Can you recommend any writings on how not to be blunt and mean? (I’ve been told I have a violent communication style.)
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a classic work about social skills in general, and includes advice on this subject.
One tip from it: no criticism. Ever. Always word things in terms of positive alternatives: for example, instead of “I didn’t read this post because it wasn’t clear why I should” an option is “If you make it clearer what this post offers, more people will read it.”
Instead of negative reinforcement- “you’re bad, but here’s how to fix it”- it’s promising positive reinforcement- “this is how you get better.” The implication of low quality is still there and some people will still get offended by it, but it’s a step up from declaring low quality outright.
One tip from it: no criticism. Ever. Always word things in terms of positive alternatives: for example, instead of “I didn’t read this post because it wasn’t clear why I should” an option is “If you make it clearer what this post offers, more people will read it.”
I wonder if the option to downvote comments is a mechanism that works against this ideal and makes the site feel more antagonistic.
From my (limited) experience here, it’s not the downvotes that make me feel the site is antagonistic… but the tendency for certain people to beat one over the head with the truth, rather than gently steering me towards it.
Having now experienced both of the above, I can say that the head-beating is both less effective, and more likely to make me hesitant to comment again...
...thankfully I can ignore that feeling if I choose… but if I weren’t so enamoured of reading the posts here, I might easily be put off.
Style loses out to the truth; if you get beaten over the head with the truth, the truth is right there—if you are gently steered towards it, you will go off-course a significant fraction of the time. I understand your position, but what I am trying to say is that “less head-beating, more gentle steering” is not the solution, but “I choose to ignore that feeling” is.
Well, no, ignoring (perceived or intended) rudeness on the internet is not really the perfection of rational behavior, it’s more of a survival skill that everyone, rational or not, learns very quickly. With that in hand, I can then learn to behave rationally from a community that doesn’t prefer politeness over truth.
Yes, the two can be combined, but there are cases where they can’t be (and of course those cases vary wildly on the people involved).
When I was young, I found that I could pick up mathematics very easily, and I simply couldn’t understand why other people bitched and moaned about it so much. After all, it was a really easy skill that anybody could learn if they just tried.
It wasn’t until many years later that I fully grokked that other people pick up certain skills at different rates to me. That what s so obvious and easy for me, might not be obvious and easy for another person. and vice versa.
I now try very hard not to assume that something is easy to learn… and therefore also try not to assume that somebody has also actually learned something that I have learned.
I mess up on that too—all the time. But I feel that it’s good to keep in mind when you can.
In my own case—the gentle steering was far more effective than the head-beating.
IMO there is no way that I would have gone off course with “here is a link showing you a proof of why X is not true” (where X is what I originally claimed) yet is was gentle enough for me to be quite happy to go off and read said link and find out for myself.
I’d expect it to depend on what downvoting replaces. For example, if it replaces lots of negative comments, I’d expect the downvote mechanism to make the site feel less antagonistic.
True, but I’m not sure if the scales are in favor of downvotes here. In general, it’s a lot less trouble to downvote than to write a negative comment, so you’d expect to see more downvotes than comments. Anonymous downvotes may also feel nastier than negative comments, since there’s nothing to respond to and no feedback on what the downvoter found offensive and why.
(nods) Yup, that’s possible. For me, negative comments feel more antagonistic than numeric ratings, but people differ. And I agree that more people will downvote than write comments.
Incidentally, the word “offensive” may be misleading. The LW policy as stated is that downvoting means the voter wants less of this sort of thing, not that the voter is offended.
In the absence of downvoting, would you suggest an alternative mechanism for tagging/suppressing/hiding posts (or users) people want to see less of? If so, what mechanism?
Or would you recommend having no such mechanism at all?
I’d suggest just relying on replies and upvotes (or the lack of them) to do the soft calibration on what kind of stuff is preferred. I’d prefer the site to generally give people the benefit of the doubt and assume their opinions are worth countering with actual replies instead of an anonymous, unaddressable thumbs-down.
For outright trolling, spamming and other obvious noise that shouldn’t even be on the site, the report feature is good.
Still another thing with the votes is that existing downvotes and upvotes are like a pheromone trail. It’s a lot easier to downvote an already downvoted comment or upvote an already upvoted comment without much thought than it is to make the deliberation whether a new comment should have −1, 0 or +1 with no idea about what other people have already thought about it. This might lead to the voting system amplifying groupthink patterns.
for example, instead of “I didn’t read this post because it wasn’t clear why I should” an option is “If you make it clearer what this post offers, more people will read it.”
