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thomblake comments on Meta: LW Policy: When to prohibit Alice from replying to Bob's arguments? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (81)
There is none. Moderation power is exercised arbitrarily at the whims of the enforcers.
(Arbitrarily rather than at random, to be precise.)
What is the distinction that you wish to draw?
Not sure why the parent was downvoted.
"Arbitrary" and "random" tend to be used in different senses. "Random" connotes unpredictability, while "arbitrary" connotes subjectivity to individual judgement.
I was not intending to claim that the moderators' actions are based on rolling dice, for example.
("Meaning" and "sense" have very similar meaning and sense to me.)
And so we see that I am a terrible communicator. I would blame the study of philosophy for introducing me to wonderful distinctions that no one else uses, though I'm sure a student of philosophy would tell me that "sense" and "reference" are the relevant subcategories of "meaning", and both of what I referred to above fall under "sense". Is Frege or C.S.Peirce in the house?
But seriously, fixed (I hope).
Thanks, fixed
This is false, see above (or refer to counterexamples).
(Edit: I shouldn't have made this comment, it doesn't usefully move the discussion.)
No, neither of those is false. There is no stated LW moderation policy, which as far as I'm concerned is equivalent to having no moderation policy. And given the lack of policy, moderation power is necessarily exercised arbitrarily. This does not imply that your judgement is bad, nor does it imply that other moderators' judgement is good.
If there is some official LW moderation or comment policy, I'd appreciate being pointed to it. But again, I've been active here since the beginning and I'm not aware of one, so it might as well not exist.
As I understand it, the word "arbitrary" refers to lack of relevant or systematic explanation or reason for something. I'm not sure what meaning you intend, the word is confusing the way you use it in this context. (Suppose hypothetically that the policy I stated above was more prominently stated previously.)
Ah, glancing at a dictionary, I had intended "Based on or subject to individual judgement or preference" with a splash of "despotic".
As I understand it, moderators are expected to use their judgement, and do not have any firm guidelines on where to apply it. Alicorn recently commented that the best she got for guidance was "ban shoe ads" (quoted from memory).
Yes, if the putative policy you stated above was more prominently stated before, that would help. Notably, if it were on record somewhere, endorsed by those who run the site, in a place where we could cite it and more importantly argue that it's inappropriate and should be changed.