In this very interesting discussion I mostly agree with you and Ben, but one thing in the comment above seems to me importantly wrong in a way that’s relevant:
When we ask people who made top tier posts before why they don’t make them now, or they put them elsewhere, the answer is resoundingly not “we were put off by mediocre content on LW” but “we were put off by commenters who were mean and made writing for LW unpleasant.”
I bet that’s true. But you also need to consider people who never posted to LW at all but, if they had, would have made top-tier posts. Mediocre content is (I think) more likely to account for them than for people who were top-tier posters but then went away.
(Please don’t take me to be saying ”… and therefore we should be rude to people whose postings we think are mediocre, so that they go away and stop putting off the really good people”. I am not at all convinced that that is a good idea.)
In this very interesting discussion I mostly agree with you and Ben, but one thing in the comment above seems to me importantly wrong in a way that’s relevant:
I bet that’s true. But you also need to consider people who never posted to LW at all but, if they had, would have made top-tier posts. Mediocre content is (I think) more likely to account for them than for people who were top-tier posters but then went away.
(Please don’t take me to be saying ”… and therefore we should be rude to people whose postings we think are mediocre, so that they go away and stop putting off the really good people”. I am not at all convinced that that is a good idea.)
I agree that meh content can be harmful in that way. I don’t think that Said’s successfully selectively discouraging meh content.