All of this is irrelevant, because the point is that if the conversational norms cannot be discussed openly (by people who otherwise aren’t banned from the site for being spammers or something similarly egregious), then there’s no reason to believe that they’re good norms. How were they vetted? How were they arrived at? Why should we trust that they’re not, say, chock-full of catastrophic problems? (Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!)
Of all the posts on the site, the post proposing new site norms is the one that should be subjected to the greatest scrutiny—and yet it’s also the post[2] from which more critics have been banned than from almost any other. This is an extremely bad sign.
Weighted by karma (as a proxy for “not just some random person off the street, but someone whom the site and its participants judge to have worthwhile things to say”). (The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1. If karma represents some measure of “Less Wrong, as a site and a community, has endorsed this person as someone whose participation in discussions here is a positive good”—and the OP here suggests that it does, indeed, represent that—what does it mean that the so-called “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” cannot even bear discussion by people who are, collectively, so relatively well-regarded?)
For what it’s worth, the high level point here seems right to me (I am not trying to chime into the rest of the discussion about whether the ban system is a good idea in the first place).
If we canonize something like Duncan’s post I agree that we should do something like copy over a bunch of it into a new post, give prominent attribution to Duncan at the very top of the post, explain how it applies to our actual moderation policy, and then we should maintain our own ban list.
I think Duncan’s post is great, but I think when we canonize something like this it doesn’t make sense for Duncan’s ban list to carry over to the more canonized version.
This is certainly well and good, but it seems to me that the important thing is to do something like this before canonizing anything. Otherwise, it’s a case of “feel free to discuss this, but nothing will come of it, because the decision’s already been made”.
The whole point of community discussion of something like this is to serve as input into any decisions made. If you decide first, it’s too late to discuss. This is exactly what makes the author-determined ban lists so extraordinarily damaging in a case like this, where the post in question is on a “meta” topic (setting aside for the moment whether they’re good or bad in general).
The most interesting thing you said is left to your footnote:
The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1.
I would love to see if this pattern is also present in other posts.
There should be some mechanism to judge posts / comments that have a mix of good and bad karma, especially since there are two measures of this now. In the olden-days it still would have been possible to do, since an overall score of “0” could still be a very high-quality information signal, if the total number of votes is high. This is only even more the case now.
Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!
At issue is whether low-quality debate is ever fruitful. That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
Certainly we can’t rely on the judgment of post authors! (And I am not even talking about this case in particular, but—just in general, for post authors to have the power to make such calls introduces a massive conflict of interest, and incentivizes ego-driven cognitive distortions. This is why the “post authors can ban people from their posts” feature is so corrosive to anything resembling good and useful discussion… truly, it seems to me like an egregious, and entirely unforced, mistake in system design.)
The mistake in system design started with the implementation of downvoting, but I have more complicated reasoning for this. If you have a system that implements downvoting, the reason for having that feature in place is to prevent ideas that are not easily argued away from being repeated. I tend to be skeptical of such systems because I tend to believe that if ideas are not easily argued away, they are more likely to have merit to them. If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
I am not sure that I’d go quite that far, but I certainly sympathize with the sentiment.
If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
All of this is irrelevant, because the point is that if the conversational norms cannot be discussed openly (by people who otherwise aren’t banned from the site for being spammers or something similarly egregious), then there’s no reason to believe that they’re good norms. How were they vetted? How were they arrived at? Why should we trust that they’re not, say, chock-full of catastrophic problems? (Indeed, the more people[1] are banned from commenting on the norms as a consequence of their criticism of said norms, the less we should believe that the norms are any good!)
Of all the posts on the site, the post proposing new site norms is the one that should be subjected to the greatest scrutiny—and yet it’s also the post[2] from which more critics have been banned than from almost any other. This is an extremely bad sign.
Weighted by karma (as a proxy for “not just some random person off the street, but someone whom the site and its participants judge to have worthwhile things to say”). (The ratio of “total karma of people banned from commenting on ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” to “karma of author of ‘Basics of Rationalist Discourse’” is approximately 3:1. If karma represents some measure of “Less Wrong, as a site and a community, has endorsed this person as someone whose participation in discussions here is a positive good”—and the OP here suggests that it does, indeed, represent that—what does it mean that the so-called “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” cannot even bear discussion by people who are, collectively, so relatively well-regarded?)
Technically, the user. But that hardly changes the point.
For what it’s worth, the high level point here seems right to me (I am not trying to chime into the rest of the discussion about whether the ban system is a good idea in the first place).
If we canonize something like Duncan’s post I agree that we should do something like copy over a bunch of it into a new post, give prominent attribution to Duncan at the very top of the post, explain how it applies to our actual moderation policy, and then we should maintain our own ban list.
I think Duncan’s post is great, but I think when we canonize something like this it doesn’t make sense for Duncan’s ban list to carry over to the more canonized version.
This is certainly well and good, but it seems to me that the important thing is to do something like this before canonizing anything. Otherwise, it’s a case of “feel free to discuss this, but nothing will come of it, because the decision’s already been made”.
The whole point of community discussion of something like this is to serve as input into any decisions made. If you decide first, it’s too late to discuss. This is exactly what makes the author-determined ban lists so extraordinarily damaging in a case like this, where the post in question is on a “meta” topic (setting aside for the moment whether they’re good or bad in general).
The most interesting thing you said is left to your footnote:
I would love to see if this pattern is also present in other posts.
There should be some mechanism to judge posts / comments that have a mix of good and bad karma, especially since there are two measures of this now. In the olden-days it still would have been possible to do, since an overall score of “0” could still be a very high-quality information signal, if the total number of votes is high. This is only even more the case now.
At issue is whether low-quality debate is ever fruitful. That piece of data in your footnote suggests that the issue might instead be whether or not there even is low-quality debate, or at least whether or not we can rely on moderators’ judgement calls or the sum of all (weighted) votes to make such calls.
Certainly we can’t rely on the judgment of post authors! (And I am not even talking about this case in particular, but—just in general, for post authors to have the power to make such calls introduces a massive conflict of interest, and incentivizes ego-driven cognitive distortions. This is why the “post authors can ban people from their posts” feature is so corrosive to anything resembling good and useful discussion… truly, it seems to me like an egregious, and entirely unforced, mistake in system design.)
The mistake in system design started with the implementation of downvoting, but I have more complicated reasoning for this. If you have a system that implements downvoting, the reason for having that feature in place is to prevent ideas that are not easily argued away from being repeated. I tend to be skeptical of such systems because I tend to believe that if ideas are not easily argued away, they are more likely to have merit to them. If you have a post which argues for the enforcement of certain norms which push down specific kinds of ideas that are hard to argue away, one of which is the very idea that this ought to be done, it creates the impression that there are certain dogmas which can no longer be defended in open dialogue.
I am not sure that I’d go quite that far, but I certainly sympathize with the sentiment.
And with this, I entirely agree.