I think the “Well-kept gardens die by pacifism” advice is cargo culted from a Usenet world where there weren’t ways to filter by quality aside from the binary censor/don’t censor.
Ah… you just resolved a bit of confusion I didn’t know I had. Eliezer often seems quite wise about “how to manage a community” stuff, but also strikes me as a bit too ban-happy at times. I had thought it was just overcompensation in response to a genuine problem, but it makes a lot more sense as coming from a context where more sophisticated ways of promoting good content aren’t available.
Ah… you just resolved a bit of confusion I didn’t know I had. Eliezer often seems quite wise about “how to manage a community” stuff, but also strikes me as a bit too ban-happy at times. I had thought it was just overcompensation in response to a genuine problem, but it makes a lot more sense as coming from a context where more sophisticated ways of promoting good content aren’t available.