I do actually quite like the UX mockups for the photo idea, which I think would have the positive effects already described (friendlier impression, easier to track comments). Here are two reasons I’m less keen:
People discriminate a lot based on how people look. My impression of someone on Facebook is coloured pretty strongly by their choice of profile picture, for example. I’d predict that attaching images to posts and comments would cause people to give relatively more weight to people who (a) look like them along various dimensions, and (b) have access to good, professional photographs of themselves.
There are a lot of users of the Forum who post anonymously or under a pseudonym. If the Forum had ubiquitous images, these users would have to either (a) use no image, (b) use a cartoon/non-human image (as is/was common in Slate Star Codex comment threads, for example), or (c) use a fake photo à la thispersondoesnotexist.com. Apart from the third option, which is ethically somewhat dubious, I think this would be significantly harmful to other users’ impression of these users, especially if they are in dispute with named users with real photos, in a way I don’t think we want.
Both of these effects are arguably present even in the current, text-only medium, but I think to a far lesser extent. I’m not claiming these effects would necessarily outweigh the benefits, but I think they’re real and important, and on balance would currently cause me to lean against images.
(Separately, I’m pretty strongly opposed to gamification, which has a big effect on my behaviour in a way I virtually always think is bad for me. I think it’s quite unlikely that the Forum will implement badges/achievements/anything of this sort except karma, but if they did I’d be quite mad. And I think it’s quite important that karma is given by users in response to the content you add to the site, not the developers for jumping through hoops.)
Hi Will, I realize I never responded to some of these. Let me respond to them now:
“People discriminate a lot based on how people look...”—I think there’s a lot of truth to people’s impressions of someone being shaped by what they look like. However:
I don’t think people are going to have significantly more negative impressions of Forum users just because of how they look. If anything, assuming a lot of people upload friendly photos of themselves, they’ll have more positive impressions by seeing people who seem warm and friendly, instead of the cold and intimidating feel that the forum has to it. And if someone doesn’t want to show a warm or friendly photo, then they can always put a different photo that conveys what they want to convey about themselves.
As you’ve said, I think people forming impressions of others on the Forum based on how they look is already happening even without profile photos. It’s quite easy to search on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google the name of a forum user (for those without pseudonyms), and know what their background is based off of their pictures. I would guess quite a few people on the Forum do this to have a better sense of who they’re reading or talking to. I do this regularly myself so I can get a better sense of who I’m talking to. I think it’s an important part of communication to understand one’s audience, and pictures allow you to better understand who you are interacting with.
“There are a lot of users of the Forum who post anonymously or under a pseudonym.” I think these users can just either opt to have a blank image, or use a random image. I would think 30-50% of current active Forum users are willing to upload profile photos, and having at least 30% of people upload photos may be good enough to make the forum a bit more friendly.
I think you’re more concerned with the effect of having images on a user’s feelings about the Forum generally, while I’m more concerned with its effect on user’s (differential) feelings about other individual users. I think there’s a bit of a disconnect there that makes your responses not feel like they quite hit what I was getting at. I think you’re probably right about the warm fuzzy angle with respect to users’ impression of the Forum generally, but I’m not convinced this outweighs the inequitable effects on individual users.
Concretely, I think in a discussion between an attractive person with a good-quality, well-posed & -lit photo and a weird-looking person with a bad photo (or no photo), the former will be at a very significant advantage with regard to swaying the audience. This discriminates against several groups of people: ethnic or other minorities, poorer people, people with worse intuitions about self-presentation, etc.
The current setup of the Forum discriminates on the basis of writing ability, which has various downsides, but I predict the effect of photos to be much stronger and even less well-correlated with actually being right.
A bit more grumpy than I actually endorse, but a feeling I’m having here: The world is full of places where people are evaluated based on how they look. It’s no bad thing to have some places where they are evaluated based on what they write.
Preface: I hate photos of myself and have been annoyed when past employers have required they be used in email profiles, so I get where you’re coming from.
I may be unusual, but this doesn’t match my experience with any discussion platform that includes profile pictures (Facebook, Twitter, Slack...). Profile pictures on these platforms are small enough that you’d actually have to expend effort (clicking through to someone’s profile or at least hovering over the photo) to judge someone’s appearance. (Though race and gender can usually be seen even at small scale, which I guess is something.)
