Upvoted. I felt this reply was engaging in good faith, and it's given me a chance to add clarity about the Forum's moderation policy.

I tried looking through the rules to find anything related to this: "The current comment makes unkind assumptions about a group of people without accurate data to back them — so despite the good intentions, it falls afoul of our rules."

Thanks for asking the question — I should have linked to the exact section I was referencing, which was:

This criterion is based on Scott Alexander's moderation policy, which I'll quote here:

If you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary. Kind, in that you don’t rush to insult people who disagree with you. Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.

(Where he uses "necessary", we use "relevant".)

The version of "kind" I'm thinking of doesn't just encompass "not insulting people", but covers other everyday aspects of the word. The relevant one here is: "Don't insinuate that a given member of a certain group is likely to be dangerous, to the point that you don't recommend people interact closely with them." See the following:

Finally, it is a well established fact that one of the biggest threats to children comes from their mothers getting new boyfriends who are not genetically related to the child; this results in a something like a 10x increase in child abuse risk vs traditional families. I have never seen similar statistics around older adopted children but I would consider whether they might present a similar risk to your son given the 12 year age gap.

If a comment speculates that a sizable group of people pose a serious hazard to the people they live with, I hold it to a higher standard, as I believe Scott would.

This comment is speculative, and I'd argue using the above standard that it isn't kind. It's certainly relevant, in that you are referring to a situation someone plans to seek out, but 1 out of 3 is still an occasion for a warning.

...one that is couched in measured language like 'consider' and 'might'.

It's better to use this kind of language than to not use it. But as a moderator, I'm wary of even measured language (in this context — no data, negative stereotyping) when someone uses a "measured" point in the service of a less measured conclusion: "I encourage you to strongly consider not adopting an older child" (emphasis mine). 

The word "strongly", to me, reads as "I believe the thing I'm about to argue for is true; even if I'm not trying to force you to agree with me, I really think you should." If that wasn't your intention, I'm sorry to have misconstrued what you meant to imply.

In a situation whether there is a logical reason why a course of action is bad, but no hard empirical data, what alternative is there but to share our best attempt at reasoning?

The alternatives I suggested involved finding data, which is a really good thing to do when you are speculating about the violent proclivities of a group of people. 

Given the choice of "make an inference without empirical data that a group of people has violent proclivities" or "don't make that inference", I'd prefer people refrain from making such inferences. It's very easy for online discussions to get tangled up in arguments about stereotyping; asking people to bring hard data if they want to get into those topics seems reasonable to me. 

(For example, under the standard you seem to be suggesting, you could have gone on in your comment to speculate about the safest gender, race, national origin, and IQ of child to adopt. Even if these were all just "inferences", I can't imagine them improving the quality of discussion, because I've never seen the internet work that way.)

Polish: We'd rather see an idea presented imperfectly than not see it at all.

Rather than content, this line is meant to refer to a post's formatting: an "unpolished" post, to my mind, is one that is messy and disorganized, rather than speculative. 

That said, I can see why people might think it refers to speculation. I'll consider edits I could make to clear this up, and to explain more about how we see the trade-off between "polish" (in the sense of accuracy/empiricism), kindness, and relevance.

Worse, I think your objection is an isolated demand for rigor. It is very common for people to express arguments in the absence of hard statistical data; such data-heavy comments are a minority of those on the forum. Even among top-level articles such sources are often omitted - for example this highly upvoted post from the frontpage contains almost no statistics at all, yet I don't think this is a major problem.

I'd gladly acknowledge my objection as an isolated demand for rigor. A comment policy of "unkind comments are held to a higher standard for accuracy" seems to require making isolated demands for rigor. (Of course, we could be more clear in our rules that we do hold such comments to a higher standard — again, I upvoted your reply because it's given me some ideas for ways to improve that page.)

My guess is the true crux of your objection is that my comment expresses a negative view of a group who it is not socially acceptable to criticize (you will note that Denise's comment also implies negative things, about a different group, but she has received no pushback because her target is considered socially acceptable to criticize).

If you ever see anyone on the Forum express negative views of a group without empirical data to back them up, please feel free to report their comment! I'd like to apply our standards fairly, even to criticism of groups that are "socially acceptable" targets in other places.

I don't know which part of Denise's comment you are referring to. My best guess is:

The foster system is often a pretty awful experience to children.

This doesn't imply negative things about any particular people or group of people. It specifically refers to a "system". Even if people who work in the foster system are generally kind and competent, the experience of growing up without a family in a family-centric culture, surrounded by a constantly shifting group of people, and feeling generally unwanted/out of place in society... well, it's often going to be pretty awful.

(Similarly, saying "sewers are an unpleasant work environment" doesn't read to me as a criticism of sewer designers; there are other, more obvious reasons that you'd prefer not to work in a sewer.) 

My comment was written to be specifically action guiding, and the negative facts about adopted children, especially older adopted children, are a crucial component of any fair evaluation of the risks and benefits of this decision. 

The part of your comment that led me to issue a warning was your speculation about the violent tendencies of older adopted children. I've made an edit to my warning to clarify that the rest of my comment was an objection/counterpoint from one user to another.

We should not be straw rationalists who are unable to act in the absence of RCTs; we can and should use evidence from other domains to make logical inferences when we have to make decisions under uncertainty. 

I agree! But there are consequences to making certain logical inferences that I think are important to consider in the context of a public discussion forum (and in the context of any communication between imperfectly rational humans). We should not be straw rationalists who refuse to consider the social implications of communication.

