I’ve considered this as a feature for a while. I haven’t really made up my mind on it, some considerations:
I am worried about having a Streisand effect, where if you say something mildly controversial in public, it’s actually less bad than if you tried at all to keep it private, where the second thing makes it sound a lot more juicy (compare “I found the following by infiltrating the Effective Altruist’s private forum and here is a screenshot” vs. “I found the following on the Effective Altruism subreddit”)
I do think it could be quite valuable for stuff that isn’t really controversial, but that in some sense… is an advanced topic? But I am not sure whether a logged-in status is actually the right barrier here. Like, many topics I would like to be able to discuss, but I would just kind of prefer that it’s a bit inconvenient to discuss, and that it wouldn’t cloud the impression that newcomers have when they first show up to the forum.
I am kind of worried that lots of people would then make lots of posts for logged-in users, while forgetting a large group of readers that is actively following a lot of content on the EA Forum and is pretty plugged-into stuff, but isn’t usually logged-in, and I haven’t found a good way to make that tradeoff salient to authors, and currently think giving people the option would cause a lot of people to make a reflectively non-endorsed mistake.
First point is very good and I hadn’t thought of it. I guess hiding something lessens the chance you get discovered, but always makes you appear more guilty if/when you are. I guess that that is more relevant the more people you think you have digging around for dirt.
Second point: Karma? But that does require you to be logged in of course.
Third: This could be addressed by not making it the choice of the poster, but by requiring a certain number of readers to click a “make this non-public” button. Then it’s more of a community decides kind of thing. Of course if you want to make a non-public post about a controversial topic, you have to rely on others make it so.
Another approach would be to make posts less findable (I’ll add these ideas to the original post too)
There could be a check box for users that added a noindex tag
If someone doesn’t want to draw attention from outside the community, they could use a codeword (and request that others do as well) for obvious search keywords—initials of a politician, etc. This is probably not all that reliable—and has the same issue as you mention in your first bullet point.
I’ve considered this as a feature for a while. I haven’t really made up my mind on it, some considerations:
I am worried about having a Streisand effect, where if you say something mildly controversial in public, it’s actually less bad than if you tried at all to keep it private, where the second thing makes it sound a lot more juicy (compare “I found the following by infiltrating the Effective Altruist’s private forum and here is a screenshot” vs. “I found the following on the Effective Altruism subreddit”)
I do think it could be quite valuable for stuff that isn’t really controversial, but that in some sense… is an advanced topic? But I am not sure whether a logged-in status is actually the right barrier here. Like, many topics I would like to be able to discuss, but I would just kind of prefer that it’s a bit inconvenient to discuss, and that it wouldn’t cloud the impression that newcomers have when they first show up to the forum.
I am kind of worried that lots of people would then make lots of posts for logged-in users, while forgetting a large group of readers that is actively following a lot of content on the EA Forum and is pretty plugged-into stuff, but isn’t usually logged-in, and I haven’t found a good way to make that tradeoff salient to authors, and currently think giving people the option would cause a lot of people to make a reflectively non-endorsed mistake.
First point is very good and I hadn’t thought of it. I guess hiding something lessens the chance you get discovered, but always makes you appear more guilty if/when you are. I guess that that is more relevant the more people you think you have digging around for dirt.
Second point: Karma? But that does require you to be logged in of course.
Third: This could be addressed by not making it the choice of the poster, but by requiring a certain number of readers to click a “make this non-public” button. Then it’s more of a community decides kind of thing. Of course if you want to make a non-public post about a controversial topic, you have to rely on others make it so.
Another approach would be to make posts less findable (I’ll add these ideas to the original post too)
There could be a check box for users that added a noindex tag
If someone doesn’t want to draw attention from outside the community, they could use a codeword (and request that others do as well) for obvious search keywords—initials of a politician, etc. This is probably not all that reliable—and has the same issue as you mention in your first bullet point.
I haven’t advertised this, but authors can request noindex status and moderators can set it.