LessWrong moderation messaging container

Moderators will evaluate your comment before it appears publicly, for criteria including:

• Understand rationality fundamentals. Try to reason probabilistically [LW · GW], get curious about where you might be wrong [? · GW], avoid arguing over definitions [? · GW], etc. Moderators may reject content that seems to be making reasoning mistakes covered in The Sequences. 
• Be careful when making assumptions about people's motivations. Try to argue about ideas rather than people. 
• Easy to engage/argue with. If you disagree, try to state your reasoning and what would change your mind. Make concrete predictions. 
• Understand the context of the parent post. Many posts are assuming some background knowledge, and most post authors don't want to rehash a lot of 101 debates every time they're building off an existing argument. If your comment seems to be ignoring background context (or simply ignoring/misunderstanding the text of the original post), moderators may ask you to post it elsewhere.

You can read more advice about how to make a good first comment in the new user's guide [LW · GW].

Note: LessWrong has high/specific standards for first posts

We think of LessWrong as somewhere in between a forum and a university or academic journal. Your first post is a bit like an application to said university. Established users can write on a variety of topics, but new users should focus on communicating clear, succinct models/evidence/arguments that are relevant to LessWrong. (We recommend avoiding fiction or poetic posts until you've gotten some upvoted object-level posts)

Understand rationality fundamentals. Try to reason probabilistically [LW · GW], get curious about where you might be wrong [? · GW], avoid arguing over definitions [? · GW], etc. Moderators may reject content that seems to be making reasoning mistakes covered in The Sequences. 

Write a clear introduction. Your first couple paragraphs should make it obvious what the main point of your post is, and ideally gesture at the strongest argument for that point. Explain why your post is relevant to the LessWrong audience. 

Address existing counterarguments (if applicable). We try to avoid rehashing debates that have been covered significantly. If your post seems to be ignoring important arguments that have already been made on a topic, mods may ask you to do more background reading.

AI content is held to a particularly high standard. There's a large wave of AI content. Ideally, we'd give a lot of feedback and guidance to each individual. Unfortunately we don't have bandwidth to do that. We're working on some posts to give people a better sense of how to get started. Meanwhile in some cases we may ask you to do some more background reading or comment in the AI Questions Open Thread [? · GW].

You can read more advice about how to make a good first post in the new user's guide [LW · GW].

LessWrong ain't your typical web forum

All first-time comments get reviewed by moderators to ensure they're productive contributions that fit with LessWrong's particular culture/values/goals. New users start our rate limited to 3 comments per day and one post per week (but you'll get more commenting privileges as you gain karma).

Learn more at the New User's Guide.