I also think that this sets a very murky precedent. I don’t disagree at all with banning AA if it turns out he has abused voting privileges, but so far there’s no hard evidence that he did. Putting that aside for now, all we’re left with is a block being based on whether some individual moderator “can tolerate” some controversial comment (meaning that it attracts both downvotes and upvotes, as far as the LW userbase is concerned). This strikes me as careless.
I sympathize with your point of view, but I find it difficult to come up with rules. I don’t know if this is enough, but I think the fact that I’m pretty tolerant about content (spam doesn’t count as content) means people aren’t at high risk of me losing my temper with them.
I’m not convinced I’m obligated to take my system 1 completely off-line when I’m dealing with ideas that are inimical to my interests.
For what it’s worth, I have a long history at LW with a high karma score (typically 92% positive), I was offered the job of moderator rather than asking for it, and when I announced that I had become moderator, I got a lot of upvotes. I think these facts are evidence that I have a pretty good sense of the community.
Have a rule—I detest it (though not to the point of banning people) when someone mentions something they saw online and doesn’t offer a link, or at least apologize for not having one.
It sounds like we had an effective if unstated rule: “When someone does a bunch of stuff wrong, get rid of them.”
AA checked four boxes:
Doesn’t listen to feedback
Doesn’t make strong arguments
Repeatedly posts on topics not of particular interest to LW
Posts things that are likely to be offensive to many
We are missing some rules that might be useful to have, specifically ‘what are the boxes’ and ‘how many do you need to check to get banned’. But quite frankly, looking at those four sins, I would think that any three should be enough to get someone banned. If anything, NancyLebovitz probably waited longer than necessary.
I would also say that making a rule based on only one of those factors would be counterproductive. I think most of us are forgiving (as far as bans go, albeit perhaps not in voting) when a user repeatedly fails on one of those, as long as they are also providing useful content in other posts.
I’m not convinced I’m obligated to take my system 1 completely off-line when I’m dealing with ideas that are inimical to my interests.
I think, as a general rule, people in a decision-making capacity are best advised to recuse themselves from any choice whenever they feel that their System 1 is interfering. (In your case, I would’ve waited for some solid evidence on the karma-abuse question. After all, if the upvotes on that comment turned out to be genuine, that would definitely affect my own views.) I am aware that this is not always realistic. But make no mistake here—the thought process that led to this decision will also make LW less, not more trustworthy (however mildly) when dealing with issues that are unusually complex or politically contentious. Masculinity and involuntary celibacy are canaries in the coalmine—our treatment of them is direct evidence of how well we can treat everything else.
I was kinder to aa than most of the people who replied to him
I really want to hope I can say the same. I sort of took it as my personal mission to respond to every outrageous thing he said, and point out the problems with his politics and his theory of sexuality. As a former member of the online incel community, I thought I was in a better position to empathize with his situation, and could present alternative arguments in a way that he might be more receptive to than standard refutation. But AA never replied directly to me, so I don’t know how he took my approach.
Check out the discussion at SlateStarCodex about banning Steve Johnson, a time-wasting fellow who wasn’t quite breaking the rules.
SlateStarCodex does not have a karma system, though.On LW, time wasters tend to be downvoted swiftly, so they don’t really waste much time anyway. If someone who’s broadly considered a “time-waster” is nonetheless upvoted, this tells me that what they’re posting is unusually interesting.
the thought process that led to this decision will also make LW less, not more trustworthy (however mildly) when dealing with issues that are unusually complex or politically contentious
That depends very much on the audience. Some people will trust more others will trust less.
I’m pretty sure that the latter will outnumber the former quite a bit. Speaking generally, we want social norms that discourage excess political talk (politics is the mindkiller, and gender politics is no exception) but when it does come up, people should be allowed to speak freely if they have something worthwhile to say. Anything else is a recipe for severe bias (via “evaporative cooling” and factionalization).
I think, as a general rule, people in a decision-making capacity are best advised to recuse themselves from any choice whenever they feel that their System 1 is interfering.
I think that’s a really bad rule in almost any setting, including this one. It amounts to acting as a straw Vulcan.
Well, System 1 is a complicated beast. In most cases, it helps you reach better and quicker decisions than a Straw Vulcan would, and this is a good thing. But there are some times when you’re fairly sure that it cannot be trusted—this is arguably one of these times.
Have a rule—I detest it (though not to the point of banning people) when someone mentions something they saw online and doesn’t offer a link, or at least apologize for not having one.
It’s funny, that this triggered up your system I in this case. Offensivness on LW...
No, it was the suggestion that women should be given to men they don’t want to marry combined with a bad posting history which caused me to ban. I’m also none too fond of suggestions that people should mistrust their own motives from someone who shows no capacity for examining their own motives.
Also note that I said I wouldn’t ban for failure to include links. (Or were you joking?)
My system 1 was rather activated. I don’t normally flame people, but I had some ideas for flaming aa to a crackly crunch.
I don’t normally flame people, but I had some ideas for flaming aa to a crackly crunch.
