(Adhering to Ray’s request of making <1 reply per hour, though in this case I was already planning to do so.)
The above fails to note something analogous to “arrested while driving ≠ arrested for driving.”
It is not in fact the case that anyone was blocked for disagreeing with or criticizing the things that I had written, though it is true that a couple of people have been blocked while disagreeing or criticizing.
EDIT: I went and looked up the fancy words for this: post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
What they were blocked for was not disagreement. I shall not enumerate the dozens-if-not-hundreds of people who have disagreed with me often and at length (and even sometimes with some vehemence) without being blocked, but I’ll note that you can find multiple instances of people on my block list disagreeing with me previously in ways that were just fine.
Metaphor: if you were to disagree with someone while throwing bricks at them, subsequently going “aHA! They blocked me for disagreeing!” would be disingenuous.
I didn’t say anything about “blocked for disagreeing [or criticizing]”. (Go ahead, check!)
What I said was:
The other people in question were, to my knowledge, also banned from commenting on Duncan’s posts due to their criticism of “Basics of Rationalist Discourse” (or due to related discussions, on related topics on Less Wrong)
Here Said is, as far as I can tell, arguing that “blocked for disagreeing or criticizing” is not straightforwardly synonymous with “blocked due to disagreeing or criticizing.”
In any event, none of the people in question were blocked for disagreeing or criticizing, and (saying it the other way too, just in case I’m missing some meaningful semantic difference) none of them were blocked due to disagreeing or criticizing, either.
I again mention that it’s not at all hard to find instances of people disagreeing with me or criticizing me or my ideas quite hard, without getting blocked, and that there are even plentiful instances of several of the blocked people having done so in the past (which did not, in the past, result in them getting blocked).
I think the important bit from Said’s perspective is that these people were blocked for reasons not-related-to whether they had something useful to say about those rules, so we may be missing important things.
I’ll reiterate Habryka’s take on “I do think if we were to canonize some version of the rules, that should be in a place that everyone can comment on.” And I’d go on to say: on that post we also should relax some of the more opinionated rules about how to comment. i.e. we should avoid boxing ourselves in so that it’s hard to criticize the rules in practice.
I think a separate thing Said cares about is that there is some period for arguing about the rules before they “get canonized.” I do think there should be at least some period for this, but not worried about it being particularly long because
a) the mod team has had tons of time to think about what norms are good and people have had tons of time to argue, and I think this is mostly going to be cementing things that were already de-facto site norms,
b) people can still argue about the rules after the fact (and I think comments on The Rules post, and top level posts about site norms, should have at least some more leeway about how to argue. I think there’ll probably still be some norms like, ‘don’t do ad hominem attacks’ but don’t expect that to actually cause an issue)
That said, I certainly don’t promise that everyone will be happy with the rules, the process here will not be democratic, it’ll be the judgment of the LW mod team.
(Adhering to Ray’s request of making <1 reply per hour, though in this case I was already planning to do so.)
The above fails to note something analogous to “arrested while driving ≠ arrested for driving.”
It is not in fact the case that anyone was blocked for disagreeing with or criticizing the things that I had written, though it is true that a couple of people have been blocked while disagreeing or criticizing.
EDIT: I went and looked up the fancy words for this: post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
What they were blocked for was not disagreement. I shall not enumerate the dozens-if-not-hundreds of people who have disagreed with me often and at length (and even sometimes with some vehemence) without being blocked, but I’ll note that you can find multiple instances of people on my block list disagreeing with me previously in ways that were just fine.
Metaphor: if you were to disagree with someone while throwing bricks at them, subsequently going “aHA! They blocked me for disagreeing!” would be disingenuous.
I didn’t say anything about “blocked for disagreeing [or criticizing]”. (Go ahead, check!)
What I said was:
To deny this, it seems to me, is untenable.
Here Said is, as far as I can tell, arguing that “blocked for disagreeing or criticizing” is not straightforwardly synonymous with “blocked due to disagreeing or criticizing.”
In any event, none of the people in question were blocked for disagreeing or criticizing, and (saying it the other way too, just in case I’m missing some meaningful semantic difference) none of them were blocked due to disagreeing or criticizing, either.
I again mention that it’s not at all hard to find instances of people disagreeing with me or criticizing me or my ideas quite hard, without getting blocked, and that there are even plentiful instances of several of the blocked people having done so in the past (which did not, in the past, result in them getting blocked).
I think the important bit from Said’s perspective is that these people were blocked for reasons not-related-to whether they had something useful to say about those rules, so we may be missing important things.
I’ll reiterate Habryka’s take on “I do think if we were to canonize some version of the rules, that should be in a place that everyone can comment on.” And I’d go on to say: on that post we also should relax some of the more opinionated rules about how to comment. i.e. we should avoid boxing ourselves in so that it’s hard to criticize the rules in practice.
I think a separate thing Said cares about is that there is some period for arguing about the rules before they “get canonized.” I do think there should be at least some period for this, but not worried about it being particularly long because
a) the mod team has had tons of time to think about what norms are good and people have had tons of time to argue, and I think this is mostly going to be cementing things that were already de-facto site norms,
b) people can still argue about the rules after the fact (and I think comments on The Rules post, and top level posts about site norms, should have at least some more leeway about how to argue. I think there’ll probably still be some norms like, ‘don’t do ad hominem attacks’ but don’t expect that to actually cause an issue)
That said, I certainly don’t promise that everyone will be happy with the rules, the process here will not be democratic, it’ll be the judgment of the LW mod team.
Strong upvote, strong agree.