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Kawoomba comments on [meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Whatever happened to "no penalty without a law"(nulla poena sine lege)? How did we go from "what should our policy on this be" to "let's do a public spectacle, come up with some rules and apply them retroactively"? LW, I am disappointed.
Even if we don't apply the rules retroactively to whoever this is, it's a perfect opportunity to come up with some rules and them apply them in the future.
This isn't a legal system; it's a blog forum. Legal systems impose themselves on non-consenting participants, and therefore are properly subject to procedural and moral restrictions that do not apply to consensual social systems.
Trying to apply the proper restrictions of a legal system to an informal, consensual social system leads to all sorts of weirdly biased results. Another example is the popular notion that "innocent until proven guilty" applies to conversation or personal opinion about a person who is believed to have done something wrongful — at least, when the accused is a member of my tribe, and thus someone who I empathize with.
This isn't really very retroactive - mass downvoting has always been disallowed/looked down upon, it is just that [it was claimed that] there was no way to tell who is an offender in order to punish them.
It really is, though. There is a large difference between looking down upon a behavior, and punishment (public shaming or whatever else, though the first is particularly distasteful). (Not that there has been a clear consensus on the topic*, anyways. I, for one, can see circumstances under which it is warranted, and circumstances under which it's not. Of course, once there's an official policy on it, I'd defer to that.)
There is plenty of behavior I observe every day (in "real life") which I look down upon / which is generally looked down upon. That is not at all the same as those people being fined / thrown in jail / whatever analogue you envision.
* Case in point: This discussion exists.
Go on
I'm sure you're imaginative enough to come up with such circumstances yourself. But since you asked, Sherlock, enjoy a hypothetical villain's soliloquy:
'Well kept gardens die by pacifism' can be applied here (though it cuts both ways). This community's unique characteristic is its high signal-to-noise ratio. Consider if someone consistently flooded the board with perceived-no-value-ergo-noise comments. Given the low frequency of comments on this board overall, such a dribble would easily dominate/drown out the daily comment feed. Consistent downvotes to tell that commenter to, in effect, "go away", could be one response, especially given the near-trivial effort, the use of provided mechanisms and the lack of clear guidelines against (as evident by the frequent discussions on the issue, which did not focus on the technical aspect alone). Note that outright telling someone "this is the wrong place for you, go away" has also occurred. Is this subjective? Of course it is, what else would it be? Note that this was just one example. I could provide many more (as, I hope, could you), depending on time constraints and how finely we partition the categories.
That being said, I see more circumstances under which it is not warranted.
Can you provide an example where this wouldn't be obvious to the moderator examining the case?
I honestly put a very low probability on the occurrence of even a single punishment due to a false positive..
I'm not going to call out specific users here.
You know, privacy concerns, a strong preference against public shaming, and all that.
s/example/hypothetical/
To suggest that a user whose comments you'd find both ubiquitous and worthless would also be so judged by a moderator "examining the case" seems like folly to me. Do you by extension suggest that people always vote the exact same, too? When you downvote a comment, would you expect everyone else to also downvote that comment, because the downvote would be "obvious"? Why would it be different with a moderator.
Such things are evidently subjective. There is a difference between using your own voting to convey a message, and bringing in some authority figure to "examine the case". All these courses of action are not equal.
I'm sure you can imagine comments that you yourself find interesting, while others find worthless. I myself have written many such comments, little puns in particular. Just imagine a long string of them. There you go.
If a user's history is controversial (both upvoted and downvoted) versus only downvoted, then punishing you for downvoting all (90%+) of their comments (if they have more than a few) is completely justified.
At any rate, here is an extra filter to prevent false positives even further - if you look at the comments where only the offender has downvoted and you see neutral comments (those which would have neither been downvoted nor upvoted normally) there, then you know there is a problem.
I haven't seen any mention of that principle in any of the CEV or TDT articles. If you want to argue that the principle should be a substantial part of a decision framework I invite you to write an article laying out your reasoning in detail.
Let sleeping basilisks lie!