I would say that flaming is a lot more polite than blocking—at least insofar as “politeness” is actually something ethically worthwhile. But maybe that’s just me.
No, it was the suggestion that women should be given to men they don’t want to marry combined with a bad posting history which caused me to ban.
That sounds to me like a system II analysis of the situation.
Not examine one’s own motives and not including links is a sign of a kind of intellectual laziness, that alone wouldn’t be ground for banning but is in combination with offensive content it has a different quality than carefully crafted posts that communicate offensive content.
If I’m putting it in words, especially for LW, system 2 is going to get involving. However, a proposition of a system of forcing women into sex is something that I take personally because I imagine myself (not in great detail) being mistreated that way. I’m against a military draft, but I don’t react the same way to a proposal of a draft for men. Actually, I don’t react the same way to a proposal of a military draft for women. This is a personal issue, and trust me, my system one was involved.
(Sidetrack: I liked The Rainbow Cadenza, a science fiction novel in which women are drafted for sex, as a rather clear parallel-to-create-outrage to the military draft for men.)
It wasn’t just not examining one’s own motives in general, it was pushing opposed people to think the worst of their own motives while not looking at one’s own.
I don’t actually see him as either saying or suggesting that women should be forced into sex. He seems to be saying that women (and all people) should be forced to not have sex outside of marriage, which would then lead to women settling for lower status partners.
Also, in this case the problem with your system 1 is that it affects your conclusions about what he means. He didn’t, after all, make the bigoted proposal you decry. Rather, you interpret him as almost making it. It’s a lot easier for bias to get in the way when banning someone for what they’re almost-saying than when banning someone for what they’re actually saying.
Now, at first blush the usual Manospherean reason suggests itself: This proposal unsettles women because they find most men sexually repulsive, even though in monogamous societies where most women have to marry ordinary men and have sexual relationships with their allegedly yucky husbands, they find the experience tolerable and they make a go of it.
It’s possible that what he meant was that women shouldn’t be allowed to have sex with the men they choose. Instead, they can either be celibate or learn to tolerate sex with men they don’t choose. Is this how you interpret what aa said?
He wanted to ban sex outside of marriage. Describing that as “can’t have sex with the men you choose” is misleading, because it’s such a noncentral example of that. It’s literally true (if you choose someone outside of marriage, you’re not allowed to have sex with him) but the same could be said for banning sex on public busses (if you choose someone on a public bus, you’re not allowed to have sex with him).
Furthermore, I find it hard to accept that “ban sex outside of marriage” is such a bigoted policy that anyone who espouses it should not be allowed here. (And it’s not even restricted to women—he just thinks the policy would affect women differently than men.)
Have a rule—I detest it (though not to the point of banning people) when someone mentions something they saw online and doesn’t offer a link, or at least apologize for not having one.
That’s a strawman. Nancy said “last straw”. It wasn’t a single comment that caused the ban.
This community doesn’t suffer from being overmoderated. I think it’s worthwhile to have a moderator who is in the position to moderate when they think it’s necessary to do so.
I also think that this sets a very murky precedent. I don’t disagree at all with banning AA if it turns out he has abused voting privileges, but so far there’s no hard evidence that he did. Putting that aside for now, all we’re left with is a block being based on whether some individual moderator “can tolerate” some controversial comment (meaning that it attracts both downvotes and upvotes, as far as the LW userbase is concerned). This strikes me as careless.
I sympathize with your point of view, but I find it difficult to come up with rules. I don’t know if this is enough, but I think the fact that I’m pretty tolerant about content (spam doesn’t count as content) means people aren’t at high risk of me losing my temper with them.
I’m not convinced I’m obligated to take my system 1 completely off-line when I’m dealing with ideas that are inimical to my interests.
For what it’s worth, I have a long history at LW with a high karma score (typically 92% positive), I was offered the job of moderator rather than asking for it, and when I announced that I had become moderator, I got a lot of upvotes. I think these facts are evidence that I have a pretty good sense of the community.
Have a rule—I detest it (though not to the point of banning people) when someone mentions something they saw online and doesn’t offer a link, or at least apologize for not having one.
It sounds like we had an effective if unstated rule: “When someone does a bunch of stuff wrong, get rid of them.”
AA checked four boxes:
Doesn’t listen to feedback
Doesn’t make strong arguments
Repeatedly posts on topics not of particular interest to LW
Posts things that are likely to be offensive to many
We are missing some rules that might be useful to have, specifically ‘what are the boxes’ and ‘how many do you need to check to get banned’. But quite frankly, looking at those four sins, I would think that any three should be enough to get someone banned. If anything, NancyLebovitz probably waited longer than necessary.
I would also say that making a rule based on only one of those factors would be counterproductive. I think most of us are forgiving (as far as bans go, albeit perhaps not in voting) when a user repeatedly fails on one of those, as long as they are also providing useful content in other posts.
