Idle curiosity / possibility of post being deleted:
At one point in LessWrong’s past (some time in the last year, I think), I seem to recall replying to a post regarding matters of a basilisk nature. I believe that the post I replied to was along these lines:
Given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of continuing to post discussions of this matter?
I believe my response was long the lines of:
I hate to use silly reflective humor, but given that the information has been leaked, what is the point of censoring discussions of this matter?
At this time, I am unable to find these posts. Am I being paranoid, or was perhaps this thread deleted?
My tactic when trying to find this kind of reference is to use a user page search. If you can recall a suitable keyword then it you should be able to find the discussion here. I couldn’t find anything based on ‘basilisk’ or ‘censor’, unfortunately.
What is EY thinking hiding this? Unless… he thinks it’s right or might be, but only if we… no, even then, it’s best dealt with as quietly as it would be if it were never touched. No one would be thinking about this if it were left open.
It was not hidden because of the basilisk, but because it was a reply to a −4 post. It is no longer invisible on the user page. You can test my claim by downvoting the parent to −4 and reloading that user page.
Please don’t. This feature is a heuristic for reducing low-quality clutter (in the global comments feed and on the post pages). Assuming it usually works, precommitting to upvoting hidden comments amounts to precommitting to reducing of the average quality of the visible comments.
(The hidden comments are visible under the “comments” tab of user pages, just not under “overview”. Wei’s tool can be easily fixed to look at that page instead of “overview”.)
Thanks for telling me about this undocumented feature. Was there any way for me to learn about it other than yelling my head off? Is this the feedback you want to give?
PS—I’m not changing my actions until Wei’s tool stops invisibly failing.
PPS—here is the corresponding comments page on which the visibility of the particular comment does not seem to depend on the visibility of the parent.
I’m not changing my actions until Wei’s tool stops invisibly failing.
These things don’t seem related. Don’t express your frustration by randomly punishing the community.
(For example, if you believed that the hiding feature makes things worse, that might be a motivation to oppose it, although the method is anarchic, something like personally destroying draconian speed limit signs; but so far you haven’t indicated that there is any motivation at all.)
This is the supposed Modus Operandi of the admins (or maybe only EY) - making such comments hard to find without deleting them. It has been mentioned here and there and I am fairly sure I experienced a version of this recently when the latest comment in the Open Thread feature on the sidebar stopped showing the latest comment for the duration of this (it could’ve been a coincidence and it is a decent way to lessen the Streisand effect so I don’t blame EY for it)
It can be found from your user page. Click the Comments tab, go to the bottom and click Next, and (currently) it will be on that page.
As far as I can tell, the Comments tab shows you all of your comments, but the Overview tab omits anything with an ancestor downvoted to −4 or below (and maybe also anything with a banned ancestor).
Deletion by the admins does not hide comments from either “overview” or “comments,” at least not today.
Please don’t use the word “ban” to refer to deletion of comments. It very often confuses people and make them think users are being banned. Admins do it because their UI uses it, but that’s a terrible reason.
Idle curiosity / possibility of post being deleted:
At one point in LessWrong’s past (some time in the last year, I think), I seem to recall replying to a post regarding matters of a basilisk nature. I believe that the post I replied to was along these lines:
I believe my response was long the lines of:
At this time, I am unable to find these posts. Am I being paranoid, or was perhaps this thread deleted?
My tactic when trying to find this kind of reference is to use a user page search. If you can recall a suitable keyword then it you should be able to find the discussion here. I couldn’t find anything based on ‘basilisk’ or ‘censor’, unfortunately.
After more work than I would honestly prefer to put into such an effort, I eventually found this post:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/goe/open_thread_february_1528_2013/8iuo
As a curiosity, this post cannot be found from my user-page, nor can it be found via Wei Dai’s app. Fascinating.
What is EY thinking hiding this? Unless… he thinks it’s right or might be, but only if we… no, even then, it’s best dealt with as quietly as it would be if it were never touched. No one would be thinking about this if it were left open.
It was not hidden because of the basilisk, but because it was a reply to a −4 post. It is no longer invisible on the user page. You can test my claim by downvoting the parent to −4 and reloading that user page.
I COMMIT TO UPVOTING EVERY HIDDEN COMMENT.
Please don’t. This feature is a heuristic for reducing low-quality clutter (in the global comments feed and on the post pages). Assuming it usually works, precommitting to upvoting hidden comments amounts to precommitting to reducing of the average quality of the visible comments.
(The hidden comments are visible under the “comments” tab of user pages, just not under “overview”. Wei’s tool can be easily fixed to look at that page instead of “overview”.)
Thanks for telling me about this undocumented feature. Was there any way for me to learn about it other than yelling my head off? Is this the feedback you want to give?
PS—I’m not changing my actions until Wei’s tool stops invisibly failing.
PPS—here is the corresponding comments page on which the visibility of the particular comment does not seem to depend on the visibility of the parent.
These things don’t seem related. Don’t express your frustration by randomly punishing the community.
(For example, if you believed that the hiding feature makes things worse, that might be a motivation to oppose it, although the method is anarchic, something like personally destroying draconian speed limit signs; but so far you haven’t indicated that there is any motivation at all.)
This is the supposed Modus Operandi of the admins (or maybe only EY) - making such comments hard to find without deleting them. It has been mentioned here and there and I am fairly sure I experienced a version of this recently when the latest comment in the Open Thread feature on the sidebar stopped showing the latest comment for the duration of this (it could’ve been a coincidence and it is a decent way to lessen the Streisand effect so I don’t blame EY for it)
It can be found from your user page. Click the Comments tab, go to the bottom and click Next, and (currently) it will be on that page.
As far as I can tell, the Comments tab shows you all of your comments, but the Overview tab omits anything with an ancestor downvoted to −4 or below (and maybe also anything with a banned ancestor).
Deletion by the admins does not hide comments from either “overview” or “comments,” at least not today.
Please don’t use the word “ban” to refer to deletion of comments. It very often confuses people and make them think users are being banned. Admins do it because their UI uses it, but that’s a terrible reason.