
Well-Kept Gardens Die by Pacifism (2009) - Tomte
http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/
======
DoreenMichele
I failed to get through the entire article. It repeats memes I have seen
before that I see as an incomplete grasp of the situation at best.

I have been a moderator. I also was a full time parent for a long time. These
two things have a lot in common.

It isn't true that your choices are either censorship or just letting some
fool ruin everything. You can engage fools, welcome them, be kind, educate
them and help them start fitting into the culture.

It helps to assume they are intelligent, but don't know everything. This is a
rubric I learned by raising kids. Children aren't stupid, but they have a
great deal to learn. A lot of the eye roll worthy stuff they do is just
naivete, not intentionally bad behavior.

You can just explain stuff to people without being ugly, angry or
condescending. You can just assume they haven't yet learned all the rules,
they were distracted, their dog just died.

It helps to give people the benefit of the doubt the first several times and
give them time to learn the ropes. People need to be clued that, hey, that
doesn't work around here. If you don't tell them this isn't something we
welcome here, don't be shocked when they keep doing it, oblivious to the fact
that other people aren't cool with it. But you can tell them without being
ugly about it.

A healthy community needs some tolerance for friction, mistakes and dust ups.
No one should be expected to be perfect and occasionally defending yourself
should be acceptable.

At the same time, it needs mechanisms to lubricate the social friction. An
expectation of baseline respect is the best lubricant.

Respect is distinct from polite catch phrases and learning all the rules. Some
of the most awful people are good at using polite catch phrases and memorizing
the rules so they can politely shit all over everyone else. This is toxic
behavior.

Yes, it's work to keep a community healthy. But, no, evaporative cooling is
not inevitable.

~~~
eecc
Exactly.

Speaking of “censorship” I posted twice for advice on r/diy and twice I was
unceremoniously deleted by a moderator with some copypasta message.

Sure, before posting I should have bothered reading the group EULA and realize
there’s another “what’s this” sub (god knows what rules they have over there)
but boy ain’t I genuinely bitter about the treatment. It alone makes me want
to troll them just out of spite... couldn’t they just have been more polite
and _gasp_ ask me to move the post to this-and-that sub?! Politeness, assuming
goodwill in the counterpart... generally being civil, oh i miss that!

~~~
ubernostrum
I mod a medium-size (250k subscribers) subreddit.

And... no, we do not have time to give personalized individual hand-holding
attention to every single person who can't be bothered to read a simple set of
rules linked from our sidebar. We use AutoModerator for a lot, and will be
using it even more in the future. It's a very impersonal tool, but in any but
the smallest subreddits it's simply not possible to scale up personalized
moderation like what you're asking for. At some point you have to show some
initiative and read subreddit rules or linked wiki pages/guides/FAQs for
yourself rather than relying on the goodwill of volunteer moderators to do it
for you.

~~~
eecc
The set of rules isn’t always “simple & obvious” particularly to those new or
only tangentially interested in the sub. Not everyone is OCD about a
particular topic but it’s handy to toss a genuine question and perhaps
catalogue it more appropriately at a later stage.

Most of these draconian rules reek of tribal fallout from some earlier -
totally unrelated - war.

“And no, we do not have the time to...” then dude, you’re investing waaay more
effort than you can afford, you’re burning out, take a step back, chill and
let other people shoulder the community. You’re not paid to do it, neither in
monetary nor in “gratitude” so chill and keep it best effort

~~~
detaro
So first you complain that mods don't give enough effort in their messages,
and now you say "chill and keep it best effort"?

"Just get more moderators" isn't easy in many communities.

~~~
eecc
No, I complain that mods are too eager establishing excessively draconian -
and rather elaborate, probably subjective - rules on a general and broad topic
sub. Keep it to the minimum (behave, be civil) and that’s that.

Not this:

1 try. No direct images, only Imgur links (first auto-delete)

2 try. No request for advice. (Second delete)

3 try. No what’s this (we have decided that it goes to another sub, there it’s
documented in article nn of our faq)

4... (whatever, take your meds, I’ve wasted enough time...)

------
teddyh
The “Pacificm” as described here is exactly Geek Social Fallacy #1:
“Ostracizers Are Evil”:

[http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html](http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html)

(Written in 2003, or about five years prior to the “Pacificm” post.)

------
1787
Yudkowsky flirts with tautology in the title - "well-kept garden" has keep
right there explicitly and "garden" implies a caretaker. So almost by
definition a well-kept garden won't persist without intervention.

But also of course not all ecosystems are gardens; not all ecosystems rely on
keepers who are external to the ecosystem. A normal forest is sustained by
natural forces and the normal actions of its inhabitants. As much as possible
I'd like a community that sustains itself rather than one that is gardened.

~~~
bloaf
I think these "well-kept gardens" are basically the HOA's of the internet
world. The property values may be high, but that doesn't mean they're good or
healthy places to live.

