jkaufman comments on LessWrong 2.0 - Less Wrong

89 Post author: Vaniver 09 December 2015 06:59PM

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Comment author: jkaufman 03 December 2015 10:48:41AM 10 points [-]

The people still posting to LW seem to be getting use out of it; going archive-only doesn't seem great to me.

The two technical changes I think would most help with continued use of the site:

  • remove the main vs discussion distinction, and remove promotion.

  • make it more usable on phones

Comment author: gjm 03 December 2015 12:10:01PM 9 points [-]

I suggest there are two purposes to the proposal to go archive-only if a plan to restore to LW to something like its former glory doesn't emerge:

  • doing that might encourage the people still using LW to move to other venues where they could add more value;
  • the threat of doing it might encourage people to contribute suggestions, make commitments, etc., that otherwise they might not have;

in addition to the purpose explicitly mentioned in the OP:

  • encourage people newly discovering LW-style rationalism to go to other livelier smarter places, rather than the "ghost town haunted by a pack of unquiet spirits" Vaniver-referencing-Yvain suggests LW is right now, so that they aren't put off by our ghostly inquietude.
    • It's not clear to me whether Vaniver is mostly worrying that people will be put off by the tumbleweeds ("man, this rationality thing can't be up to much if no one's excited about it") or by the ghosts ("wow, if that kind of stupidity and nastiness is what they're calling rationality then I want nothing to do with it").

I would be sad if LW were to close -- it's still one of the less stupid discussion venues on the web -- but I'm not sure that means I should regard it as a bad idea, conditional on our not finding a way to rejuvenate it. "End of December" (one of the options near the end of the OP) seems like an awfully short deadline, though, and I think Vaniver is proposing it because what he actually favours (as he's said) is the closing-down of LW, and the shorter the timescale the less danger there is that someone will try to do something else instead.

Comment author: Vaniver 04 December 2015 01:17:52AM 4 points [-]

This expresses my meaning.

I am more worried about ghosts than tumbleweeds.

I was unclear when talking about dates; the end of December is very soon, and chosen simply because it is the end of the year. Next March, also, was suggested solely because it would be tidy to close LW on the anniversary of its opening, not because March is a tactically good time. I think that if LW should be shut down, that needs to be after a replacement has been settled on, not before, and so I'm not sure we're aligned on the 'danger that someone will try to do something else instead.'

Comment author: gjm 04 December 2015 01:24:11AM 1 point [-]

I am not in fact worried "that someone will try to do something else instead" -- I thought, perhaps overcynically, that you might be preferring a short to a long timescale because the shorter the timescale the less likely it is that someone makes a credible How To Save LW proposal before it expires.

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