Eh, it seems somewhat self-evident that it does not make a lot of sense to expect agents to avoid punishments which do not exist at the time, as such. CEV, to the point that CEV(mankind) wouldn't be an empty-set anyways, would probably include it just by fiat of it being one of the pillars of the rule of law, and since it's about "the people we'd want to be", presumably your CEV at least would contain it, as would mine. There is no relation to TDT, since we're talking about preferences of groups of agents, not general instrumental rationality.
You mean we aren't talking about the choice whether or not to punish someone? I don't see how that holds. If you only discuss a decision theory in the abstract but are not willing to use it for practical decisions than you are likely going to have a bad decision theory.
Don't compartmentalize and stop using your decision theory when things get political.
In this case punishing people for doing something that's bad for the community can discourage other people from doing something bad for the community against which we don't have explicit rules.
Even if I agree that nation state should only punish in a court of law based on explicit rules that doesn't mean that I think the same is true for privately owned online communities. If I throw a party and someone misbehaves I can throw that person out even without him violating a previously explicitly stated rule. A lot of social interaction works about people simply observing implicit rules and focusing on being nice to each other.
TDT can't tell you how to optimally arrange the flavors of an ice cream cone if you don't input which flavors you like. "But how can that be, that is a choice too?" Decision theory tells you which decisions are optimal, given your preferences. My preference is rule of law (which also makes sense as an instrumental value), I suspect yours is too. TDT doesn't care. It can't tell you your preferences (though it can tell you which instrumental values would make sense).
I don't understand. TDT isn't my practical decision theory (I'm a meatbag, not an abstract agent), nor did I bring it up. Nor is it applicable anyways. Optimality is viewpoint dependent.
For nation states with a monopoly on power I consider the rule of law to be valuable but I don't consider it to be a terminal value for online communities or when I host a party. In most social interaction punishing people for violating implicit community norms is quite common.
The person who engages in the block downvoting might even think of themselves as punishing someone else for doing something bad.
If it isn't applicable then what's wrong with TDT? How do we fix it?
Even if you don't personally follow TDT, you are here on LW and while you are here making the argument that the policies you are advocated make sense under TDT has merits if you want to convince others.
Let's stop with the reference class tennis. This community does have established and explicit rules, such as "no proposing violence, not even hypothetically". It is not like one of your parties, I suspect. And while you may tell someone to leave you alone, or to get out, I wouldn't say that official punishments against breaking inofficial "norms" are the rule. At least hopefully nowhere I'd like to be. Note how this community has grappled time and again with coming up with a clearly defined norm on this, which would decohere the congruence even if LW were like a party. Meet-ups have resorted to clip-on notes whether hugging is ok with that person. So much for implicit norms for social interaction.
Someone who engages in block downvoting would be sending a signal, using tools as were provided. What's the obsession with the punishment-concept? (Warning, flippant aside: Do we need a good public beating, or what?)
In a word, nothing. If you use TDT going off of "I don't want agents to be punished for actions against which there are no rules", then TDT will include that when giving you the optimal course of action. If you use TDT going off of "I don't care whether agents are punished for actions against which there are no rules", then it won't include that. It's the reason why paperclippers and anti-paperclippers both can use TDT. TDT doesn't judge your preferences :-).
Those rules are not in a place where a new member would easily find them. Some people even think there a rule against politics when there's no such thing on LW.
You were the person who started speaking about punishment. For my part when I was forum moderator I didn't think of myself punishing weeds when I tried to rip them out of my healthy garden. I did ban people but not to punish them but because I thought the forum would be healthier without them.
That doesn't tell you everything there to know about hugging. There are still issues like the length of the hug that isn't fixed by the rules.
Especially in a community of munchkins you don't want to allow people to game the rules by moving exactly within them but violating their spirit.
The rules also explicitly include a no harassment of individual users clause.
At least read the explanation of that rule first, would you? There you go:
Your leading OP title, including the phrase "mass-downvote harassment" is insincere reasoning, because it is circular. It has never been established whether mass-downvoting should always be considered "harassment". You'd consider it so. I don't. Come now, be so courteous as to assume other people have reasons for their behavior.
