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.
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.