rhollerith_dot_com comments on Should you try to do good work on LW? - Less Wrong

36 Post author: cousin_it 05 July 2012 12:36PM

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Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 06 July 2012 06:57:32PM *  5 points [-]

Downvoted.

I hope I would downvote any comment containing the judgement-words "nonsense", "sociopathic" and "trash" (referring to a subset of the LW readership) regardless of the position being advocated. The book Non-violent Communication advises making observations and expressing feelings, but avoiding rendering judgments. A "judgement" can be defined as a phrase or statement that can be expected to diminish the status or moral standing of a person or group.

Parenthetically, it has been proposed that one of the ways online forums unravel over time is that a few people who like making strong judgments show up and get into long conversations with each other, which tends to discourage participants for whom the strong judgments distract from their reasons for participating.