-limiting comments, but we’re working on it, and most likely in this case we’d have applied the post rate limit but not the commenting one.
We’re planning to modify the rate-limiting system so users can comment as much as they want on their own posts.”
The intent with rate-limiting is not “you’re permanently in a rate-limited box”, it’s a soft limit meant to encourage the user to change something about their posting behavior. The ideal outcome is that the user (re?)-reads the site guidelines, changes some thing about their commenting/posting behavior, and then the rate limit is retracted.
We’re working on various improvements to the /moderation page that make it easier to sanity-check the choices moderators are making, and I expect to fine-tune our response over time.
We’re thinking through how to write good top-level posts and onboarding-UI that help spell out our intended norms/vibe/site-culture in a way that feels actively positive rather than retroactively punishing.
That’s probably not that reassuring.
The situation is pretty difficult because there’s just a really huge amount of content that needs moderating (we’re spending a couple person-hours a day moderating it right now now while also building lots of new moderation features). That amount of content is increasing, so even if we decided to work fulltime on reading things thoroughly and providing good feedback right now, it wouldn’t be sustainable going forward.
People have suggested various ways of addressing this (such as outsourcing moderation to more established users, spreading the load around). I have various concerns and issues with that, which I’ll followup on when I have more time.
Rate limits are still very much an experiment. I’m hopeful that there’s an implementation that gets us a lot of value without much downside, but I think there are a lot ways to screw them up and do damage that I want to avoid. I’ve had the same thought 1/day (especially across for both posts and comments) is too little and stifles conversation.
I’m interested in alternative approaches to, e.g. the EA Forum has developed “your comments are automatically collapsed” as a moderation tool for users making less obviously good contributions, and I think that’s interesting.
Also, I’m sad whenever people look for an alternative place to post things. In my ideal (though likely unachievable) world, anyone could post anything to LessWrong and the site infrastructure would handle visibility perfectly so that things were only viewed by people wanted to see them (and in priority order of what they want to see). This would include poetry, personal, essays, etc. It’s just not a small project at all to achieve that, even though I wish it was just the case. Until then, we have to be more judicious with the users and content they create.
I’ll have a post up soon with more of my current thoughts and questions around moderation.
>Also, I’m sad whenever people look for an alternative place to post things. In my ideal (though likely unachievable) world, anyone could post anything to LessWrong and the site infrastructure would handle visibility perfectly so that things were only viewed by people wanted to see them (and in priority order of what they want to see).
This sounds nice but if taken far enough there’s a risk of fragmenting the site community into a bunch of partially overlapping sub-communities, a la the chaos of Twitter.
I get why that feels reasonable, but I think that’s a fairly different situation. One of the main points of all this is so that post authors can have the kind of discussions they want on their posts, and one of the primary ways LessWrong often feels annoying is to have people asking confused 101 questions that then spawn a distracting conversation on what was supposed to be a 201 or 401 level post.
Is amelia currently able to respond to your comment, or is she unable to respond to comments on her post because she posted this? If so, that seems like a rather large flaw in the system. I realize you’re working on a solution tailored to this, but perhaps a less clunky system could be used, such as a 7/week limit?
I think they can actually make one more comment (there’s a separate rate limit for comments and posts in the current system). The effort involved in making it 7/week is roughly the same as the effort to just allow unlimited commenting on your own posts and I’ll just try and fix that soon.
Update: I’ve mostly completed a PR that enables rate limited authors to comment on their own posts without (nonstandard) limits. It’s not quite ready to ship tonight.
Meanwhile, reviewing Amelia’s posts in more depth, I’m not actually sure I endorse the rate limit (the message they got was mostly a template-message, not making a strong claim about her content). Meanwhile looking over her comments they seemed mostly fine. I’m revoking the rate limit for now.
I generally want to express/reiterate sadness at the situation where “clearly, most commenters deserve a fair shake, and a reasonably thorough evaluation rather than relying on rough heuristics”. I’m still pretty unsettled on the best way to handle it but most of the options seem Differently Bad.
