Error comments on The Web Browser is Not Your Client (But You Don't Need To Know That) - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Error 22 April 2016 12:12AM

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Comment author: Error 29 April 2016 09:51:13PM *  0 points [-]

I get the impression most projects do that backwards, and that that's a large part of how we got into this giant mess of incompatible discussion APIs.

Somewhere later in this sequence I'm going to address the social problem of convincing people to buy back in. The very short version is: Make it more powerful than what they've got, so they have an incentive to move. Make sure they are still running their own shows, because status and sovereignity matters. And make it more convenient to migrate than to manage what they've got, because convenience is everything.

Once you get three or four diasporists back, network effects does the rest. But it needs to be an improvement to the individual migrant even if nobody else does it, otherwise the coordination problem involved is incredibly hard to beat.

You should think about it as "What kind of a new discussion framework can we bestow on the soon-to-be-grateful world" :-)

Sometimes I think the best way to promote my ideas would be to start an NNTP-backed forum hosting service. I know it's within my capabilities.

Then I realize that 1. that would be a lot of work, and I have a day job, 2. nobody cares except me, and 3. I would be competing with Reddit.