------
captainmuon
If anything, my experience is the opposite. The initially best communites soon
develop some kind of clique identity, and set up arbitrary rules about what is
allowed and what is off topic. I'm not talking about trolling or abusive
behavior, but just content that is not aligned with what the clique considers
"fun" or "on topic". In the case of Wikipedia or Stackoverflow, this takes the
shape of deletionism.

In addition, if you give anybody power in an online community, it seems to go
to their heads. They develop a hall monitor mentality. It is even worse in the
mentioned sites since almost everybody can perform moderational tasks and thus
feel like they should hold up the rules.

Rather than "censoring" or "curating" (depending on your viewpoint), I would
much prefer a good search function and separate categories. Disk space is
cheap and the internet is infinite. Reddit does this pretty well, despite
constant moans about the quality. There is an area for almost everybody and
every topic, whether you want a clean garden or 4chan or something inbetween.

------
mabbo
I've always been fond of the system SomethingAwful uses[0] where there's a
public list of user, type of ban (probation, ban, perma-ban), offense, and
which mod banned them. It gave both the mods and the users accountability.

This was a well-kept garden with no pacifism at all. While SA sure isn't what
it was at it's height, it's still going and still retains a fairly high
quality to crap ratio.

The only real downside is that by culling users so frequently, the site isn't
very profitable and isn't as big as 4chan or reddit. They don't have the
userbase needed to make as much advertising money.

[0][https://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php](https://forums.somethingawful.com/banlist.php)

------
dang
One big prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4058818)

------
coldtea
Here's a much better written, more substantive, and more definitive post on
the matter:

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html)

------
Tepix
I agree. The reason that the SpaceX subreddit ( reddit.com/r/spacex ) is so
amazing is because it is rigorously moderated (some may call it censored).

------
icc97
A look at the Moderator - Censorship spectrum [0].

> Imagine a forum / Reddit-style social site that has no owners, no
> administrators, no entrenched authoritarian moderators. Imagine if the power
> was shifted back to the individual users, who could hire and fire personal
> “moderators” (content curators) to best guide discussions in the way that
> the user found to be valuable.

Personally I still think the StackOverflow notion of moderator elections is
the most transparent way of doing it.

It's still not perfect, but I think as far as transparency goes it's the best
that I've found.

[0]: [https://medium.com/@lopp/moderation-methods-vs-censorship-
cl...](https://medium.com/@lopp/moderation-methods-vs-censorship-
claims-f6baeb3c7392)

------
jimhefferon
Perhaps censorship-- or just vigoruous moderation-- makes more sense in a
context where a person can just go elsewhere and start their own if they don't
care for the current places.

I'll also observe that the value many of us cherish is to listen with respect
to _responsible_ differing opinions. I don't have to listen with respect to a
troll. And yes, it is a judgement which is which, but I'm OK with that.

------
skybrian
I can't find a reference, but I believe this is sometimes called the
"evaporative cooling effect".

~~~
vilhelm_s
That's from another article by Yudkowsky!

[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-
cooling-of-group-beliefs)

~~~
cma
It's a concept from Thomas Schelling (and maybe someone else earlier), worded
differently like the one from plausiblydeniable mentioned above.

~~~
vilhelm_s
So what's the Schelling reference?

~~~
cma
I can't remember exactly, but it is in here:
[https://www.amazon.com/Micromotives-Macrobehavior-
Lectures-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Micromotives-Macrobehavior-Lectures-
Public-Analysis/dp/0393329461/)

------
Houshalter
Note the website he founded and posted this on kind of died itself.

------
moosecouture
I find this article disturbing. Why not just give people the power to ignore
those they deem 'foolish'. That is how free speech works... I do not like what
you have to say... I do not walk within eat shot. Stop trying to give power to
large powerful entities that are not altruistic. When they have that power
they take that power from you. Anybody can be deemed foolish for one thing it
another.

~~~
wffurr
So when you come in to a new community and you don't have your personal ban
list set up to keep out the most egregious fools in that community, what do
you see? Chaos. So you turn around and leave to seek out a nicer, better kept
garden.

Everyone ends up with different, overlapping ban lists. Conversations become
fragmented when you can't see some of the replies. It turns into a mess, so
you leave to seek out a better-kept garden where people still talk to each
other.

You already have this power in a moderated community. You can _leave_ and find
a new one. This works pretty well for online communities because the switching
costs are very low.

And who says that moderators from within an online community, who are unpaid
volunteers who want to see the garden remain well-kept, are "large powerful
entities"? I think you are confusing the idea of a commumity moderator with
institutional censorship, which is an entirely different beast.

------
humanrebar
So this is a bit in conflict with a Scott Alexander piece that has been
upvoted here on several occasions:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

The idea that censorship and norms are useful isn't novel. In general,
American society is well beyond that, with censorship and stigmatization
levels reaching a new high, a recent example being the public shaming of
political figures associated with the NRA. But more broadly, pro-Trump and
anti-Trump people have been very busy finding virtue signals to use to
categorize people into one of the camps.

As someone with major objections to both camps, I find the whole process
perplexing and frustrating.

But there _are_ valid uses of these mechanisms. I think, when the evidence is
there, the recent expulsion of sexual abusers out of positions of power and
privilege are generally on the right track.

How do we combine the concerns? How do we expel and exclude people in a
healthy way? It seems to me that America, at least, is not very good at this
at the moment. Important things like improving the mental healthcare system in
the U.S. really hinge on the answers to these questions.

