On one level I appreciate this post as it provides delicious juicy social drama that my monkey brain craves and enjoys on a base, voyeuristic level. (I recognize this as being a moderately disgusting admission, considering the specific subject matter; but I’m also pretty confident that most people feel the same, deep down.) I also think there is a degree of value to understanding the thought processes behind community moderation, but I also think that value is mixed.
On another level, I would rather not know about this. I am fine with Less Wrong being moderated by a shadowy cabal. If the shadowy cabal starts making terrible moderation decisions, for example banning everyone who is insufficiently ideologically pure, or just going crazy in some general way, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it anyway. The good/sane/reasonable moderator subjects their decisions to scrutiny, and thus stands to be perpetually criticized. The bad/evil moderator does whatever they want, doesn’t even try to open up a dialogue, and usually gets away with it.
Fundamentally you stand to gain little and lose much by making posts like this, and now I’ve spent my morning indulging myself reading up on drama that has not improved my life in any way.
it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it anyway.
Not having control of a website isn’t the same thing as “nothing I can do.” If an authority who you used to trust goes subtly crazy in a way that you can detect, but you see other people still trusting the authority, you could do those other people a favor by telling them, “Hey, I think the authority has gone crazy, which conclusion I came to on the basis of this-and-such evidence. Maybe you should stop trusting the authority!”
The good/sane/reasonable moderator subjects their decisions to scrutiny, and thus stands to be perpetually criticized.
Right, and then they update on the good criticism (that contains useful information about how to be a better moderator) and ignore the bad criticism (that does not contain useful information). That’s how communication works. Would you prefer to not be perpetually criticized?!
Fundamentally you stand to gain little and lose much by making posts like this
For the record, I view the fact that I commented in the first place, and that I now feel compelled to defend my comment, as being Exhibit A of the thing that I’m whining about. We chimps feel compelled to get in on the action when the fabric of the tribe is threatened. Making the banning of a badguy the subject of a discussion rather than being an act of unremarked moderator fiat basically sucks everybody nearby into a vortex of social wagon-circling, signaling, and reading a bunch of links to figure out which chimps are on the good guy team and which chimps are on the bad guy team. It’s a significant cognitive burden to impose on people, a bit like an @everyone in a Discord channel, in that it draws attention and energy in vastly disproportionate scope relative to the value it provides.
If we were talking about something socio-emotionally neutral like changing the color scheme or something, cool, great, ask the community. I have no opinion on the color scheme, and I’m allowed to have no opinion on the color scheme. But if you ask me what my opinion is on Prominent Community Abuser, I can’t beg off. That’s not an allowed social move. Better not to ask, or if you’re going to ask, be aware of what you’re asking.
Sure, you can pull the “but we’re supposed to be Rationalists(tm)” card, as you do in your last paragraph, but the Rationalist community has pretty consistently failed to show any evidence of actually being superior, or even very good, at negotiating social blow-ups.
nods I do agree with this to a significant degree. Note that one of the reasons for the frontpage/personal distinction is to allow people to opt-out of a lot of social-drama stuff, and generally create a space (the frontpage) in which you don’t have to keep track of a lot of this social stuff, and can focus on the epistemic content of the posts.
I agree with most of this, and do think that it’s very clearly worth it for us to continue announcing and publicly communicating anything in the reference class of the OP (as well as the vast majority of things less large than that).
it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it anyway.
It’s sad it’s gotten that bad with the current iteration of LW. Users here used to think they have a chance at influencing how things are done and plenty of things were heavily community-influenced despite having a benevolent dictator for life.
Users here used to think they have a chance at influencing how things are done and plenty of things were heavily community-influenced despite having a benevolent dictator for life.
I wasn’t really intending to criticize the status quo. Social consensus has its place. I’m not sure moderation decisions like this one require social consensus.
I think you are misunderstanding the comment above. As moridinamael says, this is about the counterfactual in which the moderation team goes crazy for some reason, which I think mostly bottoms out in where the actual power lies. If Eliezer decides to ban everyone tomorrow, he was always able to do that, and I don’t think anyone would really have the ability to stop him now (since MIRI still owns the URL and a lot of the data). This has always been the case, and if anything is less the case now, but in either case is a counterfactual I don’t think we should optimize too much for.
