= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
WrongBot comments on Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (770)
Reading Michael Vassar's comments on WrongBot's article (http://lesswrong.com/lw/2i6/forager_anthropology/2c7s?c=1&context=1#2c7s) made me feel that the current technique of learning how to write a LW post isn't very efficient (read lots of LW, write a post, wait for lots of comments, try to figure out how their issues could be resolved, write another post etc - it uses up lots of the writer's time and lot's of the commentors time).
I was wondering whether there might be a more focused way of doing this. Ie. A short term workshop, a few writers who have been promoted offer to give feedback to a few writers who are struggling to develop the necessary rigour etc by providing a faster feedback cycle, the ability to redraft an article rather than having to start totally afresh and just general advice.
Some people may not feel that this is very beneficial - there's no need for writing to LW to be made easier (in fact, possibly the opposite) but first off, I'm not talking about making writing for LW easier, I'm talking about making more of the writing of a higher quality. And secondly, I certainly learn a lot better given a chance to interact on that extra level. I think learning to write at an LW level is an excellent way of achieving LW aim of helping people to think at that level.
I'm a long time lurker but I haven't even really commented before because I find it hard to jump to that next level of understanding that enables me to communicate anything of value. I wonder if there are others who feel the same or a similar way.
Good idea? Bad idea?
Is there any consensus about the "right" way to write a LW post? I see a lot of diversity in style, topic, and level of rigor in highly-voted posts. I certainly have no good way to tell if I'm doing it right; Michael Vassar doesn't think so, but he's never had a post voted as highly as my first one was. (Voting is not solely determined by post quality; this is a big part of the problem.)
I would certainly love to have a better way to get feedback than the current mechanisms; it's indisputable that my writing could be better. Being able to workshop posts would be great, but I think it would be hard to find the right people to do the workshopping; off the top of my head I can really only think of a handful of posters I'd want to have doing that, and I get the impression that they're all too busy. Maybe not, though.
(I think this is a great idea.)
I didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with your post, but newer posts get a much higher level of karma than old ones, which must be taken into account. Some of the core sequence posts have only 2 karma, for example.
Agreed, and that is exactly the sort of factor I was alluding to in my parenthetical.
I suppose there's a few options including: See who's willing to run workshops and then once that's known, people can choose whether to join or not. If none of the top contributors could be convinced to run them then they may still be useful for people of a lower level of post writing ability (which I suspect is where I am, at the moment). The other thing is, even regardless of who ran the workshops, the ability to get faster feedback and to redraft gives a chance to develop an article more thoroughly before posting it properly and may give a sense of where improvements can be made and where the gaps in thinking and writing are.
But I guess that questions like that are secondary to the question of whether enough people think it's a good enough idea and whether anyone would be willing to run workshops at all.