I also think this dynamic, such that it exists at all, breaks down quickly when people use anything other than photos of their own faces. I assume all anonymous users would avoid photos, and that at least some other named users would do the same (including me). What ends up happening when an argument involves:
One person with a generic nice-looking photo,
One person with an artsy photo, face obscured by shadow,
A howler monkey, and
Hobbes the tiger?
I grabbed these examples from four profiles that popped up quickly when I opened Twitter. And I think this kind of scenario will be much more common than “two people having a conversation where most onlookers would agree that person A looks nicer than person B, based on what you can see at a glance from their profile pictures”. You’ll get some instances of the latter, but I think that the effect will be quite small compared to the overall impact of having a warmer Forum with easier-to-track conversations.
I may be unusual, but this doesn’t match my experience with any discussion platform that includes profile pictures (Facebook, Twitter, Slack...). Profile pictures on these platforms are small enough that you’d actually have to expend effort (clicking through to someone’s profile or at least hovering over the photo) to judge someone’s appearance. (Though race and gender can usually be seen even at small scale, which I guess is something.)
My own experience of these platforms is that someone’s profile picture or lack thereof has a big effect on my impression of that person. (With Twitter > Facebook > Slack in terms of both size of image and size of effect, but I remember specific examples from all three platforms.)
This applies also to cartoons or other non-photo images. My clearest memories of this are from old Slate Star Codex comment threads, when almost no-one used photos but I was still very aware of my feelings about users being strongly affected by their images – and changing significantly when those images changed. As another example, my system 1 is often noticeably better-disposed toward people who use profile pictures which are nice drawings of themselves than it would be if they used the original photo.
It’s possible I’m unusually impressionable here, but I currently doubt it.
Hey Will, no worries and thanks for the response! Yeah I think I updated my views a bit from some of these discussions I had with others on the Forum about whether it should have profile photos. I’m now probably just 50% in favor of the EA Forum having profile photos, whereas I was probably 80% in favor before.
I think a good compromise is maybe there are ways to make the Forum seem friendlier and more welcoming to newcomers without having to use profile photos. That’s the problem I wanted to solve anyway. I see how profile photos can degrade the experience for more engaged Forum users, so maybe there are other solutions, but I won’t try to talk about them here.
I think a good compromise is maybe there are ways to make the Forum seem friendlier and more welcoming to newcomers without having to use profile photos.
Definitely interested in seeing this explored more!
I do actually quite like the UX mockups for the photo idea, which I think would have the positive effects already described (friendlier impression, easier to track comments). Here are two reasons I’m less keen:
People discriminate a lot based on how people look. My impression of someone on Facebook is coloured pretty strongly by their choice of profile picture, for example. I’d predict that attaching images to posts and comments would cause people to give relatively more weight to people who (a) look like them along various dimensions, and (b) have access to good, professional photographs of themselves.
There are a lot of users of the Forum who post anonymously or under a pseudonym. If the Forum had ubiquitous images, these users would have to either (a) use no image, (b) use a cartoon/non-human image (as is/was common in Slate Star Codex comment threads, for example), or (c) use a fake photo à la thispersondoesnotexist.com. Apart from the third option, which is ethically somewhat dubious, I think this would be significantly harmful to other users’ impression of these users, especially if they are in dispute with named users with real photos, in a way I don’t think we want.
Both of these effects are arguably present even in the current, text-only medium, but I think to a far lesser extent. I’m not claiming these effects would necessarily outweigh the benefits, but I think they’re real and important, and on balance would currently cause me to lean against images.
(Separately, I’m pretty strongly opposed to gamification, which has a big effect on my behaviour in a way I virtually always think is bad for me. I think it’s quite unlikely that the Forum will implement badges/achievements/anything of this sort except karma, but if they did I’d be quite mad. And I think it’s quite important that karma is given by users in response to the content you add to the site, not the developers for jumping through hoops.)
Hi Will, I realize I never responded to some of these. Let me respond to them now:
“People discriminate a lot based on how people look...”—I think there’s a lot of truth to people’s impressions of someone being shaped by what they look like. However:
I don’t think people are going to have significantly more negative impressions of Forum users just because of how they look. If anything, assuming a lot of people upload friendly photos of themselves, they’ll have more positive impressions by seeing people who seem warm and friendly, instead of the cold and intimidating feel that the forum has to it. And if someone doesn’t want to show a warm or friendly photo, then they can always put a different photo that conveys what they want to convey about themselves.