~~~
b1daly
I think what you are observing here is that human (animal) behavior is
controlled by patterns, instincts, biases, hueristics that are universal. A
classic example is reflected in the aphorism “just because you’re paranoid
doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

Public shaming is such an archetypal behavior. My contention is that critical
thinking is required to examine the content of the belief system that is the
implicit subtext of the behavior.

All humans have a “belief system” which helps them function by providing a
simplified, more manageable model of reality to conduct themselves in. Having
a “belief system” is not some mere crutch, it’s an inherent part of ourselves,
essential for our survival.

Challenging an individual’s belief system will provoke an anxiety response,
and compensating defense responses.

I “believe” that not all belief systems are “created equal.” Some map reality
more closely, some are kinder to the members of the society who create them.
Some lead to violent conflict, some are conducive to cooperation.

The “content” of a belief system can be examined with cognitive tools that
attempt to transcend one’s own belief system. (This is admittedly very hard,
and imperfectly undertaken, at best.) Science is one such tool. Logic is
another. An adoption of an empathetic stance towards an individual holding a
belief system is another.

However, because belief system have universal characteristics, identifying
something as a belief system does not provid much insight into the content of
the belief system, and does not provide a basis for evaluating it.

I think that self-identified conservatives, and fellow travelers in the pro
NRA crowd, have pulled off quite the disengenous trick, by deliberately
exploiting a kind of category confusion: they have managed, at least in their
own minds, to equate attacks, or shaming, of individuals based on their belief
system, with historical oppression of categories of people, that were a whole
different thing.

The worst type of oppression and discrimination in our US history is the
racial oppression built into the fabric of our society. This oppression was
not based on the “belief system” of black Americans. It was based on
amplifying and exploiting a perhaps natural affinity for others like ourselves
to systematically exploit, oppress, and persecute a whole category of people,
based on an aspect of themselves (race) that a) they had no choice in and b)
was irrelevant to the question of whether an individual had rights to live
with even a modicum of dignity, health, wealth, and justice.

So we have “conservatives” appropriating the mantle of the oppressed, because
they can demonstrate aspects of treatment that resemble what African Americans
have had to deal with.

It’s ludicrous. The argument seems to be: historically blacks were treated
with extreme deprivation. For example, they were not allowed to participate in
the institutions of higher education. Part of this would of course means they
would not have been permitted to speak publicly on a college campus, were it
not for the efforts of many advocates of racial equality and fairness.

So simply the act of being restricted from speaking on a public campus,
because they are (self identified) members of a group, in their minds equals
unfair discrimination. It would be comical, if it didn’t serve to confuse and
warp the civic discourse around this already difficult subject.

As part of that social rejection, the humans in the groups doing the rejection
are likely engaged in some of the same intense, sometimes disturbing,
behaviors, like “public shaming” that groups oppressing blacks engaged in.
That’s human nature. The fact that two courses of conduct share a common
motivation is not enough to evaluate the conduct.

Anecdotally, if you peruse the comment of social media/forum/comment sections
of “liberal” and “conservative” sites, you will see the same patterns of smug
self righteousness, and certainty that the “other side” are depraved,
delusional cretins, who can’t see beyond their own hypocrisy. (If you havent
tried this, do, it’s quite surreal...the archetypal patterns of social
behavior and biases, of emotional tone, are strikingly similar on Fox News and
Huffington Post.) Their are liberal trolls and conservative trolls.

Getting back to the subject of the OP, I suspect that similar category errors
are at work when the subject of “censorship” on a website comes up in response
to moderation actions. The simple act of suppressing speech in a public forum
is not enough to label it “censorship.”

------
nol13
Hence why HN wins over slashdot.

------
donatj
Well Kept Gardens always die eventually, yet actively promoting chaos like
4chan just keeps rolling along.

I personally prefer chaos. It’s far more interesting than Groupthink.

~~~
bad_user
I've never seen interesting conversations on topics I care about on 4chan. It
appeals to a certain demographic that I was never a part of, not even when I
was a teenager.

So you can give it as an example of a surviving community, but to someone like
me it might as well not exist.

Also note that you've just left a comment on Hacker News, one of the most
moderated communities on the web.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 've never seen interesting conversations on topics I care about on
> 4chan._

That, as you said, might depend on the demographic.

But you can certainly find interesting conversations on Reddit.

------
SubiculumCode
As a thesis, could this article have replaced 'online community' with 'Chinese
public' to argue for current censorship policies in China?

~~~
jhbadger
Yes it absolutely could. That's the problem with supporters of censorship.
Such people rarely see themselves as tyrants, just people who want a better
society that will come about once the toxic "others" have been silenced.

