Looks like this idea was better received than I thought. :) Other than that, I actually encountered surprisingly little surprises in the comments, so I’ll just go ahead and type out my proposal for a solution right away:
So, my idea is basically like the discussion section, but with a few differences:
Most obviously, no karma effects. However, as that is LWs main gardening method another one is needed, and in fact I suggest more than one: People with high LW karma should be able to ban/unban users (from that section only and separately, obviously), and more controversially I think there should be a fairly high karma requirement for participation. I suggest 100 karma for posting, but I’m not sure if it should be the same or lower for being able to see the section at all. The idea is that people with that much karma has probably proven themselves sensible enough to handle themselves without much gardening.
Another issue that needs consideration is that of lose attitudes from the offtopic section leaking over to LW proper, I actually suggest solving this with a quick psychological hack: Have the section using a different colour scheme and/or name, possibly remove the voting buttons or make other layout changes. in short, make it feel like a different environment where it’s subconsciously obvious that the social rules are different.
I had some other detail ideas as well, but this should be enough to implementation and test to make a more informed decision on that, and I think addresses all the problems brought up in this thread. If you can find anything potentially problematic please coment on it before we do antyhing hasty, but please consider thinking about a way to modify the idea to solve the problem as well.
Looks like this idea was better received than I thought. :) Other than that, I actually encountered surprisingly little surprises in the comments, so I’ll just go ahead and type out my proposal for a solution right away:
So, my idea is basically like the discussion section, but with a few differences: Most obviously, no karma effects. However, as that is LWs main gardening method another one is needed, and in fact I suggest more than one: People with high LW karma should be able to ban/unban users (from that section only and separately, obviously), and more controversially I think there should be a fairly high karma requirement for participation. I suggest 100 karma for posting, but I’m not sure if it should be the same or lower for being able to see the section at all. The idea is that people with that much karma has probably proven themselves sensible enough to handle themselves without much gardening. Another issue that needs consideration is that of lose attitudes from the offtopic section leaking over to LW proper, I actually suggest solving this with a quick psychological hack: Have the section using a different colour scheme and/or name, possibly remove the voting buttons or make other layout changes. in short, make it feel like a different environment where it’s subconsciously obvious that the social rules are different.
I had some other detail ideas as well, but this should be enough to implementation and test to make a more informed decision on that, and I think addresses all the problems brought up in this thread. If you can find anything potentially problematic please coment on it before we do antyhing hasty, but please consider thinking about a way to modify the idea to solve the problem as well.
So, who can implement this?