Ugh I just posted that and I already am not sure. I think the correct answer is "leave a comment saying I appreciate the effort but downvote, because this question seems like chaff and upvotes factor into the algorithm and rankings of upvoted posts", but this is a personal blogpost so the right answer is probably an upvote since those don't frontpage I think.

I'm conflicted. I appreciate the effort put into the post, but it seems like a lot of the posters are genuinely creating lots of low quality content and I'd much rather have a small amount of good content than a large amount of meh-or-bad content to sift through to find the good stuff.

I've settled on a net downvote, but would probably do a upvote and a disagree vote if that was an option.

It doesn't sound like this is a good summary, no

I think you are dramatically overestimating how difficult it was, back in the day, to accidentally or incidentally learn Scott's full name. I think this is the crux here.

It was extremely easy to find his name, and often people have stories of learning it on accident. I don't believe it was simple enough that Scott's plea to not have his name be published in the NYT was invalid, but I do think it was simple enough that an analogy to lockpicking is silly.

Hm. I think we like Slate Star Codex in this thread, so let's enjoy a throwback:

It was wrong of me to say I hate poor minorities. I meant I hate Poor Minorities! Poor Minorities is a category I made up that includes only poor minorities who complain about poverty or racism.

No, wait! I can be even more charitable! A poor minority is only a Poor Minority if their compaints about poverty and racism come from a sense of entitlement. Which I get to decide after listening to them for two seconds. And If they don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong, then they’re automatically a Poor Minority.

I dedicate my blog to explaining how Poor Minorities, when they’re complaining about their difficulties with poverty or asking why some people like Paris Hilton seem to have it so easy, really just want to steal your company’s money and probably sexually molest their co-workers. And I’m not being unfair at all! Right? Because of my new definition! I know everyone I’m talking to can hear those Capital Letters. And there’s no chance whatsoever anyone will accidentally misclassify any particular poor minority as a Poor Minority. That’s crazy talk! I’m sure the “make fun of Poor Minorities” community will be diligently self-policing against that sort of thing. Because if anyone is known for their rigorous application of epistemic charity, it is the make-fun-of-Poor-Minorities community!

I’m not even sure I can dignify this with the term “motte-and-bailey fallacy”. It is a tiny Playmobil motte on a bailey the size of Russia. (from https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/)

Can your use of "Journalism" pass this test? Can we really say "the hostility to journalists is not based on hyperbole. They really are like this. They really are competing to wreck the commons for a few advertising dollars." and expect everyone to pay close attention to check that the target is a Bad Journalist Who Lies first?

Your comment is actually one of the ones in the thread that replied to mine that I found least inane, so I will stash this downthread of my reply to you:

I think a lot of the stuff Cade Metz is alleged to say above is dumb as shit and is not good behavior. However, I don't need to make bad metaphors, abuse the concept of logical validity, or do anything else that breaks my principles to say that the behavior is bad, so I'm going to raise an issue with those where I see them and count on folks like you to push back the appropriate extent so that we can get to a better medium together.

I'd be amenable to quibbles over the lock thing, though I think it's still substantially different. A better metaphor (for the situation that Cade Metz claims is the case, which may or may not be correct) making use of locks would be "Anyone can open the lock by putting any key in. By opening the lock with my own key, I have done no damage". I do not believe that Cade Metz used specialized hacking equipment to reveal Scott's last name unless this forum is unaware of how to use search engines.

I don't (and shouldn't) care what Scott Alexander believes in order to figure out whether what Cade Metz said was logically valid. You do not need to figure out how many bones a cat has to say that "The moon is round, so a cat has 212 bones" is not valid.

The evidence offered "Scott agrees with the The Bell Curve guy" is of the same type and strength as those needed to link him to Hitler, Jesus Christ, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Cate Metz, and so on. There was absolutely nothing special about the evidence that tied it to the people offered and could have been recast without loss of accuracy to fit any leaning.

As we are familiar with, if you have an observation that proves anything, you do not have evidence.

I don't think "Giving fake evidence for things you believe are true" is in any way a minor sin of evidence presentation