Hot take: For posts not involving breaking news that may benefit from cooler reflection, the Forum should trial allowing a poster to petition the mods for a quiet period of 1 to 7 days before comments are allowed. This would need to be done pre-posting and a header would need to appear at the top of the post. For example, I think discussion on the Doing EA Better post would have benefitted from a quiet period.
I’m hesitant to extend the trial to breaking news because the risk of the delay being viewed as mods cutting off discussion is higher, and because I think people have a stronger interest in being able to promptly discuss stuff that happens externally to the Forum. Finally, no one “owns” breaking news, and the requirement for both the post author + a mod to concur is a safeguard against erroneous imposition of quiet periods.
I have thought about this, but concluded it had a big problem, which is commenters would just write their own top-level posts in response (rather than giving the original post a huge first mover advantage). I don’t think recent drama would have been improved by a proliferation of top-levels.
Hot take: For posts not involving breaking news that may benefit from cooler reflection, the Forum should trial allowing a poster to petition the mods for a quiet period of 1 to 7 days before comments are allowed. This would need to be done pre-posting and a header would need to appear at the top of the post. For example, I think discussion on the Doing EA Better post would have benefitted from a quiet period.
I’m hesitant to extend the trial to breaking news because the risk of the delay being viewed as mods cutting off discussion is higher, and because I think people have a stronger interest in being able to promptly discuss stuff that happens externally to the Forum. Finally, no one “owns” breaking news, and the requirement for both the post author + a mod to concur is a safeguard against erroneous imposition of quiet periods.
I have thought about this, but concluded it had a big problem, which is commenters would just write their own top-level posts in response (rather than giving the original post a huge first mover advantage). I don’t think recent drama would have been improved by a proliferation of top-levels.