1) I notice that the norm of discouraging politics focuses on hot-button political issues instead of politics in general. Is this an intentional shift? For example, are general discussions of politics that stays out of controversial areas no longer discouraged? I’m also curious how this interacts with comments given that commentators may engage with these issues, even if the OP did not. 2) I feel that there needs to be a mechanism for sufficiently important meta posts like this one to appear on the front page. Otherwise only a few people will see this and it will take longer for the intended norms to be adopted by the community.
Personally, that seems to me to draw the right line. Discussion of (say) economics or alternate voting procedures, while clearly political, also feel to me like useful rationality content. On the other hand, a post about race or gender or Donald Trump would have to be really exceptional to be worthwhile.
I agree with ozymandias’s comment. I don’t expect the amount of political discussion on LessWrong to increase; there have been a few great posts that can be called political on this site (the first three that come to my mind are by Eliezer, Scott, and Hallquist), but these each navigate fairly well around causing the commenters to feel like (and read others as) soldiers for a side, and don’t get heated as a result. And most importantly, they also make really good points.
Yes—these are guidelines for posts and comments.
As to (2) I basically agree and will do something about this in the coming weeks.
>Note that this guide doesn’t apply to your personal LW blog—you can do whatever you like there. This post talks about the norms and epistemic standards encouraged on the frontpage of LessWrong.
In practice, I was concerned about this issue and discussed it with a moderator ahead of time; they signed off on my plan of putting it on my personal blog feed without promoting it to the front page.
1) I notice that the norm of discouraging politics focuses on hot-button political issues instead of politics in general. Is this an intentional shift? For example, are general discussions of politics that stays out of controversial areas no longer discouraged? I’m also curious how this interacts with comments given that commentators may engage with these issues, even if the OP did not.
2) I feel that there needs to be a mechanism for sufficiently important meta posts like this one to appear on the front page. Otherwise only a few people will see this and it will take longer for the intended norms to be adopted by the community.
Personally, that seems to me to draw the right line. Discussion of (say) economics or alternate voting procedures, while clearly political, also feel to me like useful rationality content. On the other hand, a post about race or gender or Donald Trump would have to be really exceptional to be worthwhile.
I agree with ozymandias’s comment. I don’t expect the amount of political discussion on LessWrong to increase; there have been a few great posts that can be called political on this site (the first three that come to my mind are by Eliezer, Scott, and Hallquist), but these each navigate fairly well around causing the commenters to feel like (and read others as) soldiers for a side, and don’t get heated as a result. And most importantly, they also make really good points.
Yes—these are guidelines for posts and comments.
As to (2) I basically agree and will do something about this in the coming weeks.
What about ostensibly apolitical posts that nonetheless use hot button issues as examples?
What about situations where a hot button issue comes up in the context of discussion?
>Note that this guide doesn’t apply to your personal LW blog—you can do whatever you like there. This post talks about the norms and epistemic standards encouraged on the frontpage of LessWrong.
In practice, I was concerned about this issue and discussed it with a moderator ahead of time; they signed off on my plan of putting it on my personal blog feed without promoting it to the front page.
(Unrelated: HOW DO YOU FORMAT QUOTES)
(There’s a quotes button in the editor bar at the bottom. Consider:
If you for some reason don’t have the editor bar, ping us in intercom, with your browser edition and what platform you’re on.)