If you’re looking for feedback …
On one level I appreciate this post as it provides delicious juicy social drama that my monkey brain craves and enjoys on a base, voyeuristic level. (I recognize this as being a moderately disgusting admission, considering the specific subject matter; but I’m also pretty confident that most people feel the same, deep down.) I also think there is a degree of value to understanding the thought processes behind community moderation, but I also think that value is mixed.
On another level, I would rather not know about this. I am fine with Less Wrong being moderated by a shadowy cabal. If the shadowy cabal starts making terrible moderation decisions, for example banning everyone who is insufficiently ideologically pure, or just going crazy in some general way, it’s not like there’s anything I can do about it anyway. The good/sane/reasonable moderator subjects their decisions to scrutiny, and thus stands to be perpetually criticized. The bad/evil moderator does whatever they want, doesn’t even try to open up a dialogue, and usually gets away with it.
Fundamentally you stand to gain little and lose much by making posts like this, and now I’ve spent my morning indulging myself reading up on drama that has not improved my life in any way.
Not having control of a website isn’t the same thing as “nothing I can do.” If an authority who you used to trust goes subtly crazy in a way that you can detect, but you see other people still trusting the authority, you could do those other people a favor by telling them, “Hey, I think the authority has gone crazy, which conclusion I came to on the basis of this-and-such evidence. Maybe you should stop trusting the authority!”
Right, and then they update on the good criticism (that contains useful information about how to be a better moderator) and ignore the bad criticism (that does not contain useful information). That’s how communication works. Would you prefer to not be perpetually criticized?!
In a system of asymmetric justice where people are mostly competing to avoid being personally blamed for anything, sure. Maybe a website devoted to discovering and mastering the art of systematically correct reasoning should aspire to a higher standard than not getting personally blamed for anything?!
For the record, I view the fact that I commented in the first place, and that I now feel compelled to defend my comment, as being Exhibit A of the thing that I’m whining about. We chimps feel compelled to get in on the action when the fabric of the tribe is threatened. Making the banning of a badguy the subject of a discussion rather than being an act of unremarked moderator fiat basically sucks everybody nearby into a vortex of social wagon-circling, signaling, and reading a bunch of links to figure out which chimps are on the good guy team and which chimps are on the bad guy team. It’s a significant cognitive burden to impose on people, a bit like an @everyone in a Discord channel, in that it draws attention and energy in vastly disproportionate scope relative to the value it provides.
If we were talking about something socio-emotionally neutral like changing the color scheme or something, cool, great, ask the community. I have no opinion on the color scheme, and I’m allowed to have no opinion on the color scheme. But if you ask me what my opinion is on Prominent Community Abuser, I can’t beg off. That’s not an allowed social move. Better not to ask, or if you’re going to ask, be aware of what you’re asking.
Sure, you can pull the “but we’re supposed to be Rationalists(tm)” card, as you do in your last paragraph, but the Rationalist community has pretty consistently failed to show any evidence of actually being superior, or even very good, at negotiating social blow-ups.
I agree that the attention sinkhole is a problem.
nods I do agree with this to a significant degree. Note that one of the reasons for the frontpage/personal distinction is to allow people to opt-out of a lot of social-drama stuff, and generally create a space (the frontpage) in which you don’t have to keep track of a lot of this social stuff, and can focus on the epistemic content of the posts.
I agree with most of this, and do think that it’s very clearly worth it for us to continue announcing and publicly communicating anything in the reference class of the OP (as well as the vast majority of things less large than that).
It’s sad it’s gotten that bad with the current iteration of LW. Users here used to think they have a chance at influencing how things are done and plenty of things were heavily community-influenced despite having a benevolent dictator for life.
That is… not how I would characterize the days when Eliezer was the primary moderator.
I mean, he uses the exact same phrase I do here but yes, I see your point.
I wasn’t really intending to criticize the status quo. Social consensus has its place. I’m not sure moderation decisions like this one require social consensus.
I think you are misunderstanding the comment above. As moridinamael says, this is about the counterfactual in which the moderation team goes crazy for some reason, which I think mostly bottoms out in where the actual power lies. If Eliezer decides to ban everyone tomorrow, he was always able to do that, and I don’t think anyone would really have the ability to stop him now (since MIRI still owns the URL and a lot of the data). This has always been the case, and if anything is less the case now, but in either case is a counterfactual I don’t think we should optimize too much for.