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David_Allen comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 - Less Wrong
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The rot13 use is becoming excessive in this forum, there is already a spoiler warning on the post. Let EY make a special request for it when he thinks speculation goes too far.
I think the policy should be that you do not need to rot13 anything about HMPOR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.
More specificallly, (and I have to use rot13 here), vg'f svar gb jevgr nobhg Ibyqrzbeg pbagebyyvat Dhveeryy (jvgubhg hfvat ebg13), ohg lbh qb arrq gb hfr ebg13 vs lbh zragvba gur qryrgrq nhgube'f abgr nobhg gung be pynvz gung Jbeq bs Tbq unf rfgnoyvfurq gung D=I.
I affirm that this is what I think the policy should be. Speculation does not require spoilers.
Downvoted for endorsing a policy that requires people to keep track of whether something is still in the current version of the fic. I didn't know until today that the thing Unnamed put in rot13 had been "disrevealed".
I only just discovered what you meant here. I totally agree. Enforcement of 'unrevelation' spoiler policies is utterly absurd and is a norm that I would oppose rather than support.
The worst that can happen is that you make an error (and possibly fix it). A meaningful question could be, for example, whether the incentives drive the outcome in a wrong direction, or their enforcement is more trouble than it's worth.
Independent of the fact that I believe the desired outcome (less free discussion) is itself a wrong direction, it also encourages EY to be careless with authors notes in the future, due to believing he can "take them back". It also punishes people for honest mistakes.
Maybe 8 karma isn't a lot to you, but it's what I lost just for disagreeing, not even for violating the rule myself. I also think that rot13 is a bad choice, since it requires external programs - implementing a spoiler tag for comments the way there appears to be one in use in some article posts would reduce the burden both to discuss spoilers and to read those discussions. (this is more "compliance is more trouble than it's worth" than "enforcement is more trouble than it's worth", but it's a similar kind of problem.)
I think a likely result is that people either shy away from discussing it at all, or have it as an implicit assumption (to their unrot13ed posts) and are caught in a trap when someone who doesn't know asks what they're talking about. Or we end up with a lot of noise whenever someone who isn't aware of the rule runs into it.
I will add, having read some of the thread again with an eye for it, that it is enforced haphazardly. I've seen numerous posts that mention it and have a positive score.
EDIT: Here's a link to my post with a list of such posts
Don't do that. You're just helping the arbitrary punishers find more targets!
I would add: Or if X can be reasonably derived from evidence in MOR and/or canon.
I wonder how difficult it would be to add a "Rot13 this" button to the options under each text item (that is, next to "Vote up" and "Vote down" and so forth).
That would significantly reduce the nuisance factor associated with reading r13'd posts, without the site having to give up whatever value it is people see in using them.
Not that I'm offering to write the code, or anything actually useful like that. Just ruminating.
This is not an endorsement of the add-on , but if you use Firefox
/dave feels sheepish/
Yes, of course there would be such a thing, and I ought to have looked for it rather than proposing that the feature be built into the site itself. Clearly, my intuitions have been distorted by working on self-contained rather then Web apps for too many years.
Thanks for both the thought and the pointer.
If we are going automate this, we should just use spoiler tags, so the marked text can be revealed on highlighting, or when a button is clicked or whatever.
That's much too much work, and it'll be pretty bad for the website. It'll require another database query for every post on every thread (which means the site will be slower and more expensive), but it'll only be used on, what? The Harry Potter threads and the occasional brainteaser?
Textbook example of overkill.
EDIT: I misunderstood the request. I stand by it being overkill, though.
Whence the extra database queries? Presumably it could all be done on the client side in JavaScript.
I agree that it would be overkill to have it on every comment, though.
How would this be done client side? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the request, but to me it sounded like he wanted to have an option to vote to rot13 posts that you think are spoilers.
Edit: To clarify, the reason I think that's what he meant is that he said it should appear next to the vote up/vote down buttons. Those only appear after you post. I suppose you could still have a client-side rot13 button down there, but it'd be a bit useless.
You would use the button to un-rot13 spoilers that the poster had already rot13-ed. It would be for the convenience of the reader only.
The Firefox add-on is even better if it can rot13 inside TEXTAREAs, which is a convenience for the writer as well.
QuickROT sort of works inside text fields. Select, rightclick, QR, copy to clipboard, paste (your text has stayed selected).
The drawback is that QuickRot won't appear for the same text more than once, even if it's in a different text field in a different tab.
It was earlier pointed out to me that the same goal can be achieved already (and without any changes to database interaction) by means of a browser plugin, which is a superior approach all around and makes this whole thread moot. So, yes, agreed that it was a lousy idea in the first place.
EY has made such a special request for it, and most of the rot13 content here is in compliance with that particular request.
I've noted a general request to rot13 actual knowledge of future events, but that this does not cover speculation on future events or on possible reasons for past event.
I've seen only a specific request from EY on a specific post, but it wasn't clear to me that this expanded the general rule.
Did I miss a critical point here?
My answer in more annoying rot13, to be very explicit:
Vg jnf erirnyrq ol RL va na nhgube'f abgr gung Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg, orpnhfr ur jnf sehfgengrq gung ur rkcrpgrq uvf ernqref gb vaghvg gung ohg fbzr crbcyr jrer abg trggvat vg. Ubjrire, ur'f orra pbaivaprq gung vg orvat nzovthbhf jurgure Dhveeryy vf Ibyqrzbeg vf n tbbq guvat, fb unf erzbirq gur nofheqyl oyngnag uvag ur oevrsyl nqqrq gb bar puncgre naq unf orra pbafvqrevat vg n fcbvyre rire fvapr. Nyfb eryngrq vf gur snpg gung Dhveeryy!zbeg ghearq gur Cvbarre cyndhr vagb n ubepehk.
Perfect, thanks for the clarification.
I will respond in kind to maintain that rule:
Vg vf snve sebz pnaba, naq bhgfvqr bs RL'f fgngrzragf gb nffhzr D=I. Ng yrnfg nf snve nf nal bgure fcrphyngvba va guvf sbehz. Fb V jbhyq nethr gung pbzzragf yvxr guvf bar sebz lbh ner vaureragyl serr sebz gung pbagnzvangvba, hayrff lbh ersre gb RL'f pbasvezngvba qverpgyl:
Just my opinion, perhaps we should let the lawyers fight it out. :)