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KnaveOfAllTrades comments on [meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment? - Less Wrong Discussion

28 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 06 June 2014 05:46AM

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Comment author: gwern 06 June 2014 11:26:04PM 10 points [-]

Back in the stone ages, I believe the Extropian list had extensive configurable collaborative filtering mechanisms. I didn't use them much, but that seems to me the actual solution. Let people trust who they want, and follow who they want. I see a Karma Score configured by me.

The failures of old mailing lists and Usenet were why social mediums universally abandoned killfiles and similar filtering mechanisms: the balance of costs was all wrong - a large number of people had to take affirmative action to ignore the small number of bad apples. It turned out to be better to actively curate the default than to thrust the burden of filtering signal from noise onto each and every user.

To give an Extropian-list-specific example: determined harassment was why Nick Szabo stopped posting there. The filters didn't help there.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 06 June 2014 11:46:31PM *  2 points [-]

To give an Extropian-list-specific example: determined harassment was why Nick Szabo stopped posting there. The filters didn't help there.

I'm curious: Can you tell me/link me more please?

Comment author: gwern 07 June 2014 01:08:43AM 7 points [-]

No; a lot of the materials are now private, I don't think Nick wants to drag old stuff up, and if the harasser was the same Detweiler dude who did some later harassing, he may well have been mentally ill and not really responsible for his actions.

Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 07 June 2014 01:31:03AM 2 points [-]

Thanks! I guess the main thing I wanted to check was that you meant Nick was the one being harassed rather than the other way round, which you have indeed answered.