Feature request (is there a better place to put this?):
A toggle in my user settings, where I can turn on "require an extra click before publishing draft". So I can prevent accidentally posting something with an "are you sure?" dialogue, if I toggle that "on" on my account.
Yes, this has actually happened to me before. And with the Dialogues feature, the risk is only higher because of how much I'm inside the LW editor.
There's currently no advice in the FAQ on how to manage drafts and having other people give feedback on them. Here's the response I got for current best practice:
They will get a notification that someone shared them on a draft, and the post will show up below their own drafts on their personal profile page (only visible to them, obviously). However, until we ship some of the inline-commenting features we've been working on, there isn't actually a way for them to leave feedback on the post, which is unfortunate (we used to allow users to leave comments on drafts, but there were various problems with that, among them it being unclear whether those comments should persist to the published version of the post or not).
So that means that while they will get notifications about being shared, you should probably PM them if you want them to leave feedback. We do have an editor in beta that will allow users who are shared on a draft to leave Google Docs style inline comments, which I expect to go up within the next few months.
Thanks a lot for this Ruby! After skimming, the only thing I can think of adding would be a link to the moderation log, along with a short explanation of what it records. Partly because it's good that people can look at it, and partly because it's nice to inform people that their deletions and bans are publicly visible.
"A user’s vote power is determined by the code implemented in this file." links to an outdated file that says small upvote power maxes out at 3. Small upvotes have been limited to a power of 2 since February 2020. Can we correct this by changing the link to the development code or an updated blob?
Cool thing that might or might not be worth mentioning in the "How do I insert images?"-section: If you select and copy an image from anywhere public, it will automatically work (note that it doesn't work if you right click and choose 'copy image'). This works for public google-docs, which is pretty useful for people who drafts their posts in google docs. It also works if you paste them into a comment.
Is there (or could there be) an RSS option that excludes Dialogue posts?
I think I'm currently using the "all posts" feed, but I prefer the brevity and coherence that comes from a single author with a thought they're trying to communicate to a reader, as compared to two people communicating conversationally with each other.
I'm curious about this as well.
Specifically, I'd like to (possibly) archive the site (privately).
Ah, I regret that the parent comment here slipped my notice.
There's no problem with you archiving the site for your personal/private use. People have made various epubs and mobi's of the Sequences and other posts at times. Ultimately we want people to read the content regardless of form.
Copyright stuff is included in the Terms of Use document linked at the end of the FAQ. I'll check with others before trying to publicly interpret the legal meaning.
Thanks!
A direct link to the "Lesswrong.com Privacy Policy and Terms of Use":
Based on that, copyright would be (by default) held by MIRI, but that only includes the site's content, not user-generated content.
From the document:
MIRI may provide you with the ability to upload or transmit User-Generated Content to or through the Website, including, but not limited to, text, comments, photographs, images, videos, audio files, profile information, name, likeness, advertisements, listings, information, and designs (collectively "User-Generated Content"). Except as otherwise provided herein, you own all rights in and to your User-Generated Content.
When you submit User-Generated Content to the Website, you grant MIRI a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, and perpetual license to use your User-Generated Content for the normal and intended purposes of the Website. These purposes may include providing you or third parties with access to and use of the Website, backing up or archiving the Website, and selling or transferring the Website to a third party. In submitting User-Generated Content to the Website, you agree to waive all moral rights in or to your User-Generated Content across the world, whether you have or have not asserted moral rights. You also agree to waive all rights of publicity or privacy in or to your User-Generated Content.
So, AFAICT – and I am NOT a lawyer or other legal professional (in any jurisdiction) – users retain copyright on all of their content, e.g. posts and comments, and MIRI only insists on a 'license' to use that content.
It would be nice to relicense both the site's content and user's content, e.g. using a Creative Commons license.
It would also be nice to have something like an API endpoint (or publicly accessible download) of the 'site data'. Ideally, such that 'deltas' could be retrieved instead of needing to download 'full snapshots' every time a backup/archive is made.
But I'm happy with the status quo! Others have been, for some time, using the site content – as you mention. I'm not aware of any problems with that. The LW team is much bigger than I expected (and you have a designated CTO!), so I'm not worried that it'll be abandoned entirely and unexpectedly. I imagine The Internet Archive has pretty good backups/archives of the site as well.
