Eternal September probably isn't our biggest issue
What would that be in your opinion?
the massive increase in users is likely to cause problems, and those problems should be addressed.
Thank you pleeppleep for bringing this up. I am especially curious about why this thread has been hovering between -3 and 1 karma when the majority of people are concerned about this, and have chosen a solution for at least one problem. If you get any theories, please let me know.
more and more opinions that should be presented in discussions just aren't.
People have theorized that the users who might post these discussions are too intimidated to post. Do you have additional theories, or do you think this is the problem, too?
I maintain that Lesswrong is the best thing to ever happen to me
It is one of the best things that's happened to me, too. I feel strongly about protecting it.
We need a more general assessment of the problem and ways to solve it.
How would you describe the problem? What would you suggest for ways to assess it?
I honestly do miss some of the (admittedly somewhat elitist) optimism that used to flood this site.
What do you mean by that exactly? (No, I will not bite your head off about elitism. I have strong feelings about specific the type of elitism that means abusing others with the excuse that one is "better than" them, but I am curious to hear about any and all other varieties.)
We're rationalists. We aimed to build gods, eradicate the plagues of the human mind, and beat death itself. We said we'd win a staring contest with the empty, uncaring abyss of reality. We sought to rewrite human knowledge. To decide what, over the past 8 thousand years, was useful, and what wasn't.
Wow. That's inspirational. Okay, I think I know what "elitist optimism" means now. I don't agree with the goal of building gods (an awesome idea but super dangerous), but I want to quote this in places. I will need to find places to quote it in.
If we can't keep one little community productive, we might as well hang up our hats and let the world get turned into paper clips, cause we've shown there's not much we can do to about it one way or the other.
Upvote. (:
What would that be in your opinion?
I'd say our biggest issue lately is lack of direction. The classic topics are getting kinda old now, and we don't really seem to be able to commit to any replacements. Anything in the sequences is pretty firmly established so nobody talks much about them anymore, and without them we kinda drift to things like the "rational" way to brush your teeth. If the site starts to feel watered down, I don't think it's because of new users, but because of shallow topics. Endless September is probably the biggest issue dr...
Various people raised concerns that growth might ruin the culture after reading my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread. There has been some discussion about whether endless September, a phenomenon that kills online discussion groups, is a significant threat to LessWrong and what can be done. I really care about it, so I volunteered to code a solution myself for free if needed. Luke invited debate on the subject (the debate is here) and will be sent the results of this poll and asked to make a decision. It was suggested by him in an email that I wait a little while and then post my poll (meta threads are apparently annoying to some, so we let people cool off). Here it is, preceded by a Cliff's notes summary of the concerns.
Why this is worth your consideration:
- Yvain and I checked the IQ figures in the survey against other data this time, and the good news is that it's more believable that the average LessWronger is gifted. The bad news is that LessWrong's IQ average has decreased on each survey. It can be argued that it's not decreasing by a lot or we don't have enough data, but if the data is good, LessWrong's average has lost 52% of it's giftedness since March of 2009.
- Eliezer documented the arrival of poseurs (people who superficially copycat cultural behaviors - they are reported to over-run subcultures) which he termed "Undiscriminating Skeptics".
- Efforts to grow LessWrong could trigger an overwhelming deluge of newbies.
- LessWrong registrations have been increasing fast and it's possible that growth could outstrip acculturation capacity. (Chart here)
- The Singularity Summit appears to cause a deluge of new users that may have similar effect to the September deluges of college freshman that endless September is named after. (This chart shows a spike correlated with the 2011 summit where 921 users joined that month, which is roughly equal to the total number of active users LW tends to have in a month if you go by the surveys or Vladmir's wget.)
- A Slashdot effect could result in a tsunami of new users if a publication with lots of readers like the Wall Street Journal (they used LessWrong data in this article) decides to write an article on LessWrong.
- The sequences contain a lot of the culture and are long meaning that "TLDR" may make LessWrong vulnerable to cultural disintegration. (New users may not know how detailed LW culture is or that the sequences contain so much culture. I didn't.)
- Eliezer said in August that the site was "seriously going to hell" due to trolls.
- A lot of people raised concerns.
Two Theories on How Online Cultures Die:
Overwhelming user influx.
There are too many new users to be acculturated by older members, so they form their own, larger new culture and dominate the group.
Trending toward the mean.
A group forms because people who are very different want a place to be different together. The group attracts more people that are closer to mainstream than people who are equally different because there are more mainstream people than different people. The larger group attracts people who are even less different in the original group's way for similar reasons. The original group is slowly overwhelmed by people who will never understand because they are too different.
Poll Link:
Endless September Poll.
Request for Feedback:
In addition to constructive criticism, I'd also like the following:
Your observations of a decline or increase in quality, culture or enjoyment at LessWrong, if any.
Ideas to protect the culture.
Ideas for tracking cultural erosion.