It would be better if the “guardians of proper behavior” had options beyond “permaban or nothing”.
I mean, for serious wrongdoing—permaban; of course. But for mere annoying behavior—verbal admonishment in private, verbal admonishment in public, second admonishment, temporary ban, and only after everything else fails, permaban. This would be a more gentle approach.
Counter-intuitively, the gentler approach would require more authority and trust in the guardians. The verbal admonishment needs to be taken seriously by everyone else, otherwise the admonished person will not take it seriously, and thus it is a waste of time. (Unfortunately, as I know my people, the most likely reaction would be a loud and long debate about what are the proper norms, what is the best algorithm to decide what are the norms, whether the guardians are overstepping the line, and whether telling someone “dude, she said she was not interested, leave her alone” means that the entire community is epistemically rotten, corrupted by wokeness, and tomorrow the wrongthinkers will be probably be taken to death camps.) It is important for the admonishments to be cheap (cognitively and emotionally) for the guardians, otherwise they will hesitate to react, and the entire system will revert back to “we only act when the situation is clearly horrible”, in which case the appropriate outcome is indeed the permaban.
Less Wrong has put a lot of effort into creating other options and automating them. Downvoted allow subtle user feedback. Mass sock puppet voting previously ruined down votes, so they put effort into controlling sock puppets. Weighted votes so trusted people have more impact. Too many downvoted comments will lead to throttling but not bans.
My sense is these have improved things a lot, but we’re also far from my ideal outcome.
It would be better if the “guardians of proper behavior” had options beyond “permaban or nothing”.
I mean, for serious wrongdoing—permaban; of course. But for mere annoying behavior—verbal admonishment in private, verbal admonishment in public, second admonishment, temporary ban, and only after everything else fails, permaban. This would be a more gentle approach.
Counter-intuitively, the gentler approach would require more authority and trust in the guardians. The verbal admonishment needs to be taken seriously by everyone else, otherwise the admonished person will not take it seriously, and thus it is a waste of time. (Unfortunately, as I know my people, the most likely reaction would be a loud and long debate about what are the proper norms, what is the best algorithm to decide what are the norms, whether the guardians are overstepping the line, and whether telling someone “dude, she said she was not interested, leave her alone” means that the entire community is epistemically rotten, corrupted by wokeness, and tomorrow the wrongthinkers will be probably be taken to death camps.) It is important for the admonishments to be cheap (cognitively and emotionally) for the guardians, otherwise they will hesitate to react, and the entire system will revert back to “we only act when the situation is clearly horrible”, in which case the appropriate outcome is indeed the permaban.
Less Wrong has put a lot of effort into creating other options and automating them. Downvoted allow subtle user feedback. Mass sock puppet voting previously ruined down votes, so they put effort into controlling sock puppets. Weighted votes so trusted people have more impact. Too many downvoted comments will lead to throttling but not bans.
My sense is these have improved things a lot, but we’re also far from my ideal outcome.