Sorry for the delayed reply yet again, my bad.
Thanks for digging into the T&C, your analysis seems correct to me. I think we do want users to retain their rights – more than once people have been reluctant to post if might cost them their rights and other publishing opportunities. I think it'd be very costly to make writing seem costlier to authors.
Regarding an API endpoint – we have one! See here for a tutorial. The main thing is that if you wanted to archive everything, I'm not sure it's so great if you wanted to get comments too. Pulling all the posts and all the comments and assembling correctly would be a hassle. I think you're better trying to get archive via Internet Archive or similar. Deltas would indeed be tricky. But I assure you, we are not going to let the site data get lost!
By the way, what’s the motivation for the moral rights clause? That is, why do I have to waive the right to be acknowledged as the author of things I post when I post them? (The fact that it’s legally impossible for me to do so in either Russia or the EU aside.) I’m aware that are, apparently, weird places that treat just about any modification of a work as an assault on the author’s character and therefore a moral rights issue (Japan, per Creative Commons), but is waiving any and all exclusive rights to claim authorship really the best way to go about this (again, Creative Commons seems to use a different workaround)? I’m nowhere near qualified enough to argue meaningfully here, but I do roughly understand what these words mean, and in this particular combination they just look unbelievably dodgy.
It appears that there is a typo in the first sentence:
This is a new FAQ written LessWrong 2.0.
I would expect it to read something like "This is a new FAQ written for LessWrong 2.0." instead.
"Why the name? It is a bit odd . . ."
I always thought it's a reference to the Asimov essay which the linked essay "The Fallacy of Gray" only indirectly refers to, however, or rather, a commenter referred to it.
You could add something about whether deleting posts or comments or renaming yourself is possible.
I'd like to display multiple users (not just me) as authors of a post published from my account. Can I do that? And if so, how?
I've seen people do this before on the EA Forum, at least, and think I've seen it here too.
(Sorry if this is answered somewhere else already, but I couldn't seem to find it.)
Good question! I think this was missed in FAQ and I'll add it in. Currently multiple authors can only be added by an admin. If it works for you, send us a message through Intercom, or email team@lesswrong.com.
Updated the FAQ to include a bit about moderators looking at voting patterns (Which is to say: "it happens quite rarely and only after multiple team members have looked at a situation and decided it warrants diving into the data.")
Also that we try to never have all the mods look at the votes, typically just one mod does and reports back their sense of the data.
On mobile: double-tap the vote button (ignore a tool-tip telling you to hold).
I strongly suspect that many people don't realize this and that it'd be better to have a button that says "strong upvote" instead.
I think most people actually knows this. When you try to cancel an upvote on mobile, you have to cycle from upvote -> strong upvote -> no vote
Is there a bug around resizing images? Previously I've found that my image size choice is ignored unless the image has a caption. But for gifs, it seems to ignore it even if there is a caption, instead rendering the image at the full width of the article.
The image must be hosted!
This is no longer true, right?
(Also, I came here looking for a list of supported image types; I'm trying to insert an SVG, but it's just getting ignored.)
I think most raster image format should work fine (I'm not surprised that SVGs don't work, but, like, you can just take a screenshot of it and insert it or something))
Hi, new visitor here and I've just signed up.
I'm puzzled about the location of curated posts. The FAQ says this:
CuratedEach week, LessWrong’s moderation team selects on average three posts which seem to us to be especially well-written, insightful, instructive, or otherwise important. These are tagged as curated posts and appear with a star icon next to the title.
The three most recently curated posts appear in the Curated section. You can view more Curated posts by clicking View All Curated Posts or selecting the Curated filter on the AllPosts page.
Beneath the Curated section is a button to subscribe via email or RSS to curated posts (~3/week).
But when I go to the homepage, I don't see any Curated section. Below the ad for the book set, I see Recommendations, then below that Latest, then below that Recent Discussion. What am I missing?
Thanks in advance :)
Oh, I'm terribly sorry. The FAQ has gotten a bit out of date and is due for an update. Since it was written, the frontpage been changed. Curated posts are now the first few posts listed in the "Latest" section, the ones that have stars to the left of their titles.
