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Bakkot comments on Open thread, August 4 - 10, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: polymathwannabe 04 August 2014 12:20PM

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Comment author: Bakkot 05 August 2014 02:22:27AM *  14 points [-]

I wrote a userscript to add a delay and checkbox reading "I swear by all I hold sacred that this comment supports the collective search for truth to the very best of my abilities." before allowing you to comment on LW. Done in response to a comment by army1987 here.

Edit: per NancyLebovitz and ChristianKl below, solicitations for alternative default messages are welcomed.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 August 2014 02:59:25PM 5 points [-]

"To the very best of my abilities" seems excessive to me, or at least I seem to do reasonably well with "according to the amount of work I'm willing to put in, and based on pretty good habits".

I'm not even sure what I could do to improve my posting much. I could be more careful to not post when I'm tired or angry, and that probably makes sense to institute as a habit. On the other hand, that's getting rid of some of the dubious posting, which is not the same thing as improving the average or the best posts.

Comment author: satt 07 August 2014 02:01:16AM 2 points [-]

Even when I'd only been here a few weeks, your posting had already caught my eye as unusually mindful & civil, and nothing since has changed my impression that you're far better than most of us at conversing in good faith and with equanimity.

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 August 2014 01:38:42PM 2 points [-]

Given the recent discussion about how rituals can give the appearance of cultishness, it's probably not good time to bring that up at the moment ;)

Comment author: [deleted] 05 August 2014 10:03:07PM 1 point [-]

Testing this...

Comment author: [deleted] 05 August 2014 10:06:03PM 0 points [-]

Nope, doesn't seem to work. (I am probably doing something wrong as I never used Greasemonkey before.)

Comment author: Bakkot 05 August 2014 10:35:50PM *  1 point [-]

Just tested this on a clean FF profile, so it's almost certainly something on your end. Did you successfully install the script? You should've gotten an image which looks something like this, and if you go to Greasemonkey's menu while on a LW thread, you should be able to see it in the list of scripts run for that page. Also, note that you have to refresh/load a new page for it to show up after installation.

Oh, and it only works for new comments, not new posts. It should look something like this, and similarly for replies.

ETA: helpful debugging info: if you can, let me know what page it's not working on, and let me know if there's any errors in the developer console (shift-control-K or command-option-K for windows and Mac respectively).

Comment author: [deleted] 09 August 2014 08:59:57AM 0 points [-]

I had interpreted “Save this file as” in an embarrassingly wrong way. It works now!

(Maybe editing the comment should automatically uncheck the box, otherwise I can hit “Reply”, check the box straight away, then start typing my comment.)