Appendix 2. Where I personally think the norm should be on whether to run criticism past people
I think it’s generally good to give people a heads-up if you’re writing a post criticizing their work (and I tentatively think a week or two is a reasonable timeline).
I don’t think we need to push people to be willing to update drafts if they get a private response to their draft before the criticism is posted publicly. I know of multiple cases where the critic got pulled into an extended back-and-forth as a result of doing something like this, and I suspect that this kind of thing sometimes causes people to just not post anything in cases where something should have been posted. (There are still clear benefits to being willing to update drafts, but there are also real costs.)
I also think that running criticism past the people whose work is being criticized should be a soft norm that you can override if your criticism is time-sensitive (e.g. there’s something happening tomorrow that you want to inform the Forum audience about) or if you have good reason to believe that people don’t share your fundamental values, are not acting in good faith, might pressure you to stop you from publishing, or would react in a hostile way for one reason or another. (E.g. if someone were to write a criticism about how MacDonalds shouldn’t be serving meat, I don’t think they should feel obliged to first get in touch with MacDonalds. Jeff notes another example in his “EDIT” here.)
In particular, from a moderation perspective: we will not ban people from the Forum for posting criticism without running it past anyone.
Note: if you’re thinking of sharing very personal information or something closer to an unverified rumor, I’d more strongly push you to run it past people in advance. You can check with the moderation team if you’re not sure whether something is personal. See also the policies on revealing personal information on the Forum.
Appendix 2. Where I personally think the norm should be on whether to run criticism past people
I think it’s generally good to give people a heads-up if you’re writing a post criticizing their work (and I tentatively think a week or two is a reasonable timeline).
I don’t think we need to push people to be willing to update drafts if they get a private response to their draft before the criticism is posted publicly. I know of multiple cases where the critic got pulled into an extended back-and-forth as a result of doing something like this, and I suspect that this kind of thing sometimes causes people to just not post anything in cases where something should have been posted. (There are still clear benefits to being willing to update drafts, but there are also real costs.)
I also think that running criticism past the people whose work is being criticized should be a soft norm that you can override if your criticism is time-sensitive (e.g. there’s something happening tomorrow that you want to inform the Forum audience about) or if you have good reason to believe that people don’t share your fundamental values, are not acting in good faith, might pressure you to stop you from publishing, or would react in a hostile way for one reason or another. (E.g. if someone were to write a criticism about how MacDonalds shouldn’t be serving meat, I don’t think they should feel obliged to first get in touch with MacDonalds. Jeff notes another example in his “EDIT” here.)
In particular, from a moderation perspective: we will not ban people from the Forum for posting criticism without running it past anyone.
Note: if you’re thinking of sharing very personal information or something closer to an unverified rumor, I’d more strongly push you to run it past people in advance. You can check with the moderation team if you’re not sure whether something is personal. See also the policies on revealing personal information on the Forum.