(As with other comments in this thread, Iâm responding as an individual moderator rather than as a voice of the moderation team.)
It is very unusual to issue a moderation warning for a comment at +143 karma, the second most upvoted comment on the entire page, for undermining public discussion.
On the one hand â yes, certainly unusual, and one could reasonably interpret karma as demonstrating that many people thought a comment was valuable for public discussion.
However, I am exceedingly wary of changing the way moderation works based on a commentâs karma score, particularly when the moderation is the âreminder of our normsâ kind rather than the âyouâre bannedâ kind. (And almost all of our moderation is the former; weâve issued exactly two bans since the new Forum launched in 2018, other than for spammers.)
While some users contribute more value to Forum discussion than others, and karma can be a signal of this, I associate the pattern of âgiving âvaluedâ users more leeway to bend rules/ânormsâ with many bad consequences in many different settings.
Creating public knowledge about hostile behaviour can be a very useful service, and I think a lot of people would agree that is the case here.
I agree with both statements, but I also think that providing a bit more evidence can move a comment from âa lot of people agree, because they trust the author/âhave access to non-public informationâ to âeveryone agrees, because they can see the evidenceâ.
As I noted in my reply to Halstead, some users donât have the inside knowledge required to verify unsupported claims, and I donât want those people getting left out of public discussions because e.g. they didnât see a certain Facebook thread.
(If someone claims hostile behavior occurred, but doesnât show evidence, does that actually âcreate public knowledgeâ of the behavior itself? It might help some people connect the dots, but for many people, all they see is a claim.)
I do not think we want to encourage people to go around leaking private communication all the time.
I agree that leaking private communication is a behavior to discourage in most cases. And I agree with Halstead that at least one of his claims (maybe two) would have been difficult to provide evidence for without disclosing private information. However, another claim was based on an academic paper shared widely in EA spaces, and not linking to the paper seems more confusing than helpful (though as I say in my reply to Halsteadâs reply, his comment was still clearly valuable overall).
(As with other comments in this thread, Iâm responding as an individual moderator rather than as a voice of the moderation team.)
On the one hand â yes, certainly unusual, and one could reasonably interpret karma as demonstrating that many people thought a comment was valuable for public discussion.
However, I am exceedingly wary of changing the way moderation works based on a commentâs karma score, particularly when the moderation is the âreminder of our normsâ kind rather than the âyouâre bannedâ kind. (And almost all of our moderation is the former; weâve issued exactly two bans since the new Forum launched in 2018, other than for spammers.)
While some users contribute more value to Forum discussion than others, and karma can be a signal of this, I associate the pattern of âgiving âvaluedâ users more leeway to bend rules/ânormsâ with many bad consequences in many different settings.
I agree with both statements, but I also think that providing a bit more evidence can move a comment from âa lot of people agree, because they trust the author/âhave access to non-public informationâ to âeveryone agrees, because they can see the evidenceâ.
As I noted in my reply to Halstead, some users donât have the inside knowledge required to verify unsupported claims, and I donât want those people getting left out of public discussions because e.g. they didnât see a certain Facebook thread.
(If someone claims hostile behavior occurred, but doesnât show evidence, does that actually âcreate public knowledgeâ of the behavior itself? It might help some people connect the dots, but for many people, all they see is a claim.)
I agree that leaking private communication is a behavior to discourage in most cases. And I agree with Halstead that at least one of his claims (maybe two) would have been difficult to provide evidence for without disclosing private information. However, another claim was based on an academic paper shared widely in EA spaces, and not linking to the paper seems more confusing than helpful (though as I say in my reply to Halsteadâs reply, his comment was still clearly valuable overall).