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John_Maxwell_IV comments on Goals for which Less Wrong does (and doesn't) help - Less Wrong
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Let me put down a few of my own thoughts on the subject.
I think it's odd that LessWrong spends so much time pondering whether or not it should exist! Most blogs don't do that; most communities (online or otherwise) don't do that. And if a person did that, you'd consider her rather abnormal. I view such discussion as noise; or at least a sidebar to more interesting topics.
I disagree that LW can't be useful to anyone who'd understand it. I offer my own experience as an example: it was useful to me in several ways.
LW clinched my own break with religion (particularly the essay "Belief in Belief." )
Eliezer's explanation of quantum physics is very interesting, intuitive, and as far as I know isn't replicated in any textbook.
LW introduced me to futurist topics that I simply hadn't heard of, or realized that sensible people thought about (cryonics, the Singularity).
I met a few real-life friends through LW, for whom I have a lot of respect.
Finally, as far as instrumental rationality goes, LW took the place of two other, lower-quality internet forums in my free-time budget, so I spend more time out of my day trying to be thoughtful, rather than sleazy and goofy.
A couple of common topics on LW aren't all that interesting to me. Productivity/time management advice just strikes me as a bit of a guilt trip, which I can come up with by myself, thank you very much. I don't like models for how the mind works that aren't based in anything empirical -- I mistrust that sort of thing. (Not that professional researchers don't do the same thing!) I'm not a fan of the periodic gender wars and the oops-someone-mentioned-politics-and-we-all-went-crazy catastrophes. And I have a pet peeve with the local convention of using rather colorless language and speaking in very general terms and second-guessing themselves and each other all the time.
But apart from all that, it's a pretty damn good forum, and it does teach people new things.
Oh come on. You really think the fact that no one else is doing it means it is a bad idea?
And besides, Hacker News also has periodic controversies over the fact that some of its users read it instead of hacking. My guess is that any forum populated by ambitious people will have periodic controversies over whether it should be killed off/re-channeled/etc. And that's a good thing.
That is a good point. Although generally I'm a fan of conformity; it's often a sign that you're doing things right.
Sure, but that should be a very weak heuristic.
If you sample from the set of online communities you know of, you'll tend to see bigger and longer lasting ones more frequently than smaller and shorter-lasting ones. So by conforming with online communities you see, you're making your community larger and longer-lasting. That's not obviously a good thing.