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orthonormal comments on Compromise: Send Meta Discussions to the Unofficial LessWrong Subreddit - Less Wrong
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I am strongly opposed to this measure, because I believe it both treats symptoms rather than causes and is negative expected value for users.
[EDIT]: There was an html error in the original version of this comment, and so several paragraphs disappeared.
Beware Trivial Inconveniences seems relevant. I, for one, neither have a Reddit account nor visit that site, and would like to keep things that way. Even were I to make an account, to remain on top of meta discussions I'm involved in, I would have to regularly visit that thread, rather than just seeing it in my LW inbox. A predictable consequence of it being annoying is that less conversations will happen, and it's not clear to me that's a step in the right direction.
I think it's also worth considering the boundaries between meta conversations and 'object level' conversations. Anybody want to join a math club? seems, strictly speaking, like a meta conversation- but to move it offsite would totally kill it.
These two sentences stuck out to me:
If you look at a thread like Who owns LessWrong?, it's a meta conversation that shows up in Recent Comments just like the Recent Unpleasantness with V_V, but it's in its own thread. Does that make it the sort of thing that should be in Discussion, or is it the sort of thing you would want moved off site?
Would you characterize the Recent Unpleasantness as a flamewar, or are you thinking more of something like this?
I'm also curious about whether or not LW has a long tail. Are most comments on LW things that most users don't care about? Every now and then, I realize that I'm not voting as much as I could, and am thus slacking in being informative to other users. But when I go through Recent Comments to try and upvote or downvote, I find I often only care enough about ~2 comments out of 10 to upvote or downvote them, which implies that the majority of comments on LW are ones I don't have even a mild opinion about.
OK. I agree this is a legitimate issue with the proposal, but it's the best idea I know of that can be implemented without site changes (and we all know how easily site changes happen).
Do you agree, though, that the sporadic meta flame wars are a problem? (If not, it's worth noting that other people do find it a significant ugh field- beware trivial inconveniences to their use of the site too.)
I apologize, there was a html error in my comment and so most of it was accidentally eaten; I recommend rereading it. In particular, I'm curious if you think the Recent Unpleasantness with V_V was a flamewar or not.
I disagree with the words "flame" and "a": I think that the meta discussions that generate the most heat are discussions about the use of moderator power, and I think those discussions are often gone about in a suboptimal manner. I think that there are significant cheap improvements to the way those discussions occur, and significant cheap improvements that make those discussions less frequent.
I don't think that meta discussions as a whole should be avoided, because there are many meta topics that are useful. If people get the sense that there is too much meta discussion going on, I suspect that's generally a disguised complaint that there's not enough object discussion going on, and it is better cured by subsidizing / generating object discussion than penalizing meta discussion.
Edited to add: I didn't elaborate on my disagreement with "a" enough. I think there are several related problems that meta discussions bring up, and I think that targeting those problems individually is superior to a blanket ban / penalization.
Yes, the recent unpleasantness was the reason I made this post. And I don't think there's much evidence to the effect that meta arguments happen more when there's less other content on the site; I think it flares up at pretty random intervals.