Not even the wiki, which does include an example, makes mention of mass downvoting even though the topic has come up many times. The reason for that is not "well, we can't list everything, we don't list hacking a server, for example". That would be a ridiculous argument. One is using established feedback mechanisms, one isn't. New rule: You must always give reasons for each and every vote, otherwise you'll be publicly shamed for harassment.
Downvotes are a user's individual and private choice. He/She can use it to confer whatever message he/she so chooses. Don't like it? Make a rule against it. Such as an upper bound on allowed downvotes. Oh wait, such an upper-bound has already been implemented? And it doesn't disallow downvoting most of a user's comments? Maybe your moral intuitions on the matter aren't as general as you'd like them to be.
Signing off on the topic, though I'll leave you the last word, if you so choose.
The basic rule of all social spaces is "don't be a dick"; more detailed rules are elaborations of this. This seems to be considered a pretty clear violation.
One person's pedantry is another person's dickishness. One person's nitpicking is another person's "what a jerk". One person's pruning the weeds is another person's harassment. We all frequent social spaces all the time. You say the basic rule of all social spaces was "don't be a dick", and yet ... which is fine, some situations call for decisive signals (which may include "being a dick").
I've always appreciated the no-sugar-coating clear feedback signals this community sends, while others have bemoaned exactly that. I don't see signals using provided feedback mechanisms as out of bounds, absent a clear rule.
Well yeah, but that's why it requires discussion. (More "constitutional article" than "rule", maybe.) OTOH, this appears to be the sort of behaviour that causes new rules, and may cause retrospective ones.
Is there an explicit law against publicly and retroactively applying rules to someone? No? Shut up.
Indeed. How is banning anyone going to provide a stronger signal than an announcement saying "this is a banworthy offence starting now"?
It seems to me that all we can possible accomplish here is throwing away possibly-constructive commenters.
It's highly probably that anyone with enough karma to do any sort of damage with this is a high or medium-value user; downvotes have a cap based on one's own karma total.
One could argue that this sort of behavior is antisocial and implies the perpetrator is probably not someone we want on the site. But that's exactly the logic that leads to downvoting everything a person has posted!
As one of the people who was downvoted, I find it highly probably that whoever was responsible (in my case, and probably others) was acting in good faith. How could they have known to abide by a rule we are just now introducing?
I don't see a public spectacle - the names were redacted, etc. And Kaj's post seems to be asking "what should our policy on this be" to me.
I was referring to an upvoted (at the time) comment calling for public shaming. I thought this community especially would be more sensitive to the whole public shaming thing.
Also, OP should a) have messaged other editors first and b) not presumed that a valid reason for redacting private information is the "presumption of innocence". The reason for not disclosing private information is that it's private. D'uh.
Would you also object if I said (which I am not saying, just asking hypothetically) that I suggest the public shaming only for the downvotes that will happen in the future, after this rule is agreed upon? In other words, is retroactivity your true rejection?
I consider the retroactivity not a good rule for a website, because a creative person can find more behaviors that are obviously wrong, but still not forbidden yet. For example, is there an official rule against hacking the server and deleting someone else's account? (Or, as an extreme example, finding the other user in real life and hurting them?) If someone did it, would it be okay to defend them saying: "well, it wasn't said explicitly that such behavior is forbidden, therefore we should protect their privacy"?
Retroactivity and similar rules are made for countries, which have more time and resources to debug the laws, more power to apply, et cetera. LW is not a country, it does not have to follow the same rules.
It's a good remark, but the answer is yes, I would still object. Public shaming, near-regardless of whether there was an overstepping of an explicit, an implicit, a retroactively applied or a (insert attribute) rule, is a topic I have very strong opinions on. It can cause large amounts of mental anguish, especially given a susceptible population as I suspect the LW'ers INTJ crowd tends to be. It's simply not worth it, it's toxic, especially when there are so many other options left to resort to (PM's, technical limitations, etc.).
If there was one public shaming of anyone condoned by the editors (providing private information for the purpose of punishment), I'd leave this community, never looking back. Rule or no rule.
