I don’t know if it’s specifically addressed anywhere in the Terms of Use, but free use of polls can have some very hurtful results; it might be helpful to somewhere post a guide to what type of polls are appropriate and tolerated.
What? About the same as the what you could write in comments already but prettier.
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”.
Seriously, what is it about this that is so hard to understand? I mean it was right there in the grandparent:
About the same as the what you could write in comments already but prettier.
You can insult people if you want. You can use text. You can insult people using using ad hoc polls with karma sinks that we’ve been making do with for years. You can insult people in comments and happen to use the new poll markdown syntax. You can even insult people with the markdown image feature that we’ve always had:
Either way the rules are the same: You can get away with insulting people to the extent that you can do so subtly, choose targets wisely and be well in tune with social dynamics.
That is just an example of how polls can go horribly wrong, I have absolutely nothing against wedifrid and have no inside knowledge to his/her appearance or personal life.
I personally think I came across as more of an asshole by presenting my insult in the form of a poll, but I can’t think of a particular reason why that is.
Well, I consider forced-choice polls of that form a bit obnoxious, whether insulting or not, because I feel like I’m being tricked into saying something I don’t believe. E.g., “My favorite pizza topping is: (a) pepperoni, (b) sausage, (c) mushroom” is an obnoxious poll, but is not insulting to anyone. That contributes somewhat. Had you added options that allowed for the possibility of your implicit assumptions being false (e.g., “none of the above”, “I don’t have a favorite pizza topping”, etc.) that element would have been removed.
Well, yes, but polls that are false trichotomies are a bad idea no matter whether they insult wedrifid or not. I expect LessWrong to be really good at noticing them, actually, so I don’t think that’s a problem.
Your confidence is inspiring, but I’d bet some false trichotomies are more obvious than others. (Though I can’t immediately think of any examples of subtler false trichotomies to rattle off, so yeah)
Since we can’t verify that there is not an option we don’t see (appeal to ignorance is the best we’ve got for this), every set of options is essentially a false *otomy.
K I’ll try this: To make sure you are not presenting a false dichotomy, not only do you need to include all the options you know of, you also need to make sure you know all the options. How do you make sure there isn’t an option you don’t know?
This time I know better than to interpret your text in a suspicious manner. Sorry for doing that to you in the other thread. FWIW, I liked your suggestion to play rationalist taboo once I understood that it was what you were suggesting. I have woken up to the fact that I interpreted your words suspiciously due to you expressing some unfriendliness toward me. This time, my perspective is that you probably intend to be constructive. I would like to understand what you mean by telling me to “include other” but I don’t. To me, this is a cryptic message. The other one seemed cryptic at first also.
As a poll option, add “other” to whatever list you think of, and then you won’t leave anything out. Maybe “Other—I’ll explain in a comment” if you want to drive those respondents to tell you what you missed.
It feels like I should have been able to get that. If so, sorry for my moment of cluelessness, Alicorn. If not… well, maybe adding a little bit more context to your comments would save some time by reducing confusion. That could help either way.
What? About the same as the what you could write in comments already but prettier.
radical_negative_one is a terrible person [pollid:31]
The overall total equals the sum of the individual answer totals, in contrast to previous polls.
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.
So what does everyone think about wedifrid? [pollid:50]
We’ve covered this.
Seriously, what is it about this that is so hard to understand? I mean it was right there in the grandparent:
You can insult people if you want. You can use text. You can insult people using using ad hoc polls with karma sinks that we’ve been making do with for years. You can insult people in comments and happen to use the new poll markdown syntax. You can even insult people with the markdown image feature that we’ve always had:
Either way the rules are the same: You can get away with insulting people to the extent that you can do so subtly, choose targets wisely and be well in tune with social dynamics.
That is just an example of how polls can go horribly wrong, I have absolutely nothing against wedifrid and have no inside knowledge to his/her appearance or personal life.
In what way does the comment become worse by virtue of containing a poll? You could equally say “wedrifid is a misshapen troll with no friends”.
No, the poll is actually less bad. You see, your comment proposes:
while the poll merely asserts
Wedrifid got off pretty lightly, from this perspective.
I personally think I came across as more of an asshole by presenting my insult in the form of a poll, but I can’t think of a particular reason why that is.
Well, I consider forced-choice polls of that form a bit obnoxious, whether insulting or not, because I feel like I’m being tricked into saying something I don’t believe. E.g., “My favorite pizza topping is: (a) pepperoni, (b) sausage, (c) mushroom” is an obnoxious poll, but is not insulting to anyone. That contributes somewhat. Had you added options that allowed for the possibility of your implicit assumptions being false (e.g., “none of the above”, “I don’t have a favorite pizza topping”, etc.) that element would have been removed.
Because now we can tell him: “Wedrifid, you are misshapen. An appeal to popularity filtered through a false trichotomy says so.”
Well, yes, but polls that are false trichotomies are a bad idea no matter whether they insult wedrifid or not. I expect LessWrong to be really good at noticing them, actually, so I don’t think that’s a problem.
Your confidence is inspiring, but I’d bet some false trichotomies are more obvious than others. (Though I can’t immediately think of any examples of subtler false trichotomies to rattle off, so yeah)
An example of something that is NOT a false *otomoy would be the shorter list. (See other comment)
Since we can’t verify that there is not an option we don’t see (appeal to ignorance is the best we’ve got for this), every set of options is essentially a false *otomy.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here.
K I’ll try this: To make sure you are not presenting a false dichotomy, not only do you need to include all the options you know of, you also need to make sure you know all the options. How do you make sure there isn’t an option you don’t know?
Include “Other”.
This time I know better than to interpret your text in a suspicious manner. Sorry for doing that to you in the other thread. FWIW, I liked your suggestion to play rationalist taboo once I understood that it was what you were suggesting. I have woken up to the fact that I interpreted your words suspiciously due to you expressing some unfriendliness toward me. This time, my perspective is that you probably intend to be constructive. I would like to understand what you mean by telling me to “include other” but I don’t. To me, this is a cryptic message. The other one seemed cryptic at first also.
As a poll option, add “other” to whatever list you think of, and then you won’t leave anything out. Maybe “Other—I’ll explain in a comment” if you want to drive those respondents to tell you what you missed.
It feels like I should have been able to get that. If so, sorry for my moment of cluelessness, Alicorn. If not… well, maybe adding a little bit more context to your comments would save some time by reducing confusion. That could help either way.
She’s referring to unknown unknowns.
*she
Apologies. Will fix.
No, it’s an example of how you went horribly wrong.
I don’t find this a credible reading of your action.
As if I have a prior history of insulting wedifrid?
I apologize to anyone who took the poll seriously, and especially to wedifrid for happening to be the first comment along that line that I replied to.
I was only asking the community to realize ahead of time the potential pitfalls of this new feature.
Time will tell if it was worth losing some karma for my good intentions.