Sorry for the confusion!
How can I replicate the formatting for writing "This is a linkpost for" like Jim did here [Link] Still Alive - Astral Codex Ten
When you create/edit a post, there's a box you can put a link in, if you do it makes the post a link post.
I think the open source link is outdated (I am not sure) I think it should be https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum
In the Markdown editor, surround your text with
:::spoilerat the beginning, and:::at the end.
This (or at least my interpretation of it) seems to not work.
I read it as anywhere inline (i.e. surrounded by other text) putting :::spoiler (without the backticks), followed by your text to be spoilered, followed by ::: (no space required and again without backticks.)
That ended up producing the unspoilered text surrounded by the :::spoiler ... ::: construction and making me slightly sad. Here is a :::spoiler not really ::: spoilered example of the failure.
It seems that it has to be used as a standalone block instead, i.e. you put an empty line, :::spoiler on a line by itself, then your paragraph (probably must not include empty lines, but didn't check), then :::.
So this works.
This should probably be clarified?
Is (or will there be) an inline form as well? Discord uses ||spoiler|| and I think I've seen the same in other places too.
You accidentally another word: "We are open to unusual ideas are willing to doubt conventional wisdom."
This is a new FAQ written LessWrong 2.0. This is the first version and I apologize if it is a little rough. Please comment or message with further questions, typos, things that are unclear, etc.
The old FAQ on the LessWrong Wiki still contains much excellent information, however it has not been kept up to date.
Advice! We suggest you navigate this guide with the help on the table of contents (ToC) in the left sidebar. You will need to scroll to see all of it. Mobile users need to click the menu icon in the top left.
The major sections of this FAQ are:
About LessWrong
What is LessWrong?
LessWrong is a community dedicated to improving our reasoning and decision-making. We seek to hold true beliefs and to be effective at accomplishing our goals. More generally, we want to develop and practice the art of human rationality.
To that end, LessWrong is a place to 1) develop and train rationality, and 2) apply one’s rationality to real-world problems.
LessWrong serves these purposes with its library of rationality writings, community discussion forum, open questions research platform, and community page for in-person events.
See also: Welcome to LessWrong!
What is rationality?
Rationality is a term which can have different meanings to different people. You might already associate with a few things. On LessWrong, we mean something like the following:
See also: What Do We Mean By "Rationality"?, Why Spock is Not Rational, What are the open problems in Human Rationality?
What is the history of LessWrong?
In 2006, Eliezer Yudkowsky and others began writing on Overcoming Bias, a group blog with the general theme of how to move one’s beliefs closer to reality despite biases such as overconfidence and wishful thinking. In 2009, Eliezer moved to a new community blog, LessWrong. Eliezer seeded LessWrong with a series of daily blog posts which became known as The Sequences. These writings attracted a large community of readers and writers interested in the art of human rationality.
See also: A Brief History of LessWrong
What makes LessWrong different from other discussion forums?
A combination of traits makes LessWrong distinct among online communities.
Why the name? It is a bit odd . . .
I (Ruby) personally wasn’t there when the name was chosen so I’m not certain of the historical thought process, but I interpret the name “LessWrong” as expressing two important points:
And so the aspiration of LessWrong is that by dedicating ourselves to learning how to think in ways which more systematically lead to truth (what we succinctly call rationality), we can meaningfully reduce our mistaken notions and have far more accurate models of reality.
Who is this Eliezer guy I keep hearing about?
Eliezer Yudkowsky was the original founder of LessWrong back in 2009. His writings on rationality attracted to the site a large number of people enthusiastic about learning to think better. Eliezer’s best-known works are The Sequences, (later renamed Rationality: From AI to Zombies) and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. These texts are part of LessWrong’s philosophical foundation, and so unsurprisingly, you will see mentions of Eliezer not infrequently.
How does LessWrong make money?
We don’t. The LessWrong organization is a nonprofit funded by donations.
This hopefully has the benefit of reducing our incentives to optimize for clicks and pageviews. Instead, we can focus on our stated purpose.
Can I see the source code for the site?
Yes you can! We are open source, and you can find the code on Github here.
I have feedback, bug reports, or questions not answered in this FAQ. What should I do?
You have several options.
