JulianMorrison 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: 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?