The Nonlinear Library LW - What's with all the bans recently? by Gerald Monroe
Apr 4, 2024
08:17
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: What's with all the bans recently?, published by Gerald Monroe on April 4, 2024 on LessWrong.
Summary: the moderators appear to be soft banning users with 'rate-limits' without feedback. A careful review of each banned user reveals it's common to be banned despite earnestly attempting to contribute to the site. Some of the most intelligent banned users have mainstream instead of EA views on AI.
Note how the punishment lengths are all the same, I think it was a mass ban-wave of 3 week bans:
Gears to ascension was here but is no longer, guess she convinced them it was a mistake.
Have I made any like really dumb or bad comments recently:
https://www.greaterwrong.com/users/gerald-monroe?show=comments
Well I skimmed through it. I don't see anything. Got a healthy margin now on upvotes, thanks April 1.
Over a month ago, I did comment this stinker. Here is what seems to the same take by a very high reputation user here, @Matthew Barnett , on X: https://twitter.com/MatthewJBar/status/1775026007508230199
Must be a pretty common conclusion, and I wanted this site to pick an image that reflects their vision. Like flagpoles with all the world's flags (from coordination to ban AI) and EMS uses cryonics (to give people an alternative to medical ASI).
I asked the moderators:
@habryka says:
I skimmed all comments I made this year, can't find anything that matches to this accusation. What comment did this happen on? Did this happen once or twice or 50 times or...? Any users want to help here, it surely must be obvious.
You can look here: https://www.greaterwrong.com/users/gerald-monroe?show=comments if you want to help me find what habryka could possibly be referring to.
I recall this happening once, Gears called me out on it, and I deleted the comment.
Conditional that this didn't happen this year, why wasn't I informed or punished or something then?
Skimming the currently banned user list:
Let's see why everyone else got banned. Maybe I can infer a pattern from it:
Akram Choudhary :
2 per comment and 1 post at -25. Taking the doomer view here:
frankybegs
+2.23 karma per comment. This is not bad. Does seem to make comments personal. Decided to enjoy the site and make 16 comments 6-8 days ago. Has some healthy karma on the comments, +6 to +11. That's pretty good by lesswrong standards. No AI views. Ban reason is???
Victor Ashioya
His negative karma doesn't add up to -38, not sure why. AI view is in favor of red teaming, which is always good.
@Remmelt
doomer view, good karma (+2.52 karma per comment), hasn't made any comments in 17 days...why rate limit him? Skimming his comments they look nice and meaty and well written...what? All I can see is over the last couple of month he's not getting many upvotes per comment.
green_leaf
Ok at least I can explain this one. One comment at -41, in the last 20, green_leaf rarely comments. doomer view.
PeteJ
Tries to use humanities knowledge to align AI, apparently the readerbase doesn't like it. Probably won't work, banned for trying.
@StartAtTheEnd
1.02 karma per comment, a little low, may still be above the bar. Not sure what he did wrong, comments are a bit long?
doomer view, lots of downvotes
omnizoid
Seems to just be running a low vote total. People didn't like a post justifying religion.
@MiguelDev
Why rate limited? This user seems to be doing actual experiments. Karma seems a little low but I can't find any big downvote comments or posts recently.
@RomanS
Overall Karma isn't bad, 19 upvotes the most recent post. Seems to have a heavily downvoted comment that's the reason for the limit.
@shminux this user has contributed a lot to the site. One comment heavily downvoted, algorithm is last 20.
It certainly feels that way from the receiving end.
2.49 karma per comment, not bad. Cube tries to applies Baye's rule in several comments, I see a coup...
Summary: the moderators appear to be soft banning users with 'rate-limits' without feedback. A careful review of each banned user reveals it's common to be banned despite earnestly attempting to contribute to the site. Some of the most intelligent banned users have mainstream instead of EA views on AI.
Note how the punishment lengths are all the same, I think it was a mass ban-wave of 3 week bans:
Gears to ascension was here but is no longer, guess she convinced them it was a mistake.
Have I made any like really dumb or bad comments recently:
https://www.greaterwrong.com/users/gerald-monroe?show=comments
Well I skimmed through it. I don't see anything. Got a healthy margin now on upvotes, thanks April 1.
Over a month ago, I did comment this stinker. Here is what seems to the same take by a very high reputation user here, @Matthew Barnett , on X: https://twitter.com/MatthewJBar/status/1775026007508230199
Must be a pretty common conclusion, and I wanted this site to pick an image that reflects their vision. Like flagpoles with all the world's flags (from coordination to ban AI) and EMS uses cryonics (to give people an alternative to medical ASI).
I asked the moderators:
@habryka says:
I skimmed all comments I made this year, can't find anything that matches to this accusation. What comment did this happen on? Did this happen once or twice or 50 times or...? Any users want to help here, it surely must be obvious.
You can look here: https://www.greaterwrong.com/users/gerald-monroe?show=comments if you want to help me find what habryka could possibly be referring to.
I recall this happening once, Gears called me out on it, and I deleted the comment.
Conditional that this didn't happen this year, why wasn't I informed or punished or something then?
Skimming the currently banned user list:
Let's see why everyone else got banned. Maybe I can infer a pattern from it:
Akram Choudhary :
2 per comment and 1 post at -25. Taking the doomer view here:
frankybegs
+2.23 karma per comment. This is not bad. Does seem to make comments personal. Decided to enjoy the site and make 16 comments 6-8 days ago. Has some healthy karma on the comments, +6 to +11. That's pretty good by lesswrong standards. No AI views. Ban reason is???
Victor Ashioya
His negative karma doesn't add up to -38, not sure why. AI view is in favor of red teaming, which is always good.
@Remmelt
doomer view, good karma (+2.52 karma per comment), hasn't made any comments in 17 days...why rate limit him? Skimming his comments they look nice and meaty and well written...what? All I can see is over the last couple of month he's not getting many upvotes per comment.
green_leaf
Ok at least I can explain this one. One comment at -41, in the last 20, green_leaf rarely comments. doomer view.
PeteJ
Tries to use humanities knowledge to align AI, apparently the readerbase doesn't like it. Probably won't work, banned for trying.
@StartAtTheEnd
1.02 karma per comment, a little low, may still be above the bar. Not sure what he did wrong, comments are a bit long?
doomer view, lots of downvotes
omnizoid
Seems to just be running a low vote total. People didn't like a post justifying religion.
@MiguelDev
Why rate limited? This user seems to be doing actual experiments. Karma seems a little low but I can't find any big downvote comments or posts recently.
@RomanS
Overall Karma isn't bad, 19 upvotes the most recent post. Seems to have a heavily downvoted comment that's the reason for the limit.
@shminux this user has contributed a lot to the site. One comment heavily downvoted, algorithm is last 20.
It certainly feels that way from the receiving end.
2.49 karma per comment, not bad. Cube tries to applies Baye's rule in several comments, I see a coup...