Oh no! I think I lost my post/draft/sanity! What can I do?
LessWrong stores revisions of posts as you’re drafting them. If you think you have lost content, please message the team via Intercom and we’ll see what we can do.
Getting Started
I’m new. Where do I start?
We encourage new users to read for a while before diving into discussions or making their own posts. This is helpful for new users to understand the site’s culture and background.
If you’re very new and you begin posting or commenting, you might find that you are quickly downvoted. This doesn’t mean you’re bad or unwelcome! But you are probably violating a norm or ignoring expected knowledge on the site. We suggest you read up a bit more before trying again later.
What's a good and fast way to learn about how the website works?
LessWrong extensively uses tool-tips and content previews to help users understand how the site works and see what content is even before they click.
We encourage you to mouse over most elements of the site to see what pops up. You will find:
How do I create an account? (And why should I?)
Although not required to use the LessWrong website; we recommend creating an account so that you can:
Creating an account takes under 30 seconds. Click login in the top right and enter a username, email, and password.
Once you have created an account, feel free to introduce yourself in the latest Open/Welcome thread. Let others know how you found LessWrong, your background, and what you’re hoping for from LessWrong. This allows existing members to point you in the direction of material which you might especially like.
How do I Ask Questions/Make Posts/Go to My Profile/Private Message/Log Out?
For logged-in users, you can access all these options via the drop-down menu accessible by clicking your username.
The star to the right of your username is the karma notifier (star icon) and button for notifications panel (bell icon).
How do I edit my account settings? What can I do?
By clicking on your username and clicking Edit Account, you access your account settings. There you can:
Reading Content
What are all the ways to access content on LessWrong?
Ah, there are many ways!
Homepage
LessWrong’s homepage has the following content sections:
Core Readings
The core readings section provides links to texts which describe the intellectual foundations of LessWrong. They are described here.
Curated
Each week, LessWrong’s moderation team selects on average three posts which seem to us to be especially well-written, insightful, instructive, or otherwise important. These are tagged as curated posts and appear with a star icon next to the title.
The three most recently curated posts appear in the Curated section. You can view more Curated posts by clicking View All Curated Posts or selecting the Curated filter on the AllPosts page.
Beneath the Curated section is a button to subscribe via email or RSS to curated posts (~3/week).
Latest Posts
The Latest Posts section displays all* recent posts to LessWrong. These sorted magically** to balance between recency and quality (as indicated by karma score), i.e. more upvoted posts remain higher up in the Latest Posts section for longer.
*By default, only Frontpage posts are displayed in the Latest Posts section. To enable Personal blogposts to appear as well, check the checkbox beneath the section. See more in What’s the difference between Personal Blogposts and Frontpage Posts?
**LessWrong uses the following formula to rank posts in Latest Posts:
karmaScore(ageInHours+2)1.15This is same the formula as used by Hacker News. You can read about it here.
Recent Discussion
This section is a purely-time based feed of the most recent comment activity happening on posts. Currently, all posts (both Personal blogposts and Frontpage) are shown. Discussion is grouped by post but restricted to only showing a few comments per post.
All Posts Page (aka Archive)
Whereas the homepage displays posts ordered with a magical algorithm, the All Posts page gives you complete control over which posts are included and how they ordered.
The All Posts page can be accessed via the left sidebar and drop-down menu (desktop); buttons on the bottom of the screen (mobile); or directly via www.lesswrong.com/allPosts
The gear icon allows you to select which posts:
These can then be sorted by: Daily, Magic, has Recent Comments, New, Old, and Top.
The Library
The Library page is accessible from the left sidebar/drop-down menu (desktop) or the buttons at the bottom of the screen (mobile). The Library page contains sequences (ordered sets of posts) and collections (ordered sets of sequences) of LessWrong’s best writings. These are split into Core Readings, Curated Sequences, and Community Sequences.
LessWrong’s developers have put effort into making the reading experience in The Library as convenient and enjoyable as possible.
Core Readings
These are Rationality: From AI to Zombies (formerly The Sequences), The Codex, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. They are described in What are LessWrong’s core readings?
Curated Sequences
Similar Curated posts, Curated sequences are sets of posts which LessWrong’s moderation team think are especially valuable and ought to be included in LessWrong’s intellectual canon.