I think, as a general rule, people in a decision-making capacity are best advised to recuse themselves from any choice whenever they feel that their System 1 is interfering. (In your case, I would’ve waited for some solid evidence on the karma-abuse question. After all, if the upvotes on that comment turned out to be genuine, that would definitely affect my own views.) I am aware that this is not always realistic. But make no mistake here—the thought process that led to this decision will also make LW less, not more trustworthy (however mildly) when dealing with issues that are unusually complex or politically contentious. Masculinity and involuntary celibacy are canaries in the coalmine—our treatment of them is direct evidence of how well we can treat everything else.
You care about false upvoting a great deal more than I do.
Is it worth mentioning that I was kinder to aa than most of the people who replied to him?
Check out the discussion at SlateStarCodex about banning Steve Johnson, a time-wasting fellow who wasn’t quite breaking the rules.
I really want to hope I can say the same. I sort of took it as my personal mission to respond to every outrageous thing he said, and point out the problems with his politics and his theory of sexuality. As a former member of the online incel community, I thought I was in a better position to empathize with his situation, and could present alternative arguments in a way that he might be more receptive to than standard refutation. But AA never replied directly to me, so I don’t know how he took my approach.
SlateStarCodex does not have a karma system, though.On LW, time wasters tend to be downvoted swiftly, so they don’t really waste much time anyway. If someone who’s broadly considered a “time-waster” is nonetheless upvoted, this tells me that what they’re posting is unusually interesting.
In this case AA’s post got downvoted swiftly but still wasted a lot of energy.
You can have a voting ring.
That depends very much on the audience. Some people will trust more others will trust less.
I’m pretty sure that the latter will outnumber the former quite a bit. Speaking generally, we want social norms that discourage excess political talk (politics is the mindkiller, and gender politics is no exception) but when it does come up, people should be allowed to speak freely if they have something worthwhile to say. Anything else is a recipe for severe bias (via “evaporative cooling” and factionalization).
Given that the post from him on that topic were constantly downvoted, the community seemed to feel that he didn’t have something worthwile to say.
I think that’s a really bad rule in almost any setting, including this one. It amounts to acting as a straw Vulcan.
Well, System 1 is a complicated beast. In most cases, it helps you reach better and quicker decisions than a Straw Vulcan would, and this is a good thing. But there are some times when you’re fairly sure that it cannot be trusted—this is arguably one of these times.
It’s funny, that this triggered up your system I in this case. Offensivness on LW...
No, it was the suggestion that women should be given to men they don’t want to marry combined with a bad posting history which caused me to ban. I’m also none too fond of suggestions that people should mistrust their own motives from someone who shows no capacity for examining their own motives.
Also note that I said I wouldn’t ban for failure to include links. (Or were you joking?)
My system 1 was rather activated. I don’t normally flame people, but I had some ideas for flaming aa to a crackly crunch.
I would say that flaming is a lot more polite than blocking—at least insofar as “politeness” is actually something ethically worthwhile. But maybe that’s just me.
That sounds to me like a system II analysis of the situation.
Not examine one’s own motives and not including links is a sign of a kind of intellectual laziness, that alone wouldn’t be ground for banning but is in combination with offensive content it has a different quality than carefully crafted posts that communicate offensive content.
If I’m putting it in words, especially for LW, system 2 is going to get involving. However, a proposition of a system of forcing women into sex is something that I take personally because I imagine myself (not in great detail) being mistreated that way. I’m against a military draft, but I don’t react the same way to a proposal of a draft for men. Actually, I don’t react the same way to a proposal of a military draft for women. This is a personal issue, and trust me, my system one was involved.
(Sidetrack: I liked The Rainbow Cadenza, a science fiction novel in which women are drafted for sex, as a rather clear parallel-to-create-outrage to the military draft for men.)
It wasn’t just not examining one’s own motives in general, it was pushing opposed people to think the worst of their own motives while not looking at one’s own.
I don’t actually see him as either saying or suggesting that women should be forced into sex. He seems to be saying that women (and all people) should be forced to not have sex outside of marriage, which would then lead to women settling for lower status partners.
Also, in this case the problem with your system 1 is that it affects your conclusions about what he means. He didn’t, after all, make the bigoted proposal you decry. Rather, you interpret him as almost making it. It’s a lot easier for bias to get in the way when banning someone for what they’re almost-saying than when banning someone for what they’re actually saying.
It’s possible that what he meant was that women shouldn’t be allowed to have sex with the men they choose. Instead, they can either be celibate or learn to tolerate sex with men they don’t choose. Is this how you interpret what aa said?
He wanted to ban sex outside of marriage. Describing that as “can’t have sex with the men you choose” is misleading, because it’s such a noncentral example of that. It’s literally true (if you choose someone outside of marriage, you’re not allowed to have sex with him) but the same could be said for banning sex on public busses (if you choose someone on a public bus, you’re not allowed to have sex with him).
Furthermore, I find it hard to accept that “ban sex outside of marriage” is such a bigoted policy that anyone who espouses it should not be allowed here. (And it’s not even restricted to women—he just thinks the policy would affect women differently than men.)
That’s a strawman. Nancy said “last straw”. It wasn’t a single comment that caused the ban.
This community doesn’t suffer from being overmoderated. I think it’s worthwhile to have a moderator who is in the position to moderate when they think it’s necessary to do so.