My perception was that the "retraction" was an attempt to reverse the effect of the original author's note. This is obviously not actually possible. While EY probably knows this, I think he is overestimating the actual benefit of the retraction (and of the related decision to suppress discussion derived from that information in these threads).
The people the retraction is most likely to [arguably] benefit are people who started reading after it was removed and people who were reading it at the time but were inattentive to the author's note and any discussion that happened in the intervening period. My assumption is that there are not actually very many people fitting that description participating in these threads. This is weighed against by the cost of imposing rot13 on all discussion derived from that information and arbitrary downvote penalties on people who are unaware of the rule (as well as acting as the spark that sets off arguments like this).
I also think that it's possible that HPMOR discussion would be better served by a conventional forum rather than the reddit engine, as some others have mentioned, and that this could mitigate the spoiler problem, but that's mostly unrelated.
So mostly you object to being told to go out of your way while discussing something you enjoy so that others can enjoy it the way the person who made the thing your discussing intended?
May I put those words in your mouth or should I wait for the foot to come out?
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: