Baughn comments on Some recent evidence against the Big Bang - Less Wrong

6 Post author: JStewart 07 January 2015 05:06AM

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Comment author: Baughn 07 January 2015 11:05:45AM *  5 points [-]

The point of the rule is to limit the amount of bad content. This isn't bad content, so working around the rule seems justified.

If a rule and the stated reason for the rule conflict... the rule sometimes wins, but only for practical reasons that don't seem to apply here.

Comment author: gjm 07 January 2015 11:28:56AM 9 points [-]

Rather than getting into an object-level discussion of whether this particular content is bad, let's look at the general principles.

I suggest that "bad content" means something like "content whose only reason for being here is that a low-quality poster wants it here" (with "low-quality" being defined by karma, and yes I know that this is a ridiculously poor measure of actual poster quality). If someone with good karma thinks something is worth posting, this should be allowed regardless of whether they originally got it from someone else with bad karma.

(Bad karma should be interpreted as "the fact that this person wants to post something is very weak evidence that it belongs here", not as "the fact that this person wants to post something is evidence that it doesn't belong here".)

So I don't think there's anything very improper about JStewart's decision to post MazeHatter's stuff here. But of course it means JStewart is taking responsibility for doing so, and if it gets downvoted into oblivion because everyone hates it then JStewart is the one who takes the karma hit.