Top curated sequences include:
Community Sequences
Any LessWrong site member, not just moderators, can create post sequences. These appear in the Community Sequences section.
Standout mentions include:
Sequences have qualitative benefits over posts in that an author can build towards a larger point or explain more nuanced concepts than is possible in single (even quite long) blog posts.
You can also create your own sequence on this page.
User Page
Lastly, you can access a User’s posts and comments directly from their user page.
Note that you have the same options available for sorting and filtering a user’s posts as you do on the All Posts page.
What’s the difference between Frontpage posts and Personal blogposts?
Although LessWrong’s focus is on the development and application of rationality, we invite posts on almost any topic. To ensure that the default experience is still one centered on rationality, LessWrong classifies posts into Frontpage posts and Personal blogposts.
Frontpage posts must meet the criteria of being broadly relevant to LessWrong’s main interests; timeless, i.e. not about recent events; and are attempts to explain not persuade. In contrast, Personal blogposts can be on any topic of interest to the author including divisive topics (which we generally keep off the frontpage), discussions about the community, and meta posts about LessWrong itself.
Frontpage posts have visibility by default. Personal blogposts can be viewed by: i) checking the “show Personal blogposts” checkbox on the homepage, ii) via the All Posts page if “All Posts” filter option is selected, iii) via a user’s profile page, iv) in the Recent Discussion section of the homepage.
See also: Site Guide: Personal Blogposts vs Frontpage Posts
What are Curated posts?
Each week, LessWrong’s moderation team selects on average three posts which seem to us to be especially well-written, insightful, instructive, or otherwise important. These are tagged as curated posts and appear with a star icon next to the title.
All Curated posts will also be Frontpage posts.
The three most recently curated posts appear in the Curated section. You can view more Curated posts by clicking View All Curated Posts or selecting the Curated filter on the AllPosts page.
Beneath the Curated section is a button to subscribe via email or RSS to curated posts (~3/week).
What are LessWrong’s core readings?
The following texts lay the philosophical foundations of the LessWrong website and community. They are widely regarded as excellent, and, even when the ideas are not universally agreed upon, they are still commonly assumed background knowledge in the community.
Rationality: AI to Zombies (aka “the Sequences”)
In 2006, Eliezer began posting on a precursor to LessWrong, the shared blog, Overcoming Bias before the current site was launched in 2019. He posted nearly daily for several years and those writings became known as the Sequences. Later they were edited into a book, Rationality: A-Z (or RAZ).
Rationality: A-Z is a deep exploration of how human minds can come to understand the world they exist in - and all the reasons they so commonly fail to do. The comprehensive work:
Eliezer covers these topics and others through allegory, anecdote, and scientific theory. He demonstrates the ideas by applying them to debates in artificial intelligence (AI), physics, metaethics, and consciousness.
To start reading R:A-Z, visit www.lesswrong.com/rationality or visit Amazon to purchase the e-book or audiobook.
The Codex
Scott Alexander’s, one of LessWrong’s earliest and most prolific contributors, wrote many essays on good reasoning, learning from the institution of science, and different ways society has and could be organized. These have been organized into the Codex. Scott’s sequences include:
His exemplary essays include:
Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality (HPMOR)
A side project of Eliezer’s grew to be one of the most highly rated Harry Potter fanfictions of all time and an excellent primer on rationality. Eliezer imagined an alternate-universe Harry Potter who grew up with loving adopted parents, one of them an Oxford scientist. In this version, Harry enters the wizarding world with Enlightenment ideals and the experimental spirit.
We recommend HPMOR to interested in an introduction to rationality via a highly entertaining narrative. Click here to read HPMOR through LessWrong or try the audiobook.
What’s with all the AI and math posts?
For both historical reasons and because these topics are relevant to human rationality, many members of the LessWrong community are interested in AI, decision-theory, math, and related topics.
See also: What is the AI Alignment Forum (AIAF) and what does it have to do with LessWrong?
What is the AI Alignment Forum (AIAF) and what does it have to do with LessWrong?
The AI Alignment Forum is an online hub for AI Safety (aka AI alignment) researchers to discuss topics in the field. The AI Alignment forum is another project of the LessWrong team’s and resultantly shares some infrastructure with LessWrong proper, i.e. shared user accounts.
