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PhilGoetz comments on Meta: LW Policy: When to prohibit Alice from replying to Bob's arguments? - Less Wrong
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Comments (81)
I saw something for the first time today. I replied to a comment that had been down-voted, and the site asked me,
So, if one person dislikes a comment, it shouldn't be responded to? I disagree strongly. This makes the site enforce a tyranny of the majority. It punishes resistance to groupthink.
I don't think Alice should be prohibited from responding to Bob, ever. If two users create drama with back-and-forth responses, they have both chosen to do so.
I think it requires at least 3 downvotes for the penalty to apply.
I missed some of the earlier threads and didn't want to reignite them. I feel more comfortable replying to PhilGoetz's comment since it's only from two days ago.
One problem that I didn't see anyone discuss is that this feature is likely to drive away new users. This policy discourages interaction with new users because unpopular comments overlap significantly with comments from new users. By discouraging commenters from responding to the low quality posts of new users, we disincentivize the picking of low hanging fruit, which is the opposite of what we should be doing. In addition, by doling out karma penalties at a set level rather than as a fraction of total accumulated karma, new users face much heavier fees than regular users, which will also result in increased insularity.
There have already been several threads related to this change. Opinion is divided; nearly everyone opposes it, but Eliezer supports it.
I'm not sure which way this bears on the "Lw is just a cult of personality around Eliezer" hypothesis. On the one hand, lots of people opposed Eliezer on something. On the other, we let him get away with this shit and don't just leave.
Perhaps LW was originally a personality cult around Eliezer and now it just has Eliezer around as historic legacy that is too hard to get rid of for logistical reasons (like namespace ownership). Kind of like the UK still has a Queen as a head of state.
I think it says more about Trike Apps and SI kowtowing to Eliezer than anything.
On reflection, this has made me less inclined to donate to SI than I was before. (I had already been thinking recently that FHI was probably a better organization to donate to for a variety of reasons, ever since I discovered that donations from US citizens to FHI can be tax deductible.)
How would “just leaving” solve anything?
Well, there's the obvious answer: this forum exists because people participate in it. If people didn't participate in it, it would cease to exist. If I value its continued existence (either for its own sake, or for the sake of greater rationality in the world, or for the sake of greater fundraising opportunities, or for whatever reason), then a credible threat of non-participation by a significant fraction of active users threatens something I value, and I might therefore be motivated to change my behavior due to such a threat. One way to make such threats more credible is by demonstrating that users will in fact stop participating over behaviors in a specific class.
In addition to what TheOtherDave said, forums are cheap, and we could just as well be on a site without a dictator if we felt like it.
You've exaggerated in a few places, as follows.
It's mild evidence for the statement that it shouldn't be responded to.
It's not clear that there is a "tyranny" with typical connotations, so the word shouldn't be used without clarification.
Not "ever". The choices that affect many other people negatively should be discouraged, or their effect neutralized in some way, if possible.
Hm, how about "philosopher-king of the majority"?