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Larks comments on [moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment - Less Wrong
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Comments (366)
I don't think this really helps you. As you acknowledge, this clause does not actually imply that downvoting is harassment at all. Nor does it imply that blocking users is the appropriate response!
Indeed, the fact that explicitly mentions some crimes (leaving rude comments) and punishments (deleting comments) is probably evidence against this moderation action. If the policy had been totally non-specific, it would imply a wide degree of moderator discretion. The more specific it is, the stronger the implication that things left unmentioned are not actually verbotten.
Furthermore, consider that in the case mentioned in the policy (harassing comments) deleting them is a coherent response which addresses the underlying issue, without very much collateral damage. In this case, banning Eugine from posting does not actually prevent him from downvoting, so the objective is not achieved, but considerable collateral damage is inflicted, by ending his often interesting comments.
The specific circumstance is explicitly offered as one particular example of a general policy (it's preceded by "e.g."), so I think there's a pretty strong implication that there are other things left unmentioned that are in fact verboten.
It's pretty much always a mistake to apply legal-style reasoning to moderator actions on an Internet forum, anyway. The job of moderators is to keep the forum working, not merely to follow previously published procedures. Legal rules such as nulla poena sine lege don't apply in this context. They're supposed to wing it a bit when necessary.
"It's like a bar. The idea is to maintain a good time. If you are asked to cool it at a bar, and you start debating the precise details of the rules and the wording thereof and who can eject you when and so forth, the large fellow with the number on his shirt will be guiding you to the exit in short order, possibly with a humorous CLANG off the bins opposite." (from a Facebook group; doesn't quite apply to LW directly)
Sure, but then they shouldn't pretend to be justified on the basis of rules that actually do no such thing. I'm happy with Eliezer's dictatorship, but it should be an epistemically honest dictatorship.
Speaking of which, Eliezer has been strangely silent throughout this whole affair.
Eliezer has been silent on LW in general; I'm pretty sure it has little to do with this.
He last commented on June 27, so it's entirely possible he hasn't seen it yet.
Unfortunately the origional rule was not really grammatical enough to establish a general policy. If you remove the 'e.g.', as you should from a valid sentance, all we're left with is
Which doesn't even vaguely hint at a general policy!
This is true. OTOH, dicks gonna be dicks, and trolls regard rules as playground equipment.
(I have been on communities where "don't be a dick" is an explicit rule. Guess what? Users who zoom in on this rule and try to argue it ... are pretty much all dicks.)
This, this, 1000 times this. If you tightly police the actions of moderators, who are constrained already to act in good faith, to follow only and exactly the letter of the rules, you will never get a good result. (Because the bad faith users can always find a way around the letter of the rules.)
This is a major failure mode of law in general, IMO.
In practice we avoid this problem by granting a lot of discretion to judges and prosecutors (i.e. mods).