Less Wrong doesn't seem "overgrown" to me. It actually seems dried out and dying because the culture is so negative people don't want to post here. I believe Eliezer has talked about how whenever he posted something on LW, the comments would be full of people trying to find anything wrong with it.
Here's an example of what I think makes LessWrong unappealing. User Clarity wrote an interesting discussion level post about his mistakes as an investor/gambler and it was downvoted to oblivion. Shouldn't people be encouraged to discuss their failures as they relate to rationality? Do we really want to discourage this? No one even bothered to explain why they downvoted.
All discussion in Less Wrong 2.0 is seen explicitly as an attempt to exchange information for the purpose of reaching Aumann agreement. In order to facilitate this goal, communication must be precise. Therefore, all users agree to abide by Crocker's Rules for all communication that takes place on the website.
I think trying to impose strict new censorship rules and social control over communication is more likely to deal the death blow to this website than to help it. LessWrong really needs an injection of positive energy and purpose. In the absence of this, I expect LW to continue to decline.
doesn't seem "overgrown" to me. It actually seems dried out and dying
I think both. There's more post and comment volume than I remember from "the good old days", but it's much lower quality in terms of density of interesting contributions.
because the culture is so negative people don't want to post here.
I don't agree with that as the main cause. I don't think it's a negative culture, so much as a lack of positive culture. The people doing interesting work on rationality, decisionmaking, and AI are mostly not doing it here anymore.
(tl;dr: In this post, I make some concrete suggestions for LessWrong 2.0.)
Less Wrong 2.0
A few months ago, Vaniver posted some ideas about how to reinvigorate Less Wrong. Based on comments in that thread and based on personal discussions I have had with other members of the community, I believe there are several different views on why Less Wrong is dying. The following are among the most popular hypotheses:
(1) Pacifism has caused our previously well-kept garden to become overgrown
(2) The aversion to politics has caused a lot of interesting political discussions to move away from the website
(3) People prefer posting to their personal blogs.
With this background, I suggest the following policies for Less Wrong 2.0. This should be seen only as a starting point for discussion about the ideal way to implement a rationality forum. Most likely, some of my ideas are counterproductive. If anyone has better suggestions, please post them to the comments.
Moderation Policy:
There are four levels of users:
Personal Blogs:
Other Ideas: