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The same can be said for any community discussing politics, technology, or entertainment. An overwhelming majority of online commenters are ignorant of those fi

The same can be said for any community discussing politics, technology, or entertainment. An overwhelming majority of online commenters are ignorant of those fields and the myriad of factors that have to be taken into account by the experts who are making the decisions that are being discussed. So, should comments in those subreddits "assume competence" of legislators, software businesses and TV producers, lest they be deleted?

andy_ppp 4y ago
If you are as competent as the researchers you’re perfectly capable of pointing out the mistakes made in the research without insults like competency or stupidity. As it says in the rules for hacker news: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." That these rules are not enforced by deleting content but the comments largely disappearing from view (based on community voting) is not a hugely different outcome IMO. It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to participate in such a community if you don’t want to. Their space and their rules.
- Mordisquitos 4y ago
  I absolutely agree with you that comments should not explicitly cast doubt on the authors competency, nor insult them or their reasonings. However, that is not the rule we are criticising. The rule is: > Criticism of published work should assume basic competence That rule for example would bar a commenter from critiquing the work for not taking into account a confounding factor, or for using a non-representative WEIRD [0] population sample to reach overly broad conclusions. Taking these issues into account can be argued to be "basic competence", but they are too often ignored in many the most headline-worthy social science papers that attract the most upvotes. [0] western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEIRD_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEI...

andy_ppp 4y ago

If you are as competent as the researchers you’re perfectly capable of pointing out the mistakes made in the research without insults like competency or stupidity. As it says in the rules for hacker news: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." That these rules are not enforced by deleting content but the comments largely disappearing from view (based on community voting) is not a hugely different outcome IMO. It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to participate in such a community if you don’t want to. Their space and their rules.

Mordisquitos 4y ago
I absolutely agree with you that comments should not explicitly cast doubt on the authors competency, nor insult them or their reasonings. However, that is not the rule we are criticising. The rule is: > Criticism of published work should assume basic competence That rule for example would bar a commenter from critiquing the work for not taking into account a confounding factor, or for using a non-representative WEIRD [0] population sample to reach overly broad conclusions. Taking these issues into account can be argued to be "basic competence", but they are too often ignored in many the most headline-worthy social science papers that attract the most upvotes. [0] western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEIRD_bias https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_psychology#WEI...