Here’s one: What if someone takes a poll asking if they should kill themselves? People could write “yes” in the comments, but they can select “yes” in a poll anonymously.
This may lead to more brutal answers to questions. The questions will be limited to whatever the poll creator types in, but that doesn’t mean everyone will use common sense while creating their polls.
You may argue “they can already use comments as a polling system using karma” but I would then argue “okay, MaoShan still has a point, and it applies to karma, too.”
Most of the commenters here refrain from being antisocial dicks. There’s no reason to believe anonymous polling will change that.
Anyone actually making life-or-death decisions on the basis of an internet forum poll has a non-trivial chance of being selected out of the gene pool for related reasons.
Sometimes you want or can accept brutal answers.
Individual responsibility. You can’t legislate for or even concern-troll people into having common sense, even assuming common sense is a well-defined and useful property.
Another thought: Just because a person asking people on the internet whether they should kill themselves isn’t likely to survive in any case, this does not mean that LessWrong wouldn’t be sued if said person posted a poll and it resulted in their death. For whatever reason, the US legal system has been known to grant large sums of money to people who are harmed by things that many consider inadvisable or “no-brainers”.
Here’s one: What if someone takes a poll asking if they should kill themselves?
I suspect people would react against people asking that regardless of whether they include radio buttons. If I recall there has even been drama surrounding making observations about a former member suiciding. I’d be somewhat surprised if someone asking this question directly did not prompt that comment to be banned.
The questions will be limited to whatever the poll creator types in, but that doesn’t mean everyone will use common sense while creating their polls.
No, I haven’t observed common sense to universally constrain posting behavior in general. However explicit polls don’t strike me as sufficiently different or more powerful than regular comments, (inherently anonymous) votes and private messages that a move from informal expectations that people don’t behave like @#%$s need be changed to a formal “Terms of Use”.
Here’s one: What if someone takes a poll asking if they should kill themselves? People could write “yes” in the comments, but they can select “yes” in a poll anonymously.
This may lead to more brutal answers to questions. The questions will be limited to whatever the poll creator types in, but that doesn’t mean everyone will use common sense while creating their polls.
You may argue “they can already use comments as a polling system using karma” but I would then argue “okay, MaoShan still has a point, and it applies to karma, too.”
Also
Upvote this comment and downvote the karma sink if you think I should not kill myself. :-)
(Edited to add smiley per Poe’s law, especially in case someone sees this comment without seeing the parent first.)
Most of the commenters here refrain from being antisocial dicks. There’s no reason to believe anonymous polling will change that.
Anyone actually making life-or-death decisions on the basis of an internet forum poll has a non-trivial chance of being selected out of the gene pool for related reasons.
Sometimes you want or can accept brutal answers.
Individual responsibility. You can’t legislate for or even concern-troll people into having common sense, even assuming common sense is a well-defined and useful property.
Another thought: Just because a person asking people on the internet whether they should kill themselves isn’t likely to survive in any case, this does not mean that LessWrong wouldn’t be sued if said person posted a poll and it resulted in their death. For whatever reason, the US legal system has been known to grant large sums of money to people who are harmed by things that many consider inadvisable or “no-brainers”.
And there we depart from the discussion of rationality into the realm of the law. :)
I am pleased to be able to give an immediate unequivocal answer on whether this is likely to be a problem: I have no idea.
lolol I like these points as well. (:
Section 203 of the Communications Decency Act would probably immunize LW from liability.
Ok good points. I like these.
I suspect people would react against people asking that regardless of whether they include radio buttons. If I recall there has even been drama surrounding making observations about a former member suiciding. I’d be somewhat surprised if someone asking this question directly did not prompt that comment to be banned.
No, I haven’t observed common sense to universally constrain posting behavior in general. However explicit polls don’t strike me as sufficiently different or more powerful than regular comments, (inherently anonymous) votes and private messages that a move from informal expectations that people don’t behave like @#%$s need be changed to a formal “Terms of Use”.
Upvote this comment and downvote the karma sink if you think I should kill myself. :-)
(Edited to add smiley per Poe’s law, especially in case someone sees this comment without seeing the parent first.)
Then a moderator takes the poll down.
Karma sink.