Alexandros comments on Ways to improve LessWrong - Less Wrong

5 Post author: adamzerner 14 September 2014 02:25AM

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Comment author: Alexandros 15 September 2014 03:34:45AM 1 point [-]

Consider the fact that many, many programmers frequent LW. It's quite likely the majority of members know how to program a computer, and most of them have a very high level of skill. Despite this, contributions to LW's codebase have been minimal over the life of this website. I take this as extremely strong evidence that the friction to getting any change through is very, very high.

Comment author: adamzerner 15 September 2014 04:15:29AM *  0 points [-]

I don't want to propose any solutions because I don't understand what the source of the friction truly is. If you understand the real sources of friction, could you explain it in some more depth?

I sense that the lack of contribution to the codebase is because it's inconvenient, not necessarily difficult. It seems that it's inconvenient for the reasons you said: 1) the reddit fork is hard to modify and 2) the site owners are reluctant to change.

But I also sense that the proposed features aren't too difficult to implement (because they're relatively common) and that a handful of skilled volunteers could get it done in a few weeks (very rough estimate; I'm way too inexperienced to really say, but I do sense that it's very doable). Perhaps it wouldn't be compatible with the reddit codebase and it'd take a major overhaul.

But I really think the benefits would outweigh the costs. The costs would be a few weeks of a handful of programmers' time (or something like that, I don't really know). The benefits would be huge! Imagine LW users collaborating on new projects, brainstorming new ideas, contributing to and benefiting from the list of life hacks, studying together, having hack-a-thons, rooming together, having more productive discussions, summarizing the content to make it more accessible to common people etc. etc. Isn't that worth a few weeks of time from a handful of people? Even if only one or two projects emerged from the site overhaul, I think the benefits would outweigh the costs.

Sorry if my argument for why the benefits outweigh the costs isn't concrete enough. I tried.

Comment author: Alexandros 15 September 2014 05:02:13AM 0 points [-]

I admire your optimism and determination. It's not my intention to convince you not to try. Even if you don't succeed, and it's not impossible that you could succeed, you will certainly get a lot out of it. So take my negativity as a challenge, and prove me wrong :).

Comment author: adamzerner 15 September 2014 05:21:14AM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the encouragement! Would you mind offering your opinion on a few things though?

  1. How many people would a complete overhaul take, and how long would it take (roughly)?
  2. Why are the site owners reluctant to change?
  3. What do you think of my rough cost-benefit argument? The things I said are my intuition, but I could easily be overlooking certain things, and I don't understand it well enough to be too confident in the intuition. So what do you think? (you seem to share the belief in the value of the benefits, but don't seem to think they outweigh the costs)

Also, I don't want to get anyone's hopes up about my contributions. I'm still learning to code and I don't know how good I'll be in 13 weeks when I finish my bootcamp and I can't tell how long it'll be before I'm capable enough to contribute to something like this.

Comment author: Alexandros 16 September 2014 09:25:55PM 0 points [-]
  1. I don't know, I haven't done the effort estimation. It just looks like more than I'd be willing to put in.
  2. One hypothesis is that LessWrong.com is a low priority item to them, but they like having it around, so they are averse to putting in the required amount of thought to evaluate a change, and inclined to leave things as they are.
  3. I think it is unlikely it will have as much benefit as you expect, and that the pain will be bigger than you expect. However, if you add the fact that your drive may help you learn to program, then the ROI tips the other way massively.

By the way, an alternative explanation for the fact that so many developers are here but so few (or none) actually contribute to LW code, is that they're busy making lots of money or working on other things they find exciting. This is good news for you, because making the changes may be easier than I originally estimated. As long as you are determined enough.

Comment author: ChristianKl 24 September 2014 09:52:26PM 0 points [-]

I think a core reason is intransparency of how to contribute changes. You don't know who you have to convince to chance something so most people don't even try.

Comment author: adamzerner 16 September 2014 11:12:27PM 0 points [-]

Ok, thanks for your input! I'll have to do more research and brainstorming into how much benefit it really would have.

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