Warning to Duncan

(See also: Raemon's moderator action on Said)

Since we were pretty much on the same page, Raemon delegated writing this warning to Duncan to me, and signed off on it.

Generally, I am quite sad if, when someone points/objects to bad behavior, they end up facing moderator action themselves. It doesn’t set a great incentive. At the same time, some of Duncan’s recent behavior also feels quite bad to me, and to not respond to it would also create a bad incentive – particularly if the undesirable behavior results in something a person likes.

Here’s my story of what happened, building off of some of Duncan’s own words and some endorsement of something I said previous exchange with him:

Duncan felt that Said engaged in various behaviors that hurt him (confident based on Duncan’s words) and were in general bad (inferred from Duncan writing posts describing why those behaviors are bad). Such bad/hurtful behaviors include strawmanning, psychologizing at length, and failing to put in symmetric effort. For example, Said argued that Duncan banned him from his posts because Said disagreed. I am pretty sympathetic to these accusations against Said (and endorse moderation action against Said) and don’t begrudge Duncan any feelings of frustration and hurt he might have.

Duncan additionally felt that the response of other users (e.g. in voting patterns) and moderators was not adequate.

I much prefer the world where there are competent police to the world where I have to fight off muggers in the alley. - source

and 

I dunno.  If mods would show up and be like "false" and "cut it out" I would pretty happily never get into a scrap on LW ever again.”

Given what he felt to be the inadequate response from others, Duncan decided to defend himself (or try to cause others to defend him). His manner of doing so, I feel, generates quite a few costs that warrant moderator action to incentivize against Duncan or others imposing these costs on the site and mods in the future.

The following is a summary of what I consider Duncan’s self-defensive behavior (not necessarily in order of occurrence).

1. Arguing back and forth in the comments
2. Banned Said from his posts
3. Argued more in comments not on his own posts
4. Requested that the moderators intervene, and quickly (offsite)
5. Wrote a top-level post at least somewhat in response to Said (planned to write it anyhow, but prioritized based on Said interactions), and it was interpreted by others as being about Said and calling for banning him.
6. In further comments, identifies statements that he says cause he to categorize and treat Said as an intentional liar.
7. Says he’d prefer a world where both he and Said were banned than neither.
8. Accuses the LessWrong moderators of not maintaining a tended garden, and that perhaps should just leave.

Individually and done occasionally, I think many of these actions are fine. The “ban users from your posts” feature is there so that you don’t have to engage with a user you don’t want to, as a mod, I appreciate people flagging behavior they think isn’t good, writing top-level posts describing why you think certain behaviors are bad (in a timeless/universal way) also is good, and if the site doesn’t make you feel safe, saying so and leaving also seems legit (I’m sad if this is true, but I’d like to know it rather than someone leaving silently).

Requesting quick moderator intervention, denouncing that he categorizes and treats Said as an intentional liar, saying that he’d prefer both Said himself be banned than neither, and writing a post that at least some people interpreted as calling for Said to be banned, feel like a pretty “aggressive” response. Combined with the other behaviors that are more usually okay but still confrontational, it feels to me like Duncan’s response was quite escalatory in a way that generates costs.

First, I think it’s bad to have users on the site who others are afraid of getting into conflict with. Naturally, people weigh the expect value and expected costs from posting/commenting/etc, and I know that with high confidence myself and at least three others (and I assume quite a few more) are pretty afraid to get into conflict with Duncan, because Duncan argues long and hard and generally invests a lot of time to defend himself against what feels like harm, e.g. all the ways he has done so on this occasion. I assume here that others are similar to me (not everyone, but enough) in being quite wary of accidentally doing something Duncan reacts to as a terrible norm violation, because doing so can result in a really unpleasant conflict (this has happened twice that I know of with other LW team members).

I recognize that Duncan feels like he’s trying to make LessWrong a place that’s net positive for him to contribute, and does so in some prosocial ways (e.g. writes Basics of Rationalist Discourse), but I need to call out ways in which his manner doing also causes harm, e.g. a climate of fear where people won’t express disagreement because defending themselves against Duncan would be extremely exhausting and effortful.

This is worsened by the fact that often Duncan is advocating for norms. If he was writing about trees and you were afraid to disagree, it might not be a big deal. But if he is arguing norms for your community, it’s worse if you think he might be advocating something wrong but disagreeing feels very risky.

Second, Duncan’s behavior directly or indirectly requires moderator attention, sometimes fairly immediately (partly because he’s requested quick response, and partly because if there’s an overt conflict between users, mods really ought to chime in sooner rather than later). I would estimate that the team has collectively spent 40+ hours on moderation over two weeks in response to recent events (some of that I place on Said who probably needed moderation anyway), but the need to drop other work and respond to the conflict right now is time-consuming and disruptive. Not counting exactly, it feels like this has happened periodically for several years with Duncan.

Duncan is a top contributor to the site, and I think for the most part advocates for good norms, so it feels worth it to devote a good amount of time and attention to his requests, but only so much. So there’s a cost there I want to call out that was incurred from recent behavior. (I think that if Duncan had notified us of really not liking some of Said’s behavior and point to a thread, said he’d like a response within two months or else he might leave the site – that would have been vastly less costly to us than what happened.)

I don’t think we’ve previously pointed out the costs here, so it’s fair to issue a warning rather than any harsher action.

 Duncan, if you do things that impose what feel like to me costs of:

• Taking actions such that I predict users will be afraid to engage with you, at the same time as you advocate norms
• You demand fast responses to things you don’t like, thereby costing a lot of resources from mods in excess of what seems reasonable (and you're basically out of budget for a long while now)

The moderators will escalate moderator action in response, e.g. rate limits or bans of escalating duration.

A couple of notes of clarification. I feel that this warning is warranted on the basis of Duncan’s recent behavior re: Said alone, but my thinking is informed by similar-ish patterns from the past that I didn’t get into here. Also for other users wondering if this warning could apply to them. Theoretically, yes, but I think most users aren’t at all close to doing the things here that I don’t like. If you have not previously had extensive engagement with the mods about a mix of your complaints and behavior, then what I’m describing here as objectionable is very unlikely to be something you’re doing.

To close, I’ll say I’m sad that the current LessWrong feels like somewhere where you, Duncan, need to defend yourself. I think many of your complaints are very very reasonable, and I wish I had the ability to immediately change things. It’s not easy and there are many competing tradeoffs, but I do wish this was a place where you felt like it was entirely positive to contribute.