Don’t mind Lumifer. He’s one of our resident Anti-Spirals.
And yet he’s consistently one of the highest karma earners in the 30-day karma leaderboard. It seems to be mainly due to his heavy participation… his 80% upvote rate is not especially high. I find him incredibly frustrating to engage with (though I try not to let it show). I can’t help but think that he is driving valuable people away; having difficult people dominate the conversation can’t be a good thing. I’ve tried to talk to him about this.
Hypothesized failure mode for online forums: Online communities are disproportionately populated by disagreeable people who are driven online because they have trouble making real-life friends. They tend to “win” long discussions because they have more hours to invest in them. Bystanders generally don’t care much about long discussions because it’s an obscure and wordy debate they aren’t invested in, so for most extended discussions, there’s no referee to call out bad conversational behavior. The end result: the bulldog strategy of being the most determined person in the conversation ends up “winning” more often than not.
(To clarify, I’m not trying to speak out against the perspectives people like Lumifer and VoiceOfRa offer, which I am generally sympathetic to. I think their perspectives are valuable. I just wish they would make a stronger effort to engage in civil & charitable discussion, and I think having people who don’t do this and participate heavily is likely to have pernicious effects on LW culture in the long term. In general, I agree with the view that Paul Graham has advanced re: Hacker News moderation: on a group rationality level, in an online forum context, civility & niceness end up being very important.)
And yet he’s consistently one of the highest karma earners in the 30-day karma leaderboard. It seems to be mainly due to his heavy participation… his 80% upvote rate is not especially high. I find him incredibly frustrating to engage with (though I try not to let it show). I can’t help but think that he is driving valuable people away; having difficult people dominate the conversation can’t be a good thing. I’ve tried to talk to him about this.
Hypothesized failure mode for online forums: Online communities are disproportionately populated by disagreeable people who are driven online because they have trouble making real-life friends. They tend to “win” long discussions because they have more hours to invest in them. Bystanders generally don’t care much about long discussions because it’s an obscure and wordy debate they aren’t invested in, so for most extended discussions, there’s no referee to call out bad conversational behavior. The end result: the bulldog strategy of being the most determined person in the conversation ends up “winning” more often than not.
(To clarify, I’m not trying to speak out against the perspectives people like Lumifer and VoiceOfRa offer, which I am generally sympathetic to. I think their perspectives are valuable. I just wish they would make a stronger effort to engage in civil & charitable discussion, and I think having people who don’t do this and participate heavily is likely to have pernicious effects on LW culture in the long term. In general, I agree with the view that Paul Graham has advanced re: Hacker News moderation: on a group rationality level, in an online forum context, civility & niceness end up being very important.)