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cata comments on Reasons for someone to "ignore" you - Less Wrong
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Many times in the past I have felt like I should respond to someone's message, but I put it off for some trivial reason. Later, I feel too guilty about ignoring it to reply, and then the next time I feel even guiltier, and then I never respond to hide my shame. Seriously.
Since no one else seems to have said this yet: I like getting responses, and even huge delays are not an issue! :)
I occasionally reply to year old posts, and occasionally get replies to year old comments/posts of mine. I enjoy both of these situations - the latter tends to prompt me to revisit a topic, and I'll often have new insights or perspective since I've only been at this 'rationality' thing for a couple years.
5-day-old responses are rarely even noticed by me - I'm used to 1-2 weeks for a reply to m personal email! Not everyone checks the internet daily, and people often vanish for weekends, vacations, or just general being-busy or low-on-spoons.
Edit: I'd also suggest that a community norm of "It's okay to reply, even 2 years later" would be cool - if the person being-replied-to doesn't want to revisit the topic, they can just ignore the reply, after all.
I think we already have that norm on Less Wrong -- I see lots of replies to old comments in the Recent Comments pane, often creating new trails of discussion months or years after the parent comment. I like it very much.
Judging by the comments on this thread, it seemed that a lot of people still felt guilt, so I assumed that "this is okay" is not a clear community norm, despite the actual behavior being quite common. I wanted to signal boost "I am okay with this, and I strongly suspect so are a lot of people" without lying and claiming I actually knew how the community-at-large felt :)
Me too. I get frustrated by forums where old threads are routinely closed, or where participants are rebuked for bumping an old thread.
Or forums where you post something, arguing why open discussion of a certain topic should be allowed, and your comment is rendered selectively invisible a few minutes after you make it.
I'm told it is only worth arguing about such things at Alicorn's Dinner Parties. Although I can't imagine it is the optimal strategy for being invited back.
It's not really that helpful to argue it at my dinner parties, either. I'm at all of them, I oppose the karma tax, it's still here.
I was going to retract that comment... I have No Opinion on the advisability of current moderation policy and practice, in general. It's just this one issue where I hope that the powers will eventually see sense; so complaining about the bare fact that they choose to exercise their authority is not the thing to do.
I'd suggest that not only would such a norm be cool, it actually is cool.
I have left more than one online community for similar reason. The flow chart goes roughly like this:
I perfectly know this is absolutely stupid, and I try to avoid this behavior as much as I can, but it still pops up sometimes (still have to fully hack myself).
I suppose that you can use a canned "I have read your comment, will think about it and might or might not reply later" reply to break the pattern at step 3.
This seems a very practical and probably effective approach. I fear that in a more general environment this might come off as rude, but it's also possible that the same thought process that sometimes leads me into the above cycle is making me misjudge the possible people reactions. No way to know if I don't try, I guess.
If I think a comment needs a response, but I failed to get back to it for a long time, I will just reply anyway. I am the same way with email. I must come across as very aloof because I often let a message sit for a week, and sometimes several weeks, before getting back to them.
So far, nothing has exploded.
Again (see answer to shminux comment), it's possible that I'm exaggerating people feelings in this situation, and nobody really cares if I answer late to them. Reversing the situation, I would probably be fine to receive a late answer to a (non-urgent) question.
I'm not sure if this has happened to me with regard to LW comments, but I've certainly experienced this with replying to e-mails.
Yes, this has really fucked me up with emails, phone calls, and letters more so than anything like LW comments. Luckily, I've largely overcome it nowadays through conscious TDT-style reasoning.
It's pretty reassuring to know that other people suffer from the same ridiculously dumb problem.
My problem is that I need to train myself such that whenever a case like that happens, I actually consider the problem in an appropriately rational state of mind and apply TDT-style reasoning. Otherwise, I just make fake commitments that don't register and never get executed.
This sounds like something important to train for in general though.
I do this all the damn time with e-mails. Standard LW term is ugh field.
For me, the main reason why if I don't reply to a comment straight away I don't reply to it ever, is that I forget to. Sometimes (twice a month or so) I re-read my inbox to make sure there aren't comments I meant to reply to but forget to. And when I remember to, I don't click on the inbox icon (so it stays red) unless I'm on a device on which it's comfortable for me to reply.
Have you considered writing those things down? My life got immediately and significantly better after I started writing down all the things I have to do. Even though I didn't know it, forgetting about things had been a huge problem for me, so writing it all down fixed that problem, eliminated most of the guilt I felt for not getting stuff done, and allowed me to work on things in a sensible order instead of just doing whatever things randomly come to mind.
I occasionally do that, but most often I even forget to do that! I ought to make sure I always have paper and a pencil in my pocket so I can write stuff down as soon as it crosses my mind, so as to overcome the trivial inconvenience of having to get a pencil, which usually makes me just think “I'll write that down later” (and then forget to).
Well, the idea is to have all the things you have to do written down. (In particular, you should definitely have "making sure I have paper and a pencil in my pocket" on the list!) Do you have such a list right now? How many things are on it? If there are less than twenty, then start writing, and don't stop until you get to twenty.
Once you have all the stuff written down, you won't have to bother remembering anything; you can just look at the list.