Because of the overlaps between the LessWrong and AI Safety communiites and relevance of AI content to rationality, posts made to the AI Alignment forum are automatically cross-posted to LessWrong.
I (Ruby) am advocating strongly for there to be an easy way to filter these out for users who are not interested in AIAF content.
What is that Omega symbol I see on some posts? Oh, it’s AIAF karma.
Posts and comments which been cross-posted from the Alignment Forum will display their Alignment Forum karma (symbol: Omega/ 𝛀). When users with the ability to vote on Alignment Forum content vote on cross-posted AIAF on LessWrong, this will cause both the contents ordinary LessWrong karma and Alignment Forum karma to update.
Posting & Commenting
What can I post on LessWrong?
Posts on practically any topic are welcomed on LessWrong. I (and others on the team) feel it is important that members are able to “bring their entire selves” to LessWrong and are able to share all their thoughts, ideas, and experiences without fearing whether they are “on topic” for LessWrong. Rationality is not restricted to only specific domains of one’s life and neither should LessWrong be.
However, to maintain its overall focus while still allowing posts on any topic, LessWrong classifies posts as either Personal blogposts or as Frontpage posts. See more in the post on Personal Blogpost vs Frontpage Posts.
The Editor
LessWrong’s editor is what use you to enter posts and comments.
How do I use Markdown? (And not the Draft.js default editor)
By default, LessWrong uses an implementation of Draft.js, however, if you prefer, you can switch to entering your text with markdown syntax. To do, check Activate Markdown Editor checkbox in your account settings.
With the Markdown editor activated, you can use Markdown syntax for formatting.
How do I insert images?
If you are using the Draft.Js editor, select some text (or whitespace) and click the image icon in the toolbar that appears your text. Insert a URL to a hosted image. The image must be hosted! Use a free online service like Imgur or similar. Ensure you use the url to the hosted image itself, not the page displaying uploaded image (common mistake).
Note: image insertions are only enabled for posts, not comments.
If you are using the Markdown editor, using the Markdown syntax for inserting images. It is:
As above, the link must be to a hosted image.
How do I insert spoiler protections?
LessWrong gives you a way to “avoid spoiling” your readers. Text is concealed until a user mouses over it (it works a bit less well on mobile right now). This functionality is useful for creating exercises in your posts, e.g. ask a question in your post and conceal with answer beneath spoiler protection so users don’t accidentally see it. See this post as an example.
In the LW docs editor, type
>!on a new line, then a spoiler box should appearIn the Markdown editor, surround your text with
:::spoilerat the beginning, and:::at the end.How do I insert footnotes?
Using the Markdown Editor
Use the syntax described here.
Using the LW Docs Editor
You can insert footnotes via:
1. Manually selecting text in the text box and selecting insert footnote from the footnotes menu icon.
2. Using Markdown syntax
Footnotes will automatically renumber as you add and delete them!
How do I use Latex?
If using the Draft.js editor, press Cmd-4 for inline and Cmd-M for block-level. (Ctrl on Windows).
If using Markdown, surround your LaTeX text with $, for example:
$<LaTeX text>$
How do I embed interact prediction widgets? (Elicit Predictions)
Follow the instructions in this post to insert Embedded Interactive Predictions.
How do I add multiple authors to a post?
If you have 10 or more karma, you can add a co-author to your post in post settings section (bottom of the post edit page). If you don't yet have 10 karma, send us a message on Intercom (bottom right) or email us at team@lesswrong.com and we'll do it for you.
How do I make a linkpost?
At the top of the post editor (underneath "title") is a "link" button. If you click on it, you'll see a field where you can enter a link from another site.
Linkposts that include at least a short description of why the topic is relevant/interesting to LessWrongers tend to get more engagement than linkposts that just include the link by itself.
Creating Sequences
New users can create sequences by going to the Library page, scrolling to the Community Sequences section, and clicking "Create New Sequence." Once created, the sequence will be visible on your User Profile page, and in the Community Sequences section of the Library.
Once you've created at least one sequence, you'll also have access to a "Create New Sequence" button on your User Profile page.
Users with 1000+ karma also have a "New Sequence" menu item in their user menu.