Raemon, thank you very much for lifting the restriction on my account! I’m sure it’s extremely challenging to maintain high LW standards, while at the same time trying to promote open dialog with differing perspectives. I don’t envy your job, but I really appreciate the work you do.
In the short term, I might not take full advantage of my restored liberty. I’ve started using my personal website (www.AmeliaJones.org) for both AI art projects and all my writing (not just LW writing). The writing will have links to Medium blog posts, so people can comment as much as they choose. It’s actually turning out to be easier for me to do things this way. However, depending on whether I get any visibility or feedback via this method, I might return to LW for niche writing projects in the longer term.
Thanks again for lifting the restriction, and for the important work you do.
Btw, the OP user page says “No Comments Found” when I open it (and doesn’t display any comments in the Comments section), even though it also indicates that there are “24 comments” (in the stats line at the top). But the replies page works.
This is a known bug that occurs when all of the first page of comments are on posts that you can’t see (because the posts were deleted or moved to drafts).
Thanks for being curious! I’ve begun using my personal website (AmeliaJones.org) as a place for all my work. From there, I will have links to Medium blog posts. (Posts that were previously on LW would mostly be under the writing....philosophy, or writing....physics categories on the website.) I appreciate your interest!
Moderation is a delicate thing. It seems like the team is looking for a certain type of discourse, mainly higher level and well thought out interactions. If that is the goal of the platform then that should be stated and whatever measures they take to get there is their prerogative. A willingness to iterate on policy, experimenting and changing it depending on the audience and such is probably a good idea.
I do like the idea of a more general place where you can write about a wider variety of topics. I really like LessWrong, the aesthetic the quality of posts. A think a set of features for dividing up posts besides the tags would be great. Types of posts that are specifically for discussion like “All AGI Safety Questions” where you beginners can learn and eventually work their way up into higher level conversations. Something like this would be a good way to encourage the Err part without diluting the discourse on the posts that should have that standard.
Like short post, post and question, but more and filterable. A type of post for quickly putting down an idea. Then a curious observer might provide feedback that could improve it. A ranking system where a post starts out like a quick messy idea but through a collaborative iterative process could end up being a front-page post.
There are a lot of interesting possibilities and I would love to see some features that improved the conversation rather than moderation that controlled the conversation.
I kind of hope they aren’t actively filtering in favor of AI discussion as that’s what the AI Alignment forum is for. We’ll see how this all goes down, but the team has been very responsive to the community in the past. I expect when they suss out specifically what they want, they’ll post a summary and take comments. In the meantime, I’m taking an optimistic wait-and-see position on this one.
I wonder what the cost would be of having another ‘parallel’ site, running on the same software but with less restrictive norms, just as the AI Alignment forum has more restrictive norms than LessWrong.
Thank you very much for the support. As you maybe saw below, the restriction on my account has been lifted!
As I also mentioned below, I might not take advantage of the restored liberty in the short term. I’ve already begun consolidating all my writing on my personal website (AmeliaJones.org), with links to Medium blog posts for the writing. (The writing that was on LW would mostly be under writing...AI, or writing....physics. There are also short stories and other right-brain type stuff, but I don’t think LW folks would be too interested in that i.e. just ignore it.)
However, I might return to LW in the longer term. For now, please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to comments on this post. I don’t think I will be checking in too often. This will allow me to focus more on my new platform.
Warmest wishes to all of you, and thanks again for the support when I really needed it,
FYI I appreciate this writeup (an awkward thing about the current situation with moderation is that I do strongly think some significant actions need to be taken, which are going to make some authors/commenters upset. I do care about those authors/commenters’ experience – it’s a major aspect of the overall site experience which is normally something I’d like to get user-interview feedback on, but there’s something awkward about asking “hey, we think you should somehow comment less, and we want to build tools that handle this semi-automatically because we’re busy… uh, which way of doing this feels least bad to you?”)
