I feel that there could be greater transparency in how these moderation decisions are done. In my opinion, although Yarrow has been quite confrontational at times, they haven’t really done anything that would necessitate such a punishment. While the forum is allowed to moderate its users in any way it likes, one shouldn’t be rate-limited just because they have disagreements, especially if their opinions go against the mainstream opinion on the forum. This puts the neutrality of the forum moderation at question.
Personally, I have pretty bad experiences writing on this forum. I get highly-upvoted comments from people who seemingly haven’t even read what I wrote and instead throw in bad-faith arguments, which I find borderline insulting and certainly unwelcoming. See, for example, this comment that was given as a reply to my text, where I pointed out that many sources use narrative arguments (stories, parables, etc.) instead of technical evidence. The commenter accused me of writing a narrative argument… which is simply not true, as my text was not written in a form of a story. Either they didn’t read at all what I wrote or intentionally misunderstood it. And that is the most upvoted comment!
In general, the quality of discussion on this forum is very low. I feel it is pretty harsh to say this, but it is my experience and it strongly discourages me from participating at all. In this atmosphere, rate-limiting Yarrow appears not as an impartial decision, since many other, much more problematic comments appear in the forum all the time.
I think it reflects poorly on you that a “highly-upvoted” comment was a stronger update towards ‘the Forum at large is wrong’ more than ‘you were wrong’ or even ‘you should change how you communicate’.
On the object level: I read your post, and like ~half of people who reacted to it, disagreed with it; specifically I think it has narrative-like qualities, and regardless of how much we quibble over the precise point at which text can be reasonably called “narrative”, I thought it was non-evidence-based argumentation, which you were arguing against.
I think in general it is bad forum etiquette to “snitch tag” like this. I think you’re misrepresenting my comment and raising it in an irrelevant context.
In the context of my post, the term “narrative argument” was really clearly used to refer to fictional stories embedded in a text as part of its argument, such as AI2027′s short story or the parables in Y&S’s book. My text simply does not have that.
By completely misunderstanding even basic concepts such as “narrative argument”, your comment was just a snarky jab and had little value. It didn’t comment the actual content of my text, instead, and largely unjustified by any real analysis, it tried to “get back at me” by blaming me for things I blame others for, like non-evidence based argumentation and narrative arguments.
Since I find it difficult to believe that you really don’t understand what a narrative argument is, I reasonably count a high probability for you simply acting in bad faith.
I don’t know if “snitching” you is allowed or not, and I apologize for the moderators if it’s not, but I think using examples of bad behavior is relevant in discussions of what is allowed on the forum.
I empathize with your experience on the EA Forum. The top comment on this post is a clear example where someone just fundamentally misunderstood the point you were trying to make, and responded in an unhelpful and kinda snarky way. Then when you clarified your point to them, they just repeated their original point again. Really frustrating. Sometimes it seems like people don’t have the patience to deeply engage, yet they do have the patience to comment (often rudely). Which is not a good headspace for discussion.
It could potentially be nice to have alternatives to the EA Forum where stronger discussion norms around civility and generosity are upheld. I don’t know if there is a critical mass of people to support that, though. I can potentially send a group chat invite to anyone who wants to message me privately here or on Substack, or email me.
The biggest thing for the mods to understand is when you let people act abusively, it pisses people off so much, and it’s so hurtful and feels so yucky, people don’t want to engage anymore. There are people on the EA Forum who effectively have a heckler’s veto because they just make the experience of using the forum too unpleasant to tolerate for anyone they disagree with. And the end result is you get an insular culture, where even pointing out objective, uncontroversial flaws in research or analysis gets strongly discouraged.
I had a horrible time pointing out errors in a survey. I got a brusque, dismissive response. And a lot of downvotes. The errors were later corrected, but I didn’t get any apology or even acknowledgement. What a thankless job!
You have to be able to tolerate the discomfort of disagreement and intellectual criticism, to have the patience to deeply engage, to have curiosity about other people’s perspectives and humility about your own, in order to think well and do good analysis. Using personal insults and hostility to shut down disagreement and criticism is not intellectually healthy.
I feel that there could be greater transparency in how these moderation decisions are done. In my opinion, although Yarrow has been quite confrontational at times, they haven’t really done anything that would necessitate such a punishment. While the forum is allowed to moderate its users in any way it likes, one shouldn’t be rate-limited just because they have disagreements, especially if their opinions go against the mainstream opinion on the forum. This puts the neutrality of the forum moderation at question.
Personally, I have pretty bad experiences writing on this forum. I get highly-upvoted comments from people who seemingly haven’t even read what I wrote and instead throw in bad-faith arguments, which I find borderline insulting and certainly unwelcoming. See, for example, this comment that was given as a reply to my text, where I pointed out that many sources use narrative arguments (stories, parables, etc.) instead of technical evidence. The commenter accused me of writing a narrative argument… which is simply not true, as my text was not written in a form of a story. Either they didn’t read at all what I wrote or intentionally misunderstood it. And that is the most upvoted comment!
In general, the quality of discussion on this forum is very low. I feel it is pretty harsh to say this, but it is my experience and it strongly discourages me from participating at all. In this atmosphere, rate-limiting Yarrow appears not as an impartial decision, since many other, much more problematic comments appear in the forum all the time.
I think it reflects poorly on you that a “highly-upvoted” comment was a stronger update towards ‘the Forum at large is wrong’ more than ‘you were wrong’ or even ‘you should change how you communicate’.
On the object level: I read your post, and like ~half of people who reacted to it, disagreed with it; specifically I think it has narrative-like qualities, and regardless of how much we quibble over the precise point at which text can be reasonably called “narrative”, I thought it was non-evidence-based argumentation, which you were arguing against.
I think in general it is bad forum etiquette to “snitch tag” like this. I think you’re misrepresenting my comment and raising it in an irrelevant context.
In the context of my post, the term “narrative argument” was really clearly used to refer to fictional stories embedded in a text as part of its argument, such as AI2027′s short story or the parables in Y&S’s book. My text simply does not have that.
By completely misunderstanding even basic concepts such as “narrative argument”, your comment was just a snarky jab and had little value. It didn’t comment the actual content of my text, instead, and largely unjustified by any real analysis, it tried to “get back at me” by blaming me for things I blame others for, like non-evidence based argumentation and narrative arguments.
Since I find it difficult to believe that you really don’t understand what a narrative argument is, I reasonably count a high probability for you simply acting in bad faith.
I don’t know if “snitching” you is allowed or not, and I apologize for the moderators if it’s not, but I think using examples of bad behavior is relevant in discussions of what is allowed on the forum.
I empathize with your experience on the EA Forum. The top comment on this post is a clear example where someone just fundamentally misunderstood the point you were trying to make, and responded in an unhelpful and kinda snarky way. Then when you clarified your point to them, they just repeated their original point again. Really frustrating. Sometimes it seems like people don’t have the patience to deeply engage, yet they do have the patience to comment (often rudely). Which is not a good headspace for discussion.
It could potentially be nice to have alternatives to the EA Forum where stronger discussion norms around civility and generosity are upheld. I don’t know if there is a critical mass of people to support that, though. I can potentially send a group chat invite to anyone who wants to message me privately here or on Substack, or email me.
The biggest thing for the mods to understand is when you let people act abusively, it pisses people off so much, and it’s so hurtful and feels so yucky, people don’t want to engage anymore. There are people on the EA Forum who effectively have a heckler’s veto because they just make the experience of using the forum too unpleasant to tolerate for anyone they disagree with. And the end result is you get an insular culture, where even pointing out objective, uncontroversial flaws in research or analysis gets strongly discouraged.
I had a horrible time pointing out errors in a survey. I got a brusque, dismissive response. And a lot of downvotes. The errors were later corrected, but I didn’t get any apology or even acknowledgement. What a thankless job!
You have to be able to tolerate the discomfort of disagreement and intellectual criticism, to have the patience to deeply engage, to have curiosity about other people’s perspectives and humility about your own, in order to think well and do good analysis. Using personal insults and hostility to shut down disagreement and criticism is not intellectually healthy.