As something perhaps related to this... is it possible LW became dogmatic and stubborn over time and it generated the sort of place that wasn't that interesting to follow because nearly everything had already been said?
I'd like to believe I came to accept a lot of the LW common views as I dug into the sequences and realized many misconceptions I held about reality. (Perhaps there is some bias I'm unaware of that is causing me to believe I'm less biased than I am?) But I've noticed EY among others here who agree with him seemed to just dig in to their views more deeply as time went by.
A couple examples:
Conjunction Fallacy and the Linda Problem -- It just isn't difficult at all to see why this is not as much a case of people's weakness to comprehend formal mathematical probablities as it socially functioning adults' desire to engage in non-awkward conversations. If I remember right, EY wrote some long post that tl;dr (paraphrase) said the conjunction fallacy must exist because it's been studied a lot.
"Lifeism" on LW -- It's weird to me that some folks (who are very familiar with typical mind fallacy) cannot accept the fact that some people wouldn't want to live forever. The failure to have the option to exist indefinitely just isn't that big a deal to some people, and this is—it seems to me—the sort of thing that many on LW seem(ed) intent to prove was mathematically in error.
Dust Specks v. Torture -- Kooky—no matter how often I'm told to shut up and multiply.
Anyway, the one reason I liked LW is it was really smart people who were willing to change their views based on evidence and the pursuit of reality. I don't claim to have done some sort of exhaustive study on the all the material here (nor could I since a good-sized chunk of it is above my head), but I think it suffers from all the same sorts of problems and biases typical internet community hiveminds do. And maybe that just got old and annoying to people?
"Lifeism" on LW -- It's weird to me that some folks (who are very familiar with typical mind fallacy) cannot accept the fact that some people wouldn't want to live forever.
I have no problem with people who don't want to live forever (or even for an incredibly long time). Part of my transhumanism is that people should be allowed to die on their own terms. Sure, it makes me sad that my family will one day die, but it's not my place to make that decision for them.
What I do have a problem with is people dismissing anti-deathism without giving proper arguments (mostly just accepting the status-quo) or telling me I also should accept death as a neutral or positive thing.
[Based on Alexandros's excellent dataset.]
I haven't done any statistical analysis, but looking at the charts I'm not sure it's necessary. The discussion section of LessWrong has been steadily declining in participation. My fairly messy spreadsheet is available if you want to check the data or do additional analysis.
Enough talk, you're here for the pretty pictures.
The number of posts has been steadily declining since 2011, though the trend over the last year is less clear. Note that I have excluded all posts with 0 or negative Karma from the dataset.
The total Karma given out each month has similarly been in decline.
Is it possible that there have been fewer posts, but of a higher quality?
No, at least under initial analysis the average Karma seems fairly steady. My prior here is that we're just seeing less visitors overall, which leads to fewer votes being distributed among fewer posts for the same average value. I would have expected the average karma to drop more than it did--to me that means that participation has dropped more steeply than mere visitation. Looking at the point values of the top posts would be helpful here, but I haven't done that analysis yet.
These are very disturbing to me, as someone who has found LessWrong both useful and enjoyable over the past few years. It raises several questions:
Here are a few strategies that come to mind:
Idea A: Accept that LessWrong has fulfilled its purpose and should be left to fade away, or allowed to serve as a meetup coordinator and repository of the highest quality articles. My suspicion is that without strong new content and an online community, the strength of the individual meetup communities may wane as fewer new people join them. This is less of an issue for established communities like Berkeley and New York, but more marginal ones may disappear.
Idea B: Allow and encourage submission of rationalism, artificial intelligence, transhumanism etc related articles from elsewhere, possibly as a separate category. This is how a site like Hacker News stays high engagement, even though many of the discussions are endless loops of the same discussion. It can be annoying for the old-timers, but new generations may need to discover things for themselves. Sometimes "put it all in one big FAQ" isn't the most efficient method of teaching.
Idea C: Allow and encourage posts on "political" topics in Discussion (but probably NOT Main). The dangers here might be mitigated by a ban on discussion of current politicians, governments, and issues. "Historians need to have had a decade to mull it over before you're allowed to introduce it as evidence" could be a good heuristic. Another option would be a ban on specific topics that cause the worst mindkilling. Obviously this is overall a dangerous road.
Idea D: Get rid of Open Threads and create a new norm that a discussion post as short as a couple sentences is acceptable. Open threads get stagnant within a day or two, and are harder to navigate than the discussion page. Moving discussion from the Open Threads to the Discussion section would increase participation if users could be convinced thatit was okay to post questions and partly-formed ideas there.
The challenge with any of these ideas is that they will require strong moderation.
At any rate, this data is enough to convince me that some sort of change is going to be needed in order to put the community on a growth trajectory. That is not necessarily the goal, but at its core LessWrong seems like it has the potential to be a powerful tool for the spreading of rational thought. We just need to figure out how to get it started into its next evolution.