If you have a sufficiently persistent person and inflexible moderation policy, one person really is enough to destroy a website.
I agree that destructive people can do a lot of damage, and that removing them is a good idea. I also agree that destructiveness doesn’t even require maliciousness.
The strategy I’d like to see is “cultivate dissent.” If someone is being critical in an unproductive way, then show them the productive way to be critical, and if they fail to shape up, then remove them from the community, through a ban or deletion/hiding of comments. Documenting the steps along the way, and linking to previous warnings, makes it clear to observers that dissent is carefully managed, not suppressed.
Tying the moderator reaction to whether or not the criticism is fun to receive, rather than if it is useful to receive, is a recipe for receiving fun but useless criticisms and not receiving unfun but useful criticisms.
Receiving and processing unfun but useful criticisms is a core part of rationality, to the point that there are litanies about it.
The most unsuccessful thing about the message deletion is that now I am insatiable curious about what the message said and am thinking way more about that, and having to spend cognitive effort worrying about whether Eliezer overstepped his bounds or not, in a way that (I suspect) is at least as bad as whatever the original comment was. (This remains the case whether or not the message was truly awful)
If someone is being critical in an unproductive way, then show them the productive way to be critical, and if they fail to shape up, then remove them from the community, through a ban or deletion/hiding of comments.
How specifically? I imagine it would be good to tell certain people: “you have already written twenty comments with almost the same content, so either write a full article about it, or shut up”.
The idea is that writing an article requires more work, better thinking, and now you are a person who must defend an idea instead of just attacking people who have different ideas. Also an article focuses the discussion of one topic on one place.
Even if someone e.g. thinks that the whole LessWrong community is Eliezer’s suicidal cult, I would prefer if the person collected all their best evidence at one place, so people can focus on one topic and discuss it thoroughly, instead of posting dozens of sarcastic remarks in various, often unrelated places.
I imagine it would be good to tell certain people: “you have already written twenty comments with almost the same content, so either write a full article about it, or shut up”.
I like this idea quite a bit, though I would word it more politely.
I also imagine that many posters would benefit from suggestions on how to alter their commenting style in general, as well as specific suggestions about how to apply those communication principles to this situation.
Tying the moderator reaction to whether or not the criticism is fun to receive, rather than if it is useful to receive, is a recipe for receiving fun but useless criticisms and not receiving unfun but useful criticisms.
I agree that destructive people can do a lot of damage, and that removing them is a good idea. I also agree that destructiveness doesn’t even require maliciousness.
The strategy I’d like to see is “cultivate dissent.” If someone is being critical in an unproductive way, then show them the productive way to be critical, and if they fail to shape up, then remove them from the community, through a ban or deletion/hiding of comments. Documenting the steps along the way, and linking to previous warnings, makes it clear to observers that dissent is carefully managed, not suppressed.
Tying the moderator reaction to whether or not the criticism is fun to receive, rather than if it is useful to receive, is a recipe for receiving fun but useless criticisms and not receiving unfun but useful criticisms.
Receiving and processing unfun but useful criticisms is a core part of rationality, to the point that there are litanies about it.
Very much agree with this.
The most unsuccessful thing about the message deletion is that now I am insatiable curious about what the message said and am thinking way more about that, and having to spend cognitive effort worrying about whether Eliezer overstepped his bounds or not, in a way that (I suspect) is at least as bad as whatever the original comment was. (This remains the case whether or not the message was truly awful)
How specifically? I imagine it would be good to tell certain people: “you have already written twenty comments with almost the same content, so either write a full article about it, or shut up”.
The idea is that writing an article requires more work, better thinking, and now you are a person who must defend an idea instead of just attacking people who have different ideas. Also an article focuses the discussion of one topic on one place.
Even if someone e.g. thinks that the whole LessWrong community is Eliezer’s suicidal cult, I would prefer if the person collected all their best evidence at one place, so people can focus on one topic and discuss it thoroughly, instead of posting dozens of sarcastic remarks in various, often unrelated places.
I like this idea quite a bit, though I would word it more politely.
I also imagine that many posters would benefit from suggestions on how to alter their commenting style in general, as well as specific suggestions about how to apply those communication principles to this situation.
Useless criticisms are no fun at all.