As you’ve said, I think people forming impressions of others on the Forum based on how they look is already happening even without profile photos. It’s quite easy to search on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google the name of a forum user (for those without pseudonyms), and know what their background is based off of their pictures. I would guess quite a few people on the Forum do this to have a better sense of who they’re reading or talking to. I do this regularly myself so I can get a better sense of who I’m talking to. I think it’s an important part of communication to understand one’s audience, and pictures allow you to better understand who you are interacting with.
“There are a lot of users of the Forum who post anonymously or under a pseudonym.” I think these users can just either opt to have a blank image, or use a random image. I would think 30-50% of current active Forum users are willing to upload profile photos, and having at least 30% of people upload photos may be good enough to make the forum a bit more friendly.
My turn for a slow response.
I think you’re more concerned with the effect of having images on a user’s feelings about the Forum generally, while I’m more concerned with its effect on user’s (differential) feelings about other individual users. I think there’s a bit of a disconnect there that makes your responses not feel like they quite hit what I was getting at. I think you’re probably right about the warm fuzzy angle with respect to users’ impression of the Forum generally, but I’m not convinced this outweighs the inequitable effects on individual users.
Concretely, I think in a discussion between an attractive person with a good-quality, well-posed & -lit photo and a weird-looking person with a bad photo (or no photo), the former will be at a very significant advantage with regard to swaying the audience. This discriminates against several groups of people: ethnic or other minorities, poorer people, people with worse intuitions about self-presentation, etc.
The current setup of the Forum discriminates on the basis of writing ability, which has various downsides, but I predict the effect of photos to be much stronger and even less well-correlated with actually being right.
A bit more grumpy than I actually endorse, but a feeling I’m having here: The world is full of places where people are evaluated based on how they look. It’s no bad thing to have some places where they are evaluated based on what they write.
Preface: I hate photos of myself and have been annoyed when past employers have required they be used in email profiles, so I get where you’re coming from.
I may be unusual, but this doesn’t match my experience with any discussion platform that includes profile pictures (Facebook, Twitter, Slack...). Profile pictures on these platforms are small enough that you’d actually have to expend effort (clicking through to someone’s profile or at least hovering over the photo) to judge someone’s appearance. (Though race and gender can usually be seen even at small scale, which I guess is something.)
I also think this dynamic, such that it exists at all, breaks down quickly when people use anything other than photos of their own faces. I assume all anonymous users would avoid photos, and that at least some other named users would do the same (including me). What ends up happening when an argument involves:
One person with a generic nice-looking photo,
One person with an artsy photo, face obscured by shadow,
A howler monkey, and
Hobbes the tiger?
I grabbed these examples from four profiles that popped up quickly when I opened Twitter. And I think this kind of scenario will be much more common than “two people having a conversation where most onlookers would agree that person A looks nicer than person B, based on what you can see at a glance from their profile pictures”. You’ll get some instances of the latter, but I think that the effect will be quite small compared to the overall impact of having a warmer Forum with easier-to-track conversations.
My own experience of these platforms is that someone’s profile picture or lack thereof has a big effect on my impression of that person. (With Twitter > Facebook > Slack in terms of both size of image and size of effect, but I remember specific examples from all three platforms.)
This applies also to cartoons or other non-photo images. My clearest memories of this are from old Slate Star Codex comment threads, when almost no-one used photos but I was still very aware of my feelings about users being strongly affected by their images – and changing significantly when those images changed. As another example, my system 1 is often noticeably better-disposed toward people who use profile pictures which are nice drawings of themselves than it would be if they used the original photo.
It’s possible I’m unusually impressionable here, but I currently doubt it.
Hey Will, no worries and thanks for the response! Yeah I think I updated my views a bit from some of these discussions I had with others on the Forum about whether it should have profile photos. I’m now probably just 50% in favor of the EA Forum having profile photos, whereas I was probably 80% in favor before.
I think a good compromise is maybe there are ways to make the Forum seem friendlier and more welcoming to newcomers without having to use profile photos. That’s the problem I wanted to solve anyway. I see how profile photos can degrade the experience for more engaged Forum users, so maybe there are other solutions, but I won’t try to talk about them here.
Definitely interested in seeing this explored more!