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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Rationalist Wiki - Less Wrong
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A rationality wiki seems like a nice thing to have, but I wonder if the current wiki framework is sufficient unto the task. I would like to see comments with threading and voting on the wiki page, and be able to publish the wiki page as though a blog post - which might be a small task of integration, or might be a very large one. I tried to build a wiki earlier, on a certain subject that may not be named, and it sorta petered out. I'd love to have the rationalist equivalent of TVTropes but I'm not entirely sure how to go about getting it - it might require a larger audience to start with, for one thing.
I agree we'll want something better when we can get it, but what do you think of me going ahead and adding content now? I'd really like to be building something more cumulative and newcomer-accessible (because more organized or less tangled) than LW. Should I start contributing and expect the content to be later ported somewhere better, or should I wait?
See the question about scraping - though I guess so long as the text is in standard wiki format, we could port it manually in the worst case.
I could wish for better integration with LW, but the developers are busy... sure, go ahead.
The question is, would such a wiki have the mind-sucking powers of TVTropes?
"Overcoming Bias is a serious trip, particularly if you’ve let yourself get intellectually lazy. It’s a bigger, and far more productive, time sink than Wikipedia or even TV Tropes." - http://ricketyclick.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/12/quote-of-the-day-wearing-the-clown-suit/
Mind-sucking seems to be a general property of wikis, not just TVTropes. Even the original wiki is a huge potential time sink.
We'll make sure of it. :)
I'll know we have succeeded once we have a rationalist equivalent to TVTropes.
My goal with this small wiki was something a beginner could refer to see short descriptions, find the canonical references on the topic, and learn any jargon. I'd also love to see any reading lists or syllabi that are developed be put on there.
Hmm... can we scrape the data out of the Wiki easily if we want to make it official LW content? Is there a "dump database" option?
I'm fully ready to admit this is not my area of expertise, which is why I thought I'd throw this idea out before putting too much effort into it. I don't think there is a built-in export function, but all the posts are stored as XML in a single file, so it shouldn't be hard to scrape the content if desired.
I also confess ignorance as to how standard the markup language is. Perhaps any contributions should stick to plain text if possible to aid future conversion.
The markup is more or less standard. Some adjustments will, however, need to be made before porting. The posts can be extracted pretty easily.
However, I would not recommend this, except as a very basic start up, because the single file in which everything is stored grows in size pretty fast.
Ciphergoth took the initiative and set up a Wikia account, so the semi-official wiki is now at http://lesswrong.wikia.com