Some notes for now:
Our current (this week) set of moderation practices are a combination of “an experiment” and “a compromise with our current degree of tooling.” We’re building out new tools as we go. Right now we don’t have a distinction between rate-limiting posts and rate-limiting comments, but we’re working on it, and most likely in this case we’d have applied the post rate limit but not the commenting one.
We’re planning to modify the rate-limiting system so users can comment as much as they want on their own posts.”
The intent with rate-limiting is not “you’re permanently in a rate-limited box”, it’s a soft limit meant to encourage the user to change something about their posting behavior. The ideal outcome is that the user (re?)-reads the site guidelines, changes some thing about their commenting/posting behavior, and then the rate limit is retracted.
We’re working on various improvements to the /moderation page that make it easier to sanity-check the choices moderators are making, and I expect to fine-tune our response over time.
We’re thinking through how to write good top-level posts and onboarding-UI that help spell out our intended norms/vibe/site-culture in a way that feels actively positive rather than retroactively punishing.
That’s probably not that reassuring.
The situation is pretty difficult because there’s just a really huge amount of content that needs moderating (we’re spending a couple person-hours a day moderating it right now now while also building lots of new moderation features). That amount of content is increasing, so even if we decided to work fulltime on reading things thoroughly and providing good feedback right now, it wouldn’t be sustainable going forward.
People have suggested various ways of addressing this (such as outsourcing moderation to more established users, spreading the load around). I have various concerns and issues with that, which I’ll followup on when I have more time.
Rate limits are still very much an experiment. I’m hopeful that there’s an implementation that gets us a lot of value without much downside, but I think there are a lot ways to screw them up and do damage that I want to avoid. I’ve had the same thought 1/day (especially across for both posts and comments) is too little and stifles conversation.
I’m interested in alternative approaches to, e.g. the EA Forum has developed “your comments are automatically collapsed” as a moderation tool for users making less obviously good contributions, and I think that’s interesting.
Also, I’m sad whenever people look for an alternative place to post things. In my ideal (though likely unachievable) world, anyone could post anything to LessWrong and the site infrastructure would handle visibility perfectly so that things were only viewed by people wanted to see them (and in priority order of what they want to see). This would include poetry, personal, essays, etc. It’s just not a small project at all to achieve that, even though I wish it was just the case. Until then, we have to be more judicious with the users and content they create.
I’ll have a post up soon with more of my current thoughts and questions around moderation.
>Also, I’m sad whenever people look for an alternative place to post things. In my ideal (though likely unachievable) world, anyone could post anything to LessWrong and the site infrastructure would handle visibility perfectly so that things were only viewed by people wanted to see them (and in priority order of what they want to see).
This sounds nice but if taken far enough there’s a risk of fragmenting the site community into a bunch of partially overlapping sub-communities, a la the chaos of Twitter.
Similar to being able to reply freely to comments on our posts, it would be nice if we could reply freely to comments on our own comments.
I get why that feels reasonable, but I think that’s a fairly different situation. One of the main points of all this is so that post authors can have the kind of discussions they want on their posts, and one of the primary ways LessWrong often feels annoying is to have people asking confused 101 questions that then spawn a distracting conversation on what was supposed to be a 201 or 401 level post.
Is amelia currently able to respond to your comment, or is she unable to respond to comments on her post because she posted this? If so, that seems like a rather large flaw in the system. I realize you’re working on a solution tailored to this, but perhaps a less clunky system could be used, such as a 7/week limit?
I think they can actually make one more comment (there’s a separate rate limit for comments and posts in the current system). The effort involved in making it 7/week is roughly the same as the effort to just allow unlimited commenting on your own posts and I’ll just try and fix that soon.
Update: I’ve mostly completed a PR that enables rate limited authors to comment on their own posts without (nonstandard) limits. It’s not quite ready to ship tonight.
Meanwhile, reviewing Amelia’s posts in more depth, I’m not actually sure I endorse the rate limit (the message they got was mostly a template-message, not making a strong claim about her content). Meanwhile looking over her comments they seemed mostly fine. I’m revoking the rate limit for now.
