I didn't say anything about banning.
Those aren't weird deontological rules
Asserting disagreement with a compound term engenders ambiguity. Are they not weird? Not deontological? Not rules? A combination?
It creates an incentive to punish anyone you dislike by starting a thread about how mean they are to you, and also has a chilling effect on conversation in general.
"Treating everyone who complaining about being bullied seriously" isn't the same as "Automatically taking the side of everyone who complains". It's bizarre to claim that you must oppose the general phenomenon of complaints, rather than addressing a problem with a specific complaint. My karma is now 42% positive for the last month. This one thread has lost me more karma than I've accrued over the entire last month. And you're saying that there's a chilling effect against gwern?
Despite the rudeness, Gwern's replies in the linked conversation were lengthy and tried to convey information and thoughts.
Really? In the first thread, gwern wrote that the threats were bluffs, and then said he had not said that and I was dishonest in thinking he did. In the other one, he spent several posts evading the question of how IQ is additive.
Regardless of whether this person feels bullied by Gwern, everyone can take a look at the threads involved and decide if it's an appropriate response.
And everyone can look at posts and decide for themselves whether downvoting was justified. And yet that didn't stop several people from making top level post complaining about mass downvoting. And really, what kind of response is "Everyone can decide whether the response was appropriate" to accusations of bullying?
I don't think calling someone out for something like this in a top level post (not to mention that's a pretty low quality post even for discussion) and impugning the entire community as irrational or whatever is at all proportional.
So, on the one hand, you say that everyone can see for themselves whether the behavior is appropriate, but on the other hand you take umbrage at my concluding from the lack of downvotes against gwern that the community as a whole is expressing a lack of concern regarding gwern's behavior?
If thisspaceavailable (or you) want Lesswrong as a WHOLE to be less rude, rather than making a post that (clearly in my mind) is just getting back at Gwern, there are a LOT better ways to do it.
What are they? And is there a way to ask what those are, that don't involve people calling me a whiner and massively downvoting me?
Apparently, I am not entitled to be treated with basic civility. Or, at least, not according to gwern. It started when gwern wrote
>>All you're saying is that Saddam called the USA's bluff and was wrong and it was disastrous. That could EASILY have happened with an attempt by the US to demand inspections from Russia.
>Um, no, because the USSR had no reason to think and be correct in thinking it served a useful role for the USA which meant the threats were bluffs that were best ridden out lest it damage both allies' long-term goals.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfd/a_parable_of_elites_and_takeoffs/b1xz
I read this as saying the USSR should call the bluff, which made no sense in relation to gwern's other posts. When I asked whether this was actually what was intended, gwern got pissed off, insisted that there was no way a good faith reading could see the post as saying that, and accused me of deliberately misunderstanding. I have bent over backwards to resolve this civilly, but my repeated attempts to get gwern to explain how I had misunderstood the sentence achieved nothing but the accusation that I was making an “underhanded” effort to get gwern to respond. Despite not being willing to discuss the matter in *that* thread, gwern brought the matter up in a comment thread for a completely different article. Throughout our encounters, gwern has been incredibly rude, referring to me as an “idiot” and “troll” (rather hypocritical, given the ridiculously silly claims made by gwern, such as that "A, therefore, A" is not a circular argument), and generally treating me with an utter lack of respect. And in defense, gwern has pointed to high karma and being here a long time as making any accusation of inappropriate behavior “presumptuous”. Because apparently, the popular kids can't be criticized by mere common folk.
Looking at the stats, gwern is indeed the top recent contributor, which makes this behavior all the more worthy of comment. If some random poster were being rude, that would be worrisome, but the fact that the top contributor thinks that a high karma score is license to egregiously violate Wheton's rule suggests that there may be something wrong with the site as a whole.
EY has referred to a need to have this be a “Well-Kept Garden”. So I would like to know whether gwern's behavior is the sort of thing that people here think is acceptable in this garden.