>When I stsrted getting email from them (cos I edit RW, RW was pretty much the only place on the Internet that mentioned the basilisk at the time, and LW refused to talk about it so they couldn't voice their concerns there), and found others at RW had been getting email too, I decided I had to do something to help because email wouldn't scale but it would be inhuman not to try to help. Hence the RW article on the basilisk. No email since then, so it seems to do the job.

Alright, first of all, don't pretend that RW as a whole was trying to help LW by writing about it. A bunch of the RW writers clearly held contempt for LW, when they started writing about it, which is shown in inside discussions[1], as well as in the article about LW[2]. Additionally, even though the wording has been cleared a little (LW posters are no longer described as 'butthurt' for example) over the years, the Wiki(s) still contain inaccurate information (although I'll have to make a whole post to point it all out). I am mentioning this, because this is where the initial RW writings about the basilisk were.

Second of all, you published the Basilisk article in 2013 - 3 whole years after the incident, when many people had forgotten about it, and new users hadn't even heard about it. Were you really trying to help, and not just make fun of LW (which seems to me to be the motivation of most people on that Talk page you linked)? You do realize, that it was after the RW article (with the help of the rest of XiXiDu's posts on the topic from the same time) which brought the topic back, and massively increased the publicity of the basilisk? Indeed, I suspect (but have no proof) that [a lot] more than half the people who have heard of the basilisk, would've never done so if it wasn't for your article (and slate wouldn't write about it).

At any rate, let's accept that at least your motivation was only to help.How big is this 'small sample of victims I know of', that you were trying to help? How many emails did you and Dymtry receive from people who were actually distressed? And, less importantly - how many did you receive in 2013?

You sure are making it sound like a significant part of LW believes in the basilisk, both in various revisions of the articles on RW, and in comments on the topic. At any rate, is the number larger than the number of crackpots who comment on HN, or the crackpots who read RW, or is it something like 4 people who got over it quickly?

1. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Talk:LessWrong/Archive1

2. http://web.archive.org/web/20110719151907/http://rationalwik...