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!
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!