Okay. That’s a good example, and I’ll make that change.
How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie is a classic work about social skills in general, and includes advice on this subject.
One tip from it: no criticism. Ever. Always word things in terms of positive alternatives: for example, instead of “I didn’t read this post because it wasn’t clear why I should” an option is “If you make it clearer what this post offers, more people will read it.”
Instead of negative reinforcement- “you’re bad, but here’s how to fix it”- it’s promising positive reinforcement- “this is how you get better.” The implication of low quality is still there and some people will still get offended by it, but it’s a step up from declaring low quality outright.
I wonder if the option to downvote comments is a mechanism that works against this ideal and makes the site feel more antagonistic.
From my (limited) experience here, it’s not the downvotes that make me feel the site is antagonistic… but the tendency for certain people to beat one over the head with the truth, rather than gently steering me towards it.
Having now experienced both of the above, I can say that the head-beating is both less effective, and more likely to make me hesitant to comment again...
...thankfully I can ignore that feeling if I choose… but if I weren’t so enamoured of reading the posts here, I might easily be put off.
Style loses out to the truth; if you get beaten over the head with the truth, the truth is right there—if you are gently steered towards it, you will go off-course a significant fraction of the time. I understand your position, but what I am trying to say is that “less head-beating, more gentle steering” is not the solution, but “I choose to ignore that feeling” is.
Ah… so people arriving at this site should already have perfected the art of behaving rationally? ;)
and if they have not—it’s ok to beat them until their morale improves?
Well, no, ignoring (perceived or intended) rudeness on the internet is not really the perfection of rational behavior, it’s more of a survival skill that everyone, rational or not, learns very quickly. With that in hand, I can then learn to behave rationally from a community that doesn’t prefer politeness over truth.
Yes, the two can be combined, but there are cases where they can’t be (and of course those cases vary wildly on the people involved).
When I was young, I found that I could pick up mathematics very easily, and I simply couldn’t understand why other people bitched and moaned about it so much. After all, it was a really easy skill that anybody could learn if they just tried.
It wasn’t until many years later that I fully grokked that other people pick up certain skills at different rates to me. That what s so obvious and easy for me, might not be obvious and easy for another person. and vice versa.
I now try very hard not to assume that something is easy to learn… and therefore also try not to assume that somebody has also actually learned something that I have learned.
I mess up on that too—all the time. But I feel that it’s good to keep in mind when you can.
In my own case—the gentle steering was far more effective than the head-beating.
IMO there is no way that I would have gone off course with “here is a link showing you a proof of why X is not true” (where X is what I originally claimed) yet is was gentle enough for me to be quite happy to go off and read said link and find out for myself.
I’d expect it to depend on what downvoting replaces. For example, if it replaces lots of negative comments, I’d expect the downvote mechanism to make the site feel less antagonistic.
True, but I’m not sure if the scales are in favor of downvotes here. In general, it’s a lot less trouble to downvote than to write a negative comment, so you’d expect to see more downvotes than comments. Anonymous downvotes may also feel nastier than negative comments, since there’s nothing to respond to and no feedback on what the downvoter found offensive and why.
(nods) Yup, that’s possible. For me, negative comments feel more antagonistic than numeric ratings, but people differ. And I agree that more people will downvote than write comments.
Incidentally, the word “offensive” may be misleading. The LW policy as stated is that downvoting means the voter wants less of this sort of thing, not that the voter is offended.
In the absence of downvoting, would you suggest an alternative mechanism for tagging/suppressing/hiding posts (or users) people want to see less of? If so, what mechanism?
Or would you recommend having no such mechanism at all?
I’d suggest just relying on replies and upvotes (or the lack of them) to do the soft calibration on what kind of stuff is preferred. I’d prefer the site to generally give people the benefit of the doubt and assume their opinions are worth countering with actual replies instead of an anonymous, unaddressable thumbs-down.
For outright trolling, spamming and other obvious noise that shouldn’t even be on the site, the report feature is good.
Still another thing with the votes is that existing downvotes and upvotes are like a pheromone trail. It’s a lot easier to downvote an already downvoted comment or upvote an already upvoted comment without much thought than it is to make the deliberation whether a new comment should have −1, 0 or +1 with no idea about what other people have already thought about it. This might lead to the voting system amplifying groupthink patterns.
Okay. That’s a good example, and I’ll make that change.