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: LW Account Restricted: OK for me, but not sure about LessWrong, published by amelia on April 12, 2023 on LessWrong.

My LessWrong account has been restricted.

I’m alright with this. In fact, the restriction has turned out to be advantageous to me for the following reasons:

1-It inspired me to finally set up a Medium account and express my views on that platform. (/@ameliajones3.14)

2-On the Medium platform, all my writing can be in one place. This even includes my short stories and poetry. And when it comes to writing on philosophical physics, I don’t have to worry that physics-oriented platforms will reject the writing for being too philosophical, while LW might reject it for not being philosophical enough. The writing can just exist for whatever it is worth in its own right.

3-The Medium platform will presumably have a larger and more diverse audience.

4-There is some comic potential in having my account restricted. I printed out the message about the restriction, and have it displayed on my desk. I don't know exactly why it's amusing. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I thought my writing was a healthy part of the dialog, when in actuality it must have really been annoying some people.

Yet, while the restriction does not necessarily harm me personally, I do have some concerns for the future of LW. I’ll include these concerns in responses to the message about the restriction. The message is in italic. My thoughts are in bold.

Hey amelia,

We're generally tightening our moderation standards lately (see LW Team is adjusting moderation policy). This may feel like a significant shift in what the de-facto moderation standards. We're leaning towards the default expectation being more like new users can periodically submit comments or posts for approval,

The “for approval” part concerns me a little. Does this mean any new user’s post will go through a moderator, and the moderator can decide to hide it from the rest of the LW audience, simply because they disagree with it? It seems this will stifle new ideas.

with gradually escalating privileges of how often they can comment that depends on being actively upvoted.

The upvoting part also concerns me. I think some readers use the karma vote based on whether they agree or disagree with the writer (and not whether the writer’s point was unusual, unique or well-argued). We know that groundbreaking ideas are often initially unpopular or deemed as "radical," so I worry that the need for popularity might limit the voicing of such ideas.

You've been posting fairly frequently,

I made 7 posts, including drafts, in 59 days. If you add in comments on my posts, others’ posts, and replies to comments, that brings us to 24. I’m thinking that, for the good of LW, you might want to have a consistent standard, and publicize it, because some newbies might not realize what is meant by “frequent.”

[EDIT, 20230412 21:48, All but one of my comments were regarding my own posts. Somehow I feel obligated to reply w/my own comments to most comments on my posts, even if it's just to say "Thanks for your feedback."

So if you don't count the comments on my own posts, then I've done 7 posts and 1 comment in 59 days. I can understand though if this is too much. You just might want to let future newbies know this.]

and my subjective impression

I won’t say anything to this, other than that it seems problematic.

as well as voting patterns suggest most people aren't finding your comments sufficiently helpful.

Yeah, my comments received a net karma of +34, with 11 agree votes, and 1 disagree vote. However, my posts did receive a net -4 karma.

Generally, if I have an idea that I think everyone will agree with, or an idea that can be very easily argued, I don’t bother posting it--because such ideas don’t move the frontiers of philosophy forward. (I don’t reall...