It would mitigate it, but it's not getting at what I'm really talking about. Our equivalent of Wikipedia's vandalism isn't the issue - downvotes suffice for that.
What I mean is in general the flood of people not familiar with the existing material, not reading it, asking old questions, engaging in half-arsed arguments, misinforming others, etc. A handful can be educated by the regular they run into; if 1 newbie replies cluelessly to an old comment or post of mine, I can take the time to dig up the links and refute/educate them. If 100 newbies do that to me, I might just quit LW entirely. And what if they simply contribute high quality content that drags LW far away from what I value it for? (A number of LWers feel this has already happened with all the more 'practical' stuff, and would like to see LW return to its AI/decision theory roots.)
And then there's the problem that we don't really have everything organized. There's the Sequences, but that's overwhelming (Rational Wiki comments of LW that 'read the Sequences' is our polite way of telling people to go screw themselves). The wiki is very slowly being organized, but it couldn't handle a flood.
There's the Sequences, but that's overwhelming (Rational Wiki comments of LW that 'read the Sequences' is our polite way of telling people to go screw themselves).
I think that 'read the Sequences' is our polite way of telling people that there is a certain body of ideas that forms a common background for the discussions here, and that it does not serve either the newcomer or the community, to post here before being at least somewhat familiar with that background. This is our polite way of telling people to go screw themselves.
Perhaps The Sequences migh...
Recently reporters from two major national magazines contacted me in preparation for doing stories on Bitcoin. This reminded me that Wired magazine did a cover story on the Cypherpunks in its second issue. I think the LessWrong community is already larger and more active than Cypherpunks were back then, and potentially more influential, but there hasn't been much publicity on us. I'm tempted to suggest doing a story on LessWrong to one of the reporters. Is this a good idea, or bad?
More generally, do we want more publicity, and if so what's the best way to go about getting it?
ETA: Would it be bad etiquette to reveal the names of these magazines at this point, or even to say as much as I've said?