I honestly don’t see such a problem with Gwern calling out out Charles’ flimsy argument and hypocrisy using an example, be it a part of an external dispute.
On the other hand, I think Charles’ uniformly low comment quality should have had him (temporarily) banned long ago (sorry Charles). The material is generally poorly organised, poorly researched, often intentionally provocative, sometimes interspersed with irrelevant images, and high in volume. One gets the impression of an author who holds their reader in contempt.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the assessment of a temporary ban for “unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”, or “other behaviour that interferes with good discourse”, but I disagree that Charles’ comment quality is “uniformly” low or that a ban might be merited primarily because of high comment volume and too low quality.There are some real insights and contributions sprinkled in in my opinion.
For me the unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness and other behavior interfering with discourse comes from things like comments that are technically replies to a particular person but seem like they’re mostly intended to win the argument in front of unknown readers, and containing things like rudeness, paranoia, and condescension towards the person they’re replying to. I think the doxing accusation, which if I remember correctly actually doxxed the victim much more than Gwern’s comment, is part of a similar pattern of engaging poorly with a particular person, partly through an incorrect assessment that the benefits to bystanders will outweigh the costs. I think this sort of behavior stifles conversation and good will.
I’m not sure a ban is a great solution though. There might be other, less blunt ways of tackling this situation.
What I would really like to see is a (much) higher lower limit of comment quality from Charles i.e. moving the bar for tolerating rudeness and bad behavior in a comment much higher even though it could be potentially justified in terms of benefits to bystanders or readers.
I don’t disagree with your judgement of banning but I point out there’s no banning for quality—you must be very frustrated with the content.
To get a sense of this, for the specific issue in the dispute, where I suggested the person or institution in question caused a a 4 year delay in funding, are you saying it’s an objectively bad read, even limited to just the actual document cited? I don’t see how that is.
Or is this wrong, but requires additional context or knowledge.
Re the banning idea, I think you could fall afoul of “unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”, or “other behaviour that interferes with good discourse” (too much volume, too low quality). But I’m not the moderator here.
My point is that when you say that Gwern produces verbose content about a person, it seems fine—indeed quite appropriate—for him to point out that you do too. So it seems a bit rich for that to be a point of concern for moderators.
I’m not taking any stance on the doxxing dispute itself, funding delays, and so on.
I honestly don’t see such a problem with Gwern calling out out Charles’ flimsy argument and hypocrisy using an example, be it a part of an external dispute.
On the other hand, I think Charles’ uniformly low comment quality should have had him (temporarily) banned long ago (sorry Charles). The material is generally poorly organised, poorly researched, often intentionally provocative, sometimes interspersed with irrelevant images, and high in volume. One gets the impression of an author who holds their reader in contempt.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the assessment of a temporary ban for “unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”, or “other behaviour that interferes with good discourse”, but I disagree that Charles’ comment quality is “uniformly” low or that a ban might be merited primarily because of high comment volume and too low quality.There are some real insights and contributions sprinkled in in my opinion.
For me the unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness and other behavior interfering with discourse comes from things like comments that are technically replies to a particular person but seem like they’re mostly intended to win the argument in front of unknown readers, and containing things like rudeness, paranoia, and condescension towards the person they’re replying to. I think the doxing accusation, which if I remember correctly actually doxxed the victim much more than Gwern’s comment, is part of a similar pattern of engaging poorly with a particular person, partly through an incorrect assessment that the benefits to bystanders will outweigh the costs. I think this sort of behavior stifles conversation and good will.
I’m not sure a ban is a great solution though. There might be other, less blunt ways of tackling this situation.
What I would really like to see is a (much) higher lower limit of comment quality from Charles i.e. moving the bar for tolerating rudeness and bad behavior in a comment much higher even though it could be potentially justified in terms of benefits to bystanders or readers.
This is useful and thoughtful. I will read and will try to update on this (in general life, if not the forum?) Please continue as you wish!
I want to notify you and others, that I don’t expect such discussion to materially affect any resulting moderator action, see this comment describing my views on my ban.
Below that comment, I wrote some general thoughts on EA. It would be great if people considered or debated the ideas there.
Comments on Global Health
Comments on Animal Welfare
Comments on AI Safety
Comments on two Meta EA ideas
I don’t disagree with your judgement of banning but I point out there’s no banning for quality—you must be very frustrated with the content.
To get a sense of this, for the specific issue in the dispute, where I suggested the person or institution in question caused a a 4 year delay in funding, are you saying it’s an objectively bad read, even limited to just the actual document cited? I don’t see how that is.
Or is this wrong, but requires additional context or knowledge.
Re the banning idea, I think you could fall afoul of “unnecessary rudeness or offensiveness”, or “other behaviour that interferes with good discourse” (too much volume, too low quality). But I’m not the moderator here.
My point is that when you say that Gwern produces verbose content about a person, it seems fine—indeed quite appropriate—for him to point out that you do too. So it seems a bit rich for that to be a point of concern for moderators.
I’m not taking any stance on the doxxing dispute itself, funding delays, and so on.
I agree with your first paragraph for sure.