gwern comments on Beware Trivial Inconveniences - Less Wrong

90 Post author: Yvain 06 May 2009 10:04PM

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Comment author: gwern 07 May 2009 01:15:26AM *  19 points [-]

'I was reminded of this recently by Eliezer's Less Wrong Progress Report. He mentioned how surprised he was that so many people were posting so much stuff on Less Wrong, when very few people had ever taken advantage of Overcoming Bias' policy of accepting contributions if you emailed them to a moderator and the moderator approved. Apparently all us folk brimming with ideas for posts didn't want to deal with the aggravation.'

I don't really have a point here, but this shouldn't really be surprising at all, not at this moment in time.

I mean, has anyone here not used Wikipedia? (I'd also wager even odds that >=90% of you have edited WP at some point.)

EDIT: Looking back, it seems to me that what would not be surprising is, upon observing LW suddenly skyrocketing in contributors & contributed material, noticing that the sudden increase comes after a loosening of submission guidelines. When a site skyrockets, it's for one of a few reasons: being linked by a major site like Slashdot, for example. Loosening submission guidelines is one of those few reasons.

But that's not to say that Eliezer should have confidently expected a sudden increase just because he loosened submission criteria; the default prediction should have been that LW would continue on much as OB had been going. Lots of wikis never go anywhere, even if they let anyone edit.

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2009 08:24:04PM 13 points [-]

I mean, has anyone here not used Wikipedia? (I'd also wager even odds that 90% of you have edited WP at some point.)

Sometimes I actually catch myself reaching for the "edit this page" button when I find a typo or error on non-wiki websites.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 May 2012 07:45:24PM 3 points [-]

And when I see a book with out-of-date information I grab a pencil and update it. :-)

Comment author: taw 07 May 2009 02:47:49PM 9 points [-]

Oh Wikipedia - that reminds me - in late 1990s before Wikipedia there was "Free Online Dictionary of Computing". The main difference between two was that you needed to email the moderators to get your changes included. The results were even more extreme than OB vs LW.

Comment author: gwern 07 May 2009 08:30:58PM 4 points [-]

FOLDOC was the basis of a number of entries I've worked on. I had no idea that it was participation based! I guess that explains why the entries were so scrawny...

Comment author: David_Gerard 23 May 2012 12:57:58PM *  6 points [-]

When the FOLDOC maintainer saw Wikipedia, he promptly gave up and said "use my stuff, you're already doing better" - this is why he released it under GFDL, so WIkipedia could just take it.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 May 2012 07:47:04PM 3 points [-]

Even after normalizing by the total number of visitors to FOLDOC and the total number of visitors to Wikipedia respectively?

Comment author: taw 23 May 2012 12:20:09PM 6 points [-]

Wikipedia didn't get hundreds of millions of visitors until after it got so big.

I know it's hard to believe, but when we started in 2001, it was a very tiny very obscure website people were commonly making fun of, and we were excited with any coverage we could get (and getting omg slashdotted - that was like news of the month).

Comment author: JulianMorrison 07 May 2009 03:10:11PM 3 points [-]

When you visit your friend, he says "help yourself from the kitchen". Which read literally would give you the ability to strip the kitchen bare. Obviously it doesn't mean that. If the friend had spoken as they meant, "take a reasonably small amount of drinks and munchies for immediate use, and not the fancy stuff or tonight's supper", then he would be read as being under-generous.

I suspect people run similar "what subset of their generous offer ought I to take" calculations on any wide-open offer. Taking the whole offer would be greedy.

Comment author: gwern 07 May 2009 08:45:32PM 4 points [-]

I don't see that as a particularly compelling explanation. OB was not just EY & RH. There were a number of other contributors, on a weekly basis even there would be non-EY/RH posts. Just look at the long list of contributors prominent in the sidebar.

If the explanation is why people will only post comments and not articles because they don't want to take too much of what is offered, then what greater item is on offer in LW that people 'settle' for merely submitting articles & comments?

Comment author: Nominull 07 May 2009 01:54:58AM 2 points [-]

It's nice to see that even Eliezer can be shockingly stupid.

Comment author: Lawliet 07 May 2009 02:39:24AM 2 points [-]

How is that good?

Comment author: gwern 07 May 2009 12:44:19PM 10 points [-]

How is that good?

Well, it makes us feel better about ourselves? Pity about the whole FAI thing though...

Comment author: ABranco 15 October 2009 04:39:33AM 2 points [-]

Making us reap good feelings from downward social comparison.

Naughty brains, love those tricks.

Comment author: Annoyance 07 May 2009 05:52:48PM -1 points [-]

We didn't need that particular example for that - it's just one that you immediately recognize as being shockingly stupid.

When we're as shockingly stupid on something as the person we're examining, we don't notice their error, because it's ours as well.

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