For me, I’d add 0: Don’t. A public note or post that something’s available for me to opt into is fine (in related forums), but otherwise leave me alone unless I’ve explicitly asked to be contacted.
Highly depends on your role and personality I guess.
As a community builder and someone pretty high on extraversion, I’m generally happy to add more people to my loose network. If there’s just a bit of overlap between my and a stranger’s interests, I expect there to be a far higher upside than downside risk to us knowing that the other exists and what they work on. Of course, I may change my opinion on this over time while my time becomes more valuable and my loose network larger.
Any generalizable rules you can think of about whom better not to cold message at all?
Any generalizable rules you can think of about whom better not to cold message at all?
Yes. Contact people you see posting on sites with a norm for individual contact on random topics (I don’t know what those are, but I don’t think it’s LW). Contact people whose profile description asks you to contact them. Contact people if they post or comment that they’d like to be contacted.
Judgement call to contact people you have a comment exchange with that you want to explore further (I’d argue this isn’t “cold”).
Otherwise, leave them alone.
You can, of course, solicit contacts by setting up your profile and posting or shortform-ing that you’d like to be contacted. That’s way better than reaching out yourself to people you don’t have any reason to believe want that.
Really, e-mail or DM on a site is ALMOST NEVER the right way to initiate “cold” contact. That’s what posts are for.
Thanks, I didn’t take into account that people might read this as an encouragement to randomly message people on Lesswrong. And thanks for giving me more clarity about the implicit norms here.
To clarify: The person likely found my mail address on my homepage, where it is exactly for the reason that I’m generally happy to be contacted by strangers.
Ah, that’s important context. Putting your contact info on your public website is an invitation to be contacted. It’s probably best to specify there (perhaps on a “contact me” page, which has your info AFTER this) under what conditions you’d like to connect.
I haven’t down-voted. The amount number of private messages that get sent on LessWrong seems to be quite low.
For most topics, it makes sense to ask a question publically, but there are messages that are personalized enough that private messages make sense. I wouldn’t like to have a public norm that forbids messages like “I really like what you wrote on X, can I hire you to research Y and write a post about it”. When it comes to telling someone about typos in their post a private message is usually better than a comment.
A net negative karma score suggests to me that a majority believes that your proposed policy is too strict.
I didn’t vote myself, but my feeling is that it’s a combination of
Innocuous but mostly-irrelevant personal opinion;
Implicit unhelpful advice / criticism of OP.
Like, the literal content is mostly just “I don’t like receiving cold emails”. Okay, so why are you telling us this? If we assume you intended to communicate more than just the literal content, it becomes the advice/moralizing “don’t send cold emails”. But if that is what you intend, it’s kind of passive-aggressive and it’s not very helpful. If you think one should never send cold emails, why not? If you think there are circumstances where it’s okay, which circumstances?
My current guess is that you didn’t intend that advice/moralizing? But I still felt it in your comment, and I expect it’s a large part of why you got downvoted.
Thanks. My intent was to dissuade people from taking the post as “these are conditions you should cold-contact people on LW” (which is how I interpreted it), by pointing out that I’d prefer not to be contacted at all, even with the recommended information.
For me, I’d add 0: Don’t. A public note or post that something’s available for me to opt into is fine (in related forums), but otherwise leave me alone unless I’ve explicitly asked to be contacted.
Highly depends on your role and personality I guess.
As a community builder and someone pretty high on extraversion, I’m generally happy to add more people to my loose network. If there’s just a bit of overlap between my and a stranger’s interests, I expect there to be a far higher upside than downside risk to us knowing that the other exists and what they work on. Of course, I may change my opinion on this over time while my time becomes more valuable and my loose network larger.
Any generalizable rules you can think of about whom better not to cold message at all?
Yes. Contact people you see posting on sites with a norm for individual contact on random topics (I don’t know what those are, but I don’t think it’s LW). Contact people whose profile description asks you to contact them. Contact people if they post or comment that they’d like to be contacted.
Judgement call to contact people you have a comment exchange with that you want to explore further (I’d argue this isn’t “cold”).
Otherwise, leave them alone.
You can, of course, solicit contacts by setting up your profile and posting or shortform-ing that you’d like to be contacted. That’s way better than reaching out yourself to people you don’t have any reason to believe want that.
Really, e-mail or DM on a site is ALMOST NEVER the right way to initiate “cold” contact. That’s what posts are for.
Thanks, I didn’t take into account that people might read this as an encouragement to randomly message people on Lesswrong. And thanks for giving me more clarity about the implicit norms here.
To clarify: The person likely found my mail address on my homepage, where it is exactly for the reason that I’m generally happy to be contacted by strangers.
Ah, that’s important context. Putting your contact info on your public website is an invitation to be contacted. It’s probably best to specify there (perhaps on a “contact me” page, which has your info AFTER this) under what conditions you’d like to connect.
I’m surprised that this is a controversial comment − 8 votes for a net of 0!
I haven’t down-voted. The amount number of private messages that get sent on LessWrong seems to be quite low.
For most topics, it makes sense to ask a question publically, but there are messages that are personalized enough that private messages make sense. I wouldn’t like to have a public norm that forbids messages like “I really like what you wrote on X, can I hire you to research Y and write a post about it”. When it comes to telling someone about typos in their post a private message is usually better than a comment.
A net negative karma score suggests to me that a majority believes that your proposed policy is too strict.
I didn’t vote myself, but my feeling is that it’s a combination of
Innocuous but mostly-irrelevant personal opinion;
Implicit unhelpful advice / criticism of OP.
Like, the literal content is mostly just “I don’t like receiving cold emails”. Okay, so why are you telling us this? If we assume you intended to communicate more than just the literal content, it becomes the advice/moralizing “don’t send cold emails”. But if that is what you intend, it’s kind of passive-aggressive and it’s not very helpful. If you think one should never send cold emails, why not? If you think there are circumstances where it’s okay, which circumstances?
My current guess is that you didn’t intend that advice/moralizing? But I still felt it in your comment, and I expect it’s a large part of why you got downvoted.
Thanks. My intent was to dissuade people from taking the post as “these are conditions you should cold-contact people on LW” (which is how I interpreted it), by pointing out that I’d prefer not to be contacted at all, even with the recommended information.