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MrMind comments on [Meta] The Decline of Discussion: Now With Charts! - Less Wrong
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I think LWers and online communities in general should realize that, just like any other economic good, they are subject to obsolescence.
Also, not necessarily the reason for the decline in activity needs to be treated to make LW popular again. A refocus might just be more effective.
Just like any product, an online community needs to know its niche and market that niche heavily.
I think the most effective step to undertake is for the group to make an effort and decide what direction it want to give to the site: be it a repository, a place for discussing rationality and IA within or without the boundary traced by the Sequence, and so on, and make this the better place for those kind of information.
When do you imagine guns or butter will finally be obsolete?
Which is to say I don't think there is any such general rule of obsolescence in economics. And especially when it comes to a branded thing which can be modified, obsolescence would then seem to be a choice of the designers and not a fundamental phenomenon to be reckoned with.
Guns or butter? Probably never. A gun or some brand of butter? You do the math...
Just as LW is not "the online community", but just a (very specific) online cummunity. And it needs to cater to its audience, otherwise... It's luck is that it's just very well focused, we need to recognize this and make it more marketable.
Technology is a big component in every model of economic growth, and by definition technological progress makes some other things obsolete.
Once everyone uploads :-P
I've never managed to figure out how the transition from "population can double in a few decades" to "population can double as fast a forkbomb" is supposed to reduce scarcity.