The discussion on this post is getting heated, so we'd like to remind everyone of the Forum norms. Chiefly:
- Be kind.
- Stay on topic.
- Be honest.
If you don’t think you can respect these norms consistently in the comments of this post, consider not contributing, and moving on to another post.
We’ll investigate the issues that are brought up to the best of our ability. We’d like to remind readers that a lot of this is speculation.
Writing this as a moderator, but only expressing my own view.
Accusing someone of acting in bad faith on a public forum can be very damaging to the person, and it's very easy to be mistaken about such a characterization. Even if the person is acting in bad faith, it might escalate things and make it hard to deal with the underlying problem well.
Instead, it would be better to go through the moderation and community health channels, which you can do by flagging comments/posts or by contacting us directly.
Accusing anonymous or pseudonymous Forum accounts of being someone in particular (or doxing anyone) goes against Forum norms. We have reached out to John Halstead to ask that he refrain from doing so and that he refrain from commenting more on these threads.
However, I doubt this would go anywhere. I suspect this is simply yet another way of ignoring people who disagree with you without thinking too hard, and relying on the combination of your name-recognition and the average EA's ignorance of climate change to buy you the 'Seems like he knows what he's talking about!'-ness you want
The moderation team feels that this is unnecessarily hostile and rude, and violates Forum norms. This is a warning; please do better in the future.
Thus, all criticism must be stated in the most faux-friendly, milquetoast way possible, imposing significant effort demands on the critic and allowing them to be disregarded if they ever slip up and actually straightforwardly say that a bad thing is bad.
I'm speaking for the moderation team right now. We enforce civility on the Forum and don't view this property as opposed to criticism or disagreement.
The moderation team is issuing Phil Tanny a 1-year ban for repeated violation of Forum norms (even after warning). This user repeatedly violated our norms and we didn’t see any attempts on their behalf to follow our Forum’s norms more after we warned them the first time by messaging them and responding to their comments. Some examples:
- This comment is unnecessarily rude (the "thank you" in particular is sarcastic).
- They posted other comments that are unnecessarily rude (e.g. calling the criticism contest “blowharding.”)
- Their reaction to being downvoted
These comments are not acceptable for the Forum, as they come too close to advocating for violence, which is not allowed (you can see the guide to norms on the Forum). The moderation team has issued a warning to the poster.
The moderation team feels that phrases like “called you out on it being bullshit” aren’t constructive for this discussion (or on the Forum as a general rule). Please don’t use them.
Some comments in this thread are uncivil and break Forum norms. The moderation team is asking John Halstead to refrain from adding more to this thread.
A comment aimed at readers, authors, and commenters alike:
Please try not to misgender people, but also don’t assume ill intent if someone does; a correction is appreciated, but insinuations of ill intent are not. The post currently has correct pronouns, and we’re considering this topic closed in this case.
On deadnames, I currently agree with Lukas Gloor’s comment:
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