The book version of the Sequences is supposed to be published in the next month or two, if I understand correctly. I would really enjoy an online reading group to go through the book together.
Reasons for a reading group:
- It would give some of us the motivation to actually go through the Sequences finally.
- I have frequently had thoughts or questions on some articles in the Sequences, but I refrained from commenting because I assumed it would be covered in a later article or because I was too intimidated to ask a stupid question. A reading group would hopefully assume that many of the readers would be new to the Sequences, so asking a question or making a comment without knowing the later articles would not appear stupid.
- It may even bring back a bit of the blog-style excitement of the "old" LW ("I wonder what exciting new thoughts are going to be posted today?") that many have complained has been missing since the major contributors stopped posting.
Any idea why not? Also, could be that the book version will increase interest. It could also be that we'll get an influx of new readers with the book's publication and HPMOR's conclusion, so that might help.
Encouraging people to link / quote insightful previous comments might mitigate this issue, at least somewhat. Also, the focus of the reading group would be mostly towards newer readers, so we wouldn't necessarily be aiming for super-high-value comments. That's not to say that people won't have important things to say, just that it's of secondary importance here.
From what I've seen about the glacial pace of edits to site mechanics, this is almost certainly not going to happen. Unless you know of an easy way to do it?
Having a sidebar will make for extremely low visibility, and I'm not sure exactly how to encourage people other than that.
Any idea why not?
When I was reading the sequences in reruns I felt like a first student in a class in a glass box with ALL the graduates looking on and free to shoot down my ideas :-) Plus I am not a naturally prolific commenter...