I generally want to express/reiterate sadness at the situation where “clearly, most commenters deserve a fair shake, and a reasonably thorough evaluation rather than relying on rough heuristics”. I’m still pretty unsettled on the best way to handle it but most of the options seem Differently Bad.
Raemon, thank you very much for lifting the restriction on my account! I’m sure it’s extremely challenging to maintain high LW standards, while at the same time trying to promote open dialog with differing perspectives. I don’t envy your job, but I really appreciate the work you do.
In the short term, I might not take full advantage of my restored liberty. I’ve started using my personal website (www.AmeliaJones.org) for both AI art projects and all my writing (not just LW writing). The writing will have links to Medium blog posts, so people can comment as much as they choose. It’s actually turning out to be easier for me to do things this way. However, depending on whether I get any visibility or feedback via this method, I might return to LW for niche writing projects in the longer term.
Thanks again for lifting the restriction, and for the important work you do.
Best wishes,
Amelia
Btw, the OP user page says “No Comments Found” when I open it (and doesn’t display any comments in the Comments section), even though it also indicates that there are “24 comments” (in the stats line at the top). But the replies page works.
This is a known bug that occurs when all of the first page of comments are on posts that you can’t see (because the posts were deleted or moved to drafts).
I’m curious what posts have disappeared from @amelia.
Thanks for being curious! I’ve begun using my personal website (AmeliaJones.org) as a place for all my work. From there, I will have links to Medium blog posts. (Posts that were previously on LW would mostly be under the writing....philosophy, or writing....physics categories on the website.) I appreciate your interest!
Moderation is a delicate thing. It seems like the team is looking for a certain type of discourse, mainly higher level and well thought out interactions. If that is the goal of the platform then that should be stated and whatever measures they take to get there is their prerogative. A willingness to iterate on policy, experimenting and changing it depending on the audience and such is probably a good idea.
I do like the idea of a more general place where you can write about a wider variety of topics. I really like LessWrong, the aesthetic the quality of posts. A think a set of features for dividing up posts besides the tags would be great. Types of posts that are specifically for discussion like “All AGI Safety Questions” where you beginners can learn and eventually work their way up into higher level conversations. Something like this would be a good way to encourage the Err part without diluting the discourse on the posts that should have that standard.
Like short post, post and question, but more and filterable. A type of post for quickly putting down an idea. Then a curious observer might provide feedback that could improve it. A ranking system where a post starts out like a quick messy idea but through a collaborative iterative process could end up being a front-page post.
There are a lot of interesting possibilities and I would love to see some features that improved the conversation rather than moderation that controlled the conversation.
I kind of hope they aren’t actively filtering in favor of AI discussion as that’s what the AI Alignment forum is for. We’ll see how this all goes down, but the team has been very responsive to the community in the past. I expect when they suss out specifically what they want, they’ll post a summary and take comments. In the meantime, I’m taking an optimistic wait-and-see position on this one.
I wonder what the cost would be of having another ‘parallel’ site, running on the same software but with less restrictive norms, just as the AI Alignment forum has more restrictive norms than LessWrong.
I don’t think they are filtering for AI. That was ill said, and not my intention, thanks for catching it. I am going to edit that piece out.
To the people who upvoted this post,
Thank you very much for the support. As you maybe saw below, the restriction on my account has been lifted!
As I also mentioned below, I might not take advantage of the restored liberty in the short term. I’ve already begun consolidating all my writing on my personal website (AmeliaJones.org), with links to Medium blog posts for the writing. (The writing that was on LW would mostly be under writing...AI, or writing....physics. There are also short stories and other right-brain type stuff, but I don’t think LW folks would be too interested in that i.e. just ignore it.)
However, I might return to LW in the longer term. For now, please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to comments on this post. I don’t think I will be checking in too often. This will allow me to focus more on my new platform.
Warmest wishes to all of you, and thanks again for the support when I really needed it,
Amelia
Best of luck to you, whatever you decide!