This seems like generally a bad precedent to set—lots of people put a bunch of time into writing thoughtful comments; those comments are now gone. Even leaving the post up with the body blanked out would be preferable. I’m not sure the author of a post should have the power to erase all the discussion of it unless they have a very good reason.
I think it’s a somewhat hard tradeoff to set in terms of visibility and streisand-effect like things. I am currently happy with the equilibrium where you can still find the comments on the greaterwrong mirror:
My understanding is that the author ultimately decided to take it down when someone called them a bigot in the comments (for their points related to polyamory). I think both the comment and reaction to it were a bit much personally, but I can understand not wanting the comments visible if that was the key worry for the author.
To clarify, authors have always been able to make a post private by clicking “Move to Draft” on their posts. Moderators can do so as well (like has been done in this case) if, for example, the author does not know about that possibility.
The comments are not completely gone: you can still see them on the profile pages of the authors. For example, if you look at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/jeff_kaufman you’ll see a comment “Asking and guessing aren’t the only options here: double-opt in methods …” that was originally on the referenced post and is now detached.
This seems like generally a bad precedent to set—lots of people put a bunch of time into writing thoughtful comments; those comments are now gone. Even leaving the post up with the body blanked out would be preferable. I’m not sure the author of a post should have the power to erase all the discussion of it unless they have a very good reason.
I think it’s a somewhat hard tradeoff to set in terms of visibility and streisand-effect like things. I am currently happy with the equilibrium where you can still find the comments on the greaterwrong mirror:
https://ea.greaterwrong.com/posts/NacFjEJGoFFWRqsc8/women-and-effective-altruism
I doubt many people are aware of this option or know what greater wrong is. I wonder if it is a good idea to make that easier to find?
Yeah, it seems reasonable (IMO) to add it to the site-FAQ, though I wouldn’t want it to be more prominent than that.
It doesn’t link to greater wrong, instead it links to the deleted post.
It links to the deleted post, without the post itself, but with the comments still visible.
The link text is to greaterwrong, the link address is to the ea forum (where the post is not visible).Clickable link:https://ea.greaterwrong.com/posts/NacFjEJGoFFWRqsc8/women-and-effective-altruismEdit: it was actually correct in the first comment, but it’s not clickable, my bad, you need to use https://ea.greaterwrong.com/posts/NacFjEJGoFFWRqsc8/women-and-effective-altruism
Huh, yeah, seems like it’s not clickable. That seems bad. I’ll add it to the list of bugs.
My understanding is that the author ultimately decided to take it down when someone called them a bigot in the comments (for their points related to polyamory). I think both the comment and reaction to it were a bit much personally, but I can understand not wanting the comments visible if that was the key worry for the author.
To clarify, authors have always been able to make a post private by clicking “Move to Draft” on their posts.
Moderators can do so as well (like has been done in this case) if, for example, the author does not know about that possibility.
The comments are not completely gone: you can still see them on the profile pages of the authors. For example, if you look at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/jeff_kaufman you’ll see a comment “Asking and guessing aren’t the only options here: double-opt in methods …” that was originally on the referenced post and is now detached.