John_Maxwell_IV comments on Poll - Is endless September a threat to LW and what should be done? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Epiphany 08 December 2012 11:42PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 December 2012 05:23:02AM *  6 points [-]

I think we could use more intellectual productivity. I think we already have the capacity for a lot more. I think that would do a lot against any problems we might have, Obviously I am aware of the futility of the vague "we" in this paragraph, so I'll talk about what I could do but don't.

I have a lot of ideas to write up. I want to write something on "The improper use of empathy", something about "leading and following", something about social awkwardness from the inside. I wrote an article about fermi estimation that I've never posted. And some other ideas that I can't remember right now. I'll admit I have one meta-essay in here somewhere too. "Who's in charge here?"

I don't write as much for LW as I could, because I feel like a mere mortal among gods. I feel kindof inadequate, like I would be lowering the level of discussion around here. Ironically, the essays that I do post are all quite well upvoted, and not posting may be one source of the lowered quality of LW.

I may not be the only one.

EDIT: this is also why I post to discussion and not main.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 09 December 2012 06:47:06AM *  6 points [-]

Yep, that's my experience as well. Recently, I decided "screw what LW thinks" and started posting more thoughts of mine, and they're all getting upvoted. My vague intuitions about how many upvotes my posts will get doesn't seem to correlate very well with how many upvotes they actually get either. This is probably true for other people as well.

The only potential problem with this, IMO, is if people think I'm more of an authoritative source than I actually am. I'm just sharing random thoughts I have; I don't do scholarly work like gwern.

Comment author: Epiphany 11 December 2012 02:34:31AM *  1 point [-]

It seems to me that there are lots and lots of people who want to write posts but they're concerned about whether those posts will be received well. I've read, also, that more people put "public speaking" as their worst fear than "death" when surveyed. If we made a karma prediction tool, maybe that would help get people posting here. Here's what I'm thinking:

First, we could create a checklist of the traits that we think will get a LessWrong post upvoted. For instance:

  • Is there an obvious main point or constructive goal?
  • Is the main point supported / is there a reasonable plan for the constructive goal? (Or are they otherwise framed in the correct context "This is hypothetical" or whatever.)
  • What type of support is included (math, citations, graphics, etc).
  • Was the topic already covered?
  • Is it a topic of interest to LessWrong?
  • Is it uplifting or unhappy?
  • (Or do a separate survey that asks people's reasons for upvoting / downvoting and populate the checklist with those.)

Then we could post the checklist as a poll in each new post and article for a while.

Then we could correlate the karma data with the checklist poll data and test it to see how accurately it predicts a post's karma.

If you had a karma prediction tool, would it help you post more?

Submitting...

Comment author: satt 24 February 2013 09:04:45PM 0 points [-]

Posting that checklist as a poll in each new post would likely end up irritating people.

A simpler approach, with the twin advantages of being simpler and being something one can do unilaterally, would be to just count the proportion of recent, non-meetup-related Discussion posts with positive karma. Then you could give potential post authors an encouraging reference class forecast like "85% of non-meetup Discussion posts get positive karma".

Comment author: Epiphany 24 February 2013 09:51:32PM 1 point [-]

You know what? That is simple and elegant. I like that about it... but in the worst case scenario, that will encourage people to post stuff without thinking about it because they'll make the hasty generalization that "All non-meetup posts have an 85% chance of getting some karma" and even in the best case scenario, a lot of people will probably be thinking something along the lines of "Just because Yvain and Gwern and people who are really good at this get positive karma doesn't mean that I will."

Unfortunately, I think it would be ineffective.

Comment author: satt 24 February 2013 11:30:17PM 1 point [-]

Fair points.

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