Also, I object to your slippery slope argument. I see a fundamental difference in using tools as provided (downvote buttons), and hacking a server.
and getting mass downvoted isn't stressful? someone hounding another person through all their comments isn't stressful? someone doing that should be ashamed. We can't make them ashamed without public shaming. It's either that or banning them. I don't care about whether what they're doing is technically allowed by the system. They're doing something bad for the community, and they should be stopped.
ahem
It's not fun, but having a single, anonymous individual express dislike through such an abstract means is nowhere near comparable to public shaming by a community you identify with, I assure you.
I'm sorry, was that a rhetorical question intended to slip an unsupported hypothesis?
(For the record, in case it isn't clear: if it weren't for the fact that being mass-downvoted means I'm currently unable to, I would definitely have downvoted your above comment.)
sure, that's why it works. Public shaming is supposed to be stressful, in order to get that person to STOP. One is a socially mitigated system of enforcing how the ingroup behaves, whereas mass downvoting someone you own is an individual attempt to enforce how the group behaves. My point was that it being stressful was not a good reason not to do it. If someone identifies with your ingroup and you think they're ruining it, then there is a mismatch between group identities. No group is obligated to associate with anyone who wants to be in it.
To be clear: It being stressful is a reason not to do it, but it may be outweighed by the benefits, right?
Two points: one, you pretty openly compared the two. Since they are different by several orders of magnitude, I think it impacts your point somewhat: should we do A Very Bad Thing to punish/disincentivize something far less unethical or harmful?
Two, I'm having a conversation with a mass-downvote-er in another tab. They seem pretty ... corrected. I seriously doubt they will do this again.
And yet, amazingly, this happened without me choosing to so much as hint who they were, let alone "publicly shaming" them.
That sounds like a budding bromance. Hopefully not some kind of Stockholm syndrome.
I'm not sure why you think your own personal definitions of what's an order of magnitude more or less x or your anecdote about getting someone to change their ways is helpful. I personally think punishing someone for fucking with the community is less bad than someone taking it on themselves to scare people away. But you clearly disagree. I don't know who you're having this conversation with, but multiple people approached eugine neier and tried to talk to him about it. So clearly that's not a solution that will always work.
Side note:
"Funny how that works" is pure rhetorical shit. It has no place in trying to convince someone of anything. All it does is show how "superior" you are to people who already agree with you.
Just stop with downvotes altogether then, since even smaller amounts can be stressful. Allowing spammy no-value posters to drown out the few valuable comments is also bad for the community, but whatever.
What's with the whole "shut up" routine (in your other comment)? You're shaming yourself, here. Not going to engage with you anymore.
This raises the question: why do we bother posting rules at all, then?
And the answer, of course, is that such unwritten "rules" are not immediately obvious to everybody.
That's better, at least. People should know what they're in for. It would be a large breach of trust for the moderators to make public what had been assumed private.
I'm sure that the infamously antiauthoritarian LW community would just have loved it if the editors had just decided on a course of action behind closed doors.
I've been actively modding /r/DebateReligion (not exactly a topic which preempts drama) over on Reddit (not exactly a community which dislikes drama) for years, and at least from my experiences there I wouldn't dream of putting such questions to the community (especially with delicious "redacted" drama bait) before coming to some sort of consensus with my fellow moderators. You could of course argue (and I'd agree) that this is a more mature community.
Also, I wouldn't cite "presumption of innocence" when apparently unaware of much more pertinent principles (no retroactively applied punishments, not even hinting at a disclosure of legitimately presumed-private data). I do agree that a specific rule going forward would be a good idea, given how often this topic crops up. To establish such a rule -- via public discussion, if you so choose --, dangling (however unwittingly) the allure of a witch-hunt would have best been left out entirely.
At the moment nobody is actively modding LW so the comparison doesn't really hold. The community mostly mods itself by downvoting posts it doesn't like.
But they could have just pinged the guy and said he was causing a problem they didn't want to deal with. Maybe he would have let it go.
The best solution is to have the problem just go away.
no: The best solution is for the problem to go away and never come back. signs point to there being multiple sources of mass downvotes.
Yup. Can confirm there were at least two. [Cite.]