In retrospect, reading this thread is hilarious to me since I have been so inactive a user as to not have built up a model of any of the users who have been active since late 2011.
You could argue that I have a poor or no theory of mind, but it is still fun attempting to construct temporary models for everyone based solely on the contents of this thread (I have no time to read the previous five years backlog).
Personally I think that there should be a lower limit of lesswrong culture/rationality in each post regardless of it’s niceness content, and have a preference towards nicer posts, though (and this next sentence will turn a lot of people against me) making the forum too accessible will encourage Endless September effects worse than what the community on this site is currently buckling under.
It doesn’t have to be a trade-off between rationality and politeness. Maybe we could downvote both comments that are stupid and comments that are rude. (Polite but not smart comments could be ignored, and only insightful non-rude comments upvoted.)
I’d argue for more strict dealing of downvote moderation, a higher waterline, if you like; noninsightful posts get downvoted (and otherwise ignored, or if specifically wrong, corrected) and impolite posts also get down-voted and responded to with an explanation.
Explanatory responses might need to be encouraged more, in order to permit the author to know why exactly their post is being downvoted, but I’m wary of encouraging the lesswrong community to become more of a politeness before reason community than it already has, and so many other communities out there have.
Same, unfortunately, I consider this site to be a mostly sunk ship, as previously stated, I’ve been mostly inactive since 2011, and I never really posted here anyway.
In retrospect, reading this thread is hilarious to me since I have been so inactive a user as to not have built up a model of any of the users who have been active since late 2011. You could argue that I have a poor or no theory of mind, but it is still fun attempting to construct temporary models for everyone based solely on the contents of this thread (I have no time to read the previous five years backlog).
Personally I think that there should be a lower limit of lesswrong culture/rationality in each post regardless of it’s niceness content, and have a preference towards nicer posts, though (and this next sentence will turn a lot of people against me) making the forum too accessible will encourage Endless September effects worse than what the community on this site is currently buckling under.
It doesn’t have to be a trade-off between rationality and politeness. Maybe we could downvote both comments that are stupid and comments that are rude. (Polite but not smart comments could be ignored, and only insightful non-rude comments upvoted.)
I wonder who downvoted you.
I’d argue for more strict dealing of downvote moderation, a higher waterline, if you like; noninsightful posts get downvoted (and otherwise ignored, or if specifically wrong, corrected) and impolite posts also get down-voted and responded to with an explanation. Explanatory responses might need to be encouraged more, in order to permit the author to know why exactly their post is being downvoted, but I’m wary of encouraging the lesswrong community to become more of a politeness before reason community than it already has, and so many other communities out there have.
I treat up/downvoting not as a carrot or a stick, but as a message. Accordingly, I either downvote or reply, not both (with rare exceptions).
Basically, if I bother to reply, there is no need for an up/downvote since I’ve sent a better message.
As an aside, I don’t think that tinkering with voting will solve any of LW’s problems.
Same, unfortunately, I consider this site to be a mostly sunk ship, as previously stated, I’ve been mostly inactive since 2011, and I never really posted here anyway.