A comment that refers to a negative stereotype about a group of people has fairly high downside risk. Not in isolation, of course (few people read most Forum comments), but in the sense that every instance of a thing permitted makes it more difficult to stop further instances of that thing. And when the thing is "speculation about the violent tendencies of different groups of people", there's a lot of risk to it becoming more common. (I would expect people who don't like that kind of speculation to become less active, and people who enjoy it to become more active, with generally negative consequences.)

Of course, downside risk isn't the only thing a comment can have. There are also potential benefits, which are usually going to be more important!

In this case, the potential benefit could actually be high — if the OP decides not to adopt because they anticipated helping the child become dramatically more wealthy or successful than they'd otherwise have been, and it turns out this (very likely) wouldn't have happened and the OP would have been bitterly disappointed as a result (which in turn seems bad for their adopted child), you've helped them.

However, the part of the comment that I moderated doesn't seem as beneficial, on net. I find the inference shaky (how violent are siblings, relative to parents? How common is violence toward siblings vs. stepsiblings?), and the magnitude of the risk highly unclear. And when net benefits are concerned, I don't want to ignore that the choice of "adopt vs. not adopt" has a substantial impact on the welfare of the child who is or isn't adopted. (Or at least I infer that it does; moderators also have to draw inferences sometimes.)

If we punish such comments, while allowing relatively statistic-light 'positive' comments we create a persistent bias which will lead us to social desirability bias. It is well known that the EA movement has a bias against conservatives; we should not let this bias morph into a moderation policy.

I agree that our current moderation policy seems likely to create some amount of social desirability bias, even if we aim to apply it fairly to "desirable" and "undesirable" topics.

However, there are other factors that influence a forum's success aside from "are people sharing opinions with as little bias as possible?" (Though that's an important factor, and I try not to get in the way of it unless I have a really good reason, as I think I do here.)

I'd guess that most people in EA are more likely to participate in an atmosphere that leans positive and pleasant, and where certain types of comments (e.g. negative stereotypes about groups, harsh criticism) are held to unusually high standards of rigor. And I'd guess that a forum with more participation will be more impactful, because more people will share ideas, give feedback, and so on.

(I could write many, many more paragraphs about the considerations we've had to make around balancing user experience for people with different preferences while aiming at the most impactful overall product, but I've now spent more than an hour on this comment and have to finish up.)

These are the kinds of tradeoffs I have to consider as a moderator. I also have to consider the best way to apply policies established by the people who built the Forum and fund its continued development, even if my personal preferences are a bit different in some cases. I hope that even if we don't see eye to eye on this particular post, you can see that I am at least aware of the concerns you raise.

*****

On the "bias against conservatives" point: I don't understand how this relates to our conversation. If anything, I think of adoption as a "conservative" type of action, because I associate it with large families and religious beliefs. 

There are other posts on the Forum that could be cited more easily for this concern — maybe you meant to refer to some of those?

*****

Now speaking as a commenter, rather than a moderator:

I do think your comment showed an absence of something else we encourage:

You set out to present the best case you could for the argument "don't adopt". You didn't speculate on the benefit of being adopted to a child's well-being, or how their family might benefit — instead, you focused on negative consequences. Given that really good outcomes are also possible, this focus stands out.

(To give another example: I can imagine someone posting about their plans to remarry, and someone else saying "you should strongly consider not remarrying, because stepparents are often violent towards their stepchildren". This may be true, but there are many potential benefits to remarrying, and it seems like people should remarry at least sometimes — is someone who reads your comment likely to better understand whether they should remarry?)

This isn't to say that every comment has to present all the pros and cons of a decision. I was just personally put off by that aspect.

Yet better outcomes for adopted teenagers over non-adopted teenagers is actually a logical consequence of the  considerations I mentioned, because never-adopted children will have even worse adverse selection problems than late-adopted children!

Fair enough! This is a good and helpful critique.

I should have added more detail to that comment (about e.g. trying really hard to compare adopted vs. eligible-but-not-adopted children with similar characteristics, or children who were successfully adopted vs. children who would have been adopted but the paperwork fell through, etc., etc.) I meant to imply "find the most reliable version of this study", but that definitely didn't come through.

Back to being a moderator:

I really don't want the Forum to be a place where people simply can't share certain true (legal, safe) information. However, there are a lot of ways to share information, and I do want to encourage people to share it in certain ways I think are better for discussion.

Aside from the alternatives I proposed in the last comment (finding more data), here are some suggested formats that could have brought your comment more in line with how I'd like Forum discussion to go. These are meant to be "examples of comments with formats that seem good", rather than "examples of exactly what you should have said" — you may well disagree with some of what I say here.

• "From your quote X, I think you may be hoping to have outcome Y on an adopted child. I think that's unlikely, because..."
• "You ask whether it's "worth it" to adopt an older child. While I understand the desire to help people whose welfare is especially neglected, I think there are some alternatives A and B you should consider, based on tradeoffs X and Y..."
• "I think that bringing a happy new life into the world is actually a very good thing! Here are some thoughts on why it could lead to a better world, overall, than deciding to adopt..."
• (I've replaced my fourth example with Habryka's comment, which does a great job of providing extra supporting data for claims about the risk of violence.)

In particular, I think the last one of these takes risks seriously without assuming that adoption is never the right option.

You don't have to write comments that look like any of these, of course — I'm just trying to show that there are ways to convey "negative" or "socially undesirable" opinions without presenting negative stereotypes of entire groups.