There’s a dynamic in conversations I’m noticing here, which is probably obvious to everyone else. I think for any given conversation, there are some “attractors”—directions the conversation could go which would be easy for many of the participants, but which would ultimately end all the interesting and useful parts of the conversation. And good moderation/guidance/curation involves steering the conversation away from those attractors.
For example, the talking heads shows I saw when the NYT ran the big story about massive, warrantless wiretapping by the NSA tended to quickly go from a potentially informative discussion about the specifics of the case, to a much easier-to-have discussion[1] about whether the NYT should have published the story, perhaps even about whether publishing it amounted to treason or should have gotten someone arrested.
I’m not sure that the karma system needs to be redesigned—there’s a limit to how much you can say with a number. It might help to have a “that was fun” category, but I think part of the point of karma is that it’s easy to do, and having a bunch of karma categories might mean that people won’t use it at all or will spend a lot of time fiddling with the categories.
We may have reached the point in this group where enough of us can recognize and defuse those conversations which merely wander around the usual flowchart and encourage people to add information.
One method for dealing with such would be to have designated posts for threads on observed attractors, indexed on the wiki, and fork tangents into those threads.
In keeping with General Order Six: other methods include, as suggested, downvoting any derail into a recognized attractor, with explanation; adding known attractors to a list of banned subjects … it might be best to combine some of these, actually.
Before we start planning solutions should we perhaps establish whether there is a consensus that we even have a problem? One vote for ‘no problem’ from me.
That’s a good reason to continue permitting such discussions, but given the continuing influx of new posters, I suspect there will still be repetition.
The existence of conversational attractors is why I think any discussion tool needs to be hierarchical—so any new topic can instantly be “quarantined” in its own space.
The LW comment system does this in theory—every new comment can be the root of a new discussion—but apparently in practice some of the same “problem behaviors” (as we say here in the High Energy Children Research Laboratory) still take place.
Moreover, I don’t understand why it still happens. If you see the conversation going off in directions that aren’t interesting (however popular they may be), can’t you just press the little [-] icon to make that subthread disappear? I haven’t encountered this problem here myself, so I don’t know if there might be some reason that this doesn’t work for that purpose.
Just now I tried using that icon—not because I didn’t like the thread, but just to see what happened—and it very nicely collapsed the whole thing into a single line showing the commenter’s name, timestamp, karma points, and how many “children” the comment has. What would be nice, perhaps, is if it showed the first line of content—or even a summary which I could add to remind myself why I closed the branch. That doesn’t seem crucial, however.
How google translation works “n practice, languages are used to say the same things over and over again. ”
How potentially informative conversations go redundant
These attractors happen both because they’re easy conversation and because they’re useful for propagandists to set up
I’m not sure that the karma system needs to be redesigned—there’s a limit to how much you can say with a number. It might help to have a “that was fun” category, but I think part of the point of karma is that it’s easy to do, and having a bunch of karma categories might mean that people won’t use it at all or will spend a lot of time fiddling with the categories.
We may have reached the point in this group where enough of us can recognize and defuse those conversations which merely wander around the usual flowchart and encourage people to add information.
Ahem.
A fair example.
I may have overestimated the skill level of the group. Or maybe bringing up redundancy as a problem is the first move in developing that skill.
One method for dealing with such would be to have designated posts for threads on observed attractors, indexed on the wiki, and fork tangents into those threads.
In keeping with General Order Six: other methods include, as suggested, downvoting any derail into a recognized attractor, with explanation; adding known attractors to a list of banned subjects … it might be best to combine some of these, actually.
Before we start planning solutions should we perhaps establish whether there is a consensus that we even have a problem? One vote for ‘no problem’ from me.
Good question—let’s watch for attractors for a month, and pay attention to how many turn up.
Atrractors aren’t just subjects, they’re subjects which are commonly discussed in a way that couldn’t pass a Turing test.
If we can manage to bring out new material on one of those subjects, so much the better for us.
That’s a good reason to continue permitting such discussions, but given the continuing influx of new posters, I suspect there will still be repetition.
The existence of conversational attractors is why I think any discussion tool needs to be hierarchical—so any new topic can instantly be “quarantined” in its own space.
The LW comment system does this in theory—every new comment can be the root of a new discussion—but apparently in practice some of the same “problem behaviors” (as we say here in the High Energy Children Research Laboratory) still take place.
Moreover, I don’t understand why it still happens. If you see the conversation going off in directions that aren’t interesting (however popular they may be), can’t you just press the little [-] icon to make that subthread disappear? I haven’t encountered this problem here myself, so I don’t know if there might be some reason that this doesn’t work for that purpose.
Just now I tried using that icon—not because I didn’t like the thread, but just to see what happened—and it very nicely collapsed the whole thing into a single line showing the commenter’s name, timestamp, karma points, and how many “children” the comment has. What would be nice, perhaps, is if it showed the first line of content—or even a summary which I could add to remind myself why I closed the branch. That doesn’t seem crucial, however.