The Open Thread posted at the beginning of the month has gotten really, really big, so I've gone ahead and made another one. Post your new discussions here!
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
Yes.
Back in Overcoming Bias days, I constantly had the impression that the posts were of much higher quality than the comments. The way it typically worked, or so it seemed to me, was that Hanson or Yudkowsky (or occasionally another author) would write a beautifully clear post making a really nice point, and then the comments would be full of snarky, clacky, confused objections that a minute of thought really ought to have dispelled. There were obviously some wonderful exceptions to this, of course, but, by and large, that's how I remember feeling.
Curiously, though, I don't have this feeling with Less Wrong to anything like the same extent. I don't know whether this is because of the karma system, or just the fact that this feels more like a community environment (as opposed to the "Robin and Eliezer Show", as someone once dubbed OB), or what, but I think it has to be counted as a success story.
I hate to sound complimentary, but... I get the impression that the comments on LW are substantially higher-quality than the comments on OB.
And that the comments on LW come from a smaller group of core readers as well, which is to some extent unfortunate.
I wonder if it's the karma system or the registration requirement that does it?