Once a sequence is created, you can add posts to it by clicking "Add/Remove Posts."
Karma & Voting
How do I vote?
Posts and comments have buttons for upvoting and downvoting them displayed around the posts current karma score.
Further, you have the option to strong upvotes or downvote posts and comments. On desktop: hold the vote button until you see the double bars appear. On mobile: double-tap the vote button (ignore a tool-tip telling you to hold).
What should my votes mean?
We encourage people to vote such that upvote means “I want to see more of this” and downvote means “I want to see less of this.”
Votes should apply to individual posts/comments, not to overall users. (So, please do not downvote all of a user's historical posts).
What’s the relationship between votes and karma? Why aren’t they the same?
Posts and comments have a karma score. A single vote will increase or decrease the karma by an integer value. Upvotes increase the karma, downvotes decrease - and these can cancel out.
Further, users have karma scores too. A user’s karma score is the sum of all the karma on their posts and comments. The votes of users with more karma have more power under LessWrong’s voting system, ensuring that users who have earned the community’s respect and trust have more influence than new sign-ups. Because some users have votes which are worth more than a single point, the karma score of a post is usually greater than the number of votes on it.
What’s the mapping between users’ karma and voting power?
A user’s vote power is determined by the code implemented in this file.
Agree/Disagree Voting
We've recently added agree/disagree voting to comments on posts. As of July 2022, this is still a bit of an experiment. Read more here.
Notifications & Subscriptions
The notification and subscriptions system are currently undergoing a significant upgrade. Expect the functionality to be expanded in the next week or two. We will update this documentation then.
Where do I get notifications?
See the bell icon in the upper right-hand corner. There are four tabs.
Bell: combined responses to your posts and comments + private message notifications
What can I get notifications for?
In your account settings you can toggle notifications on and off for responses to your posts and comments.
Can I subscribe by email? What can I subscribe to?
Right now, you can subscribe to receive Curated posts by email or RSS. See the subscribe buttons beneath the Curated posts section on the homepage or in your account settings.
Messaging
How do I sent private messages to other users?
Navigate to a user's page by clicking on an appearance of their username or finding them via search. Click send message.
To read your messages, click on the notification icon (bell icon, top right) > click the two speech bubbles on the right. Or visit www.lesswrong.com/inbox.
Questions
What do you mean, questions?
The LessWrong team is actively developing a new experimental Open Questions Research Platform. The vision is to build a system which allows the LessWrong community to apply its high standards of reasoning and scholarship to solving large, important questions.
We expect LessWrong’s Open Questions to be valuable beyond existing platforms, e.g. Quora and StackExchange, for multiple reasons. Among them:
The LessWrong team thinks this is an excellent way to train and apply rationality.
What kind of questions can I ask?
If you have a question which seems like the LessWrong community could answer better than any other Q&A platform, we welcome you to ask it here.
We will handle making sure questions of the right type are shown in each place, so don’t worry too much about whether your question is relevant. Like with posts, we welcome questions on most topics and then categorize them appropriately.
Existing questions have been of all the following types:
These are all good. Get a sense of what people ask on LessWrong by viewing the questions page.
How do I ask questions?
To ask a question, click on your Username (top right, you must have an account), and click Ask Question [Beta].
How do I write a good question?
The site StackOverflow has a lot of good advice on writing questions. I've copied over some bits and reworded them to fit LessWrong:
Search, and research.
Before posting a question, we strongly recommend that you spend a reasonable amount of time researching the problem and searching for existing questions on this site that may provide an answer. LessWrong has been around for a long time now. Many common confusions are covered in Rationality A-Z, or in the Best of LessWrong . any common questions have already been answered.)
Make sure to keep track of what you find when researching, even if it doesn't help! If you ultimately aren't able to find the answer to your question elsewhere on this site, then including links to related questions (as well as an explanation of why they didn't help in your specific case).
Write a title that summarizes the specific question.
The title is the first thing that potential answerers will see. If your title isn't interesting, they won't read the rest. Also, without a good title, people may not even be able to find your question. So, make the title count:
How can I helpfully answer questions?
You can probably help more than you think! Even if it’s not easy to answer a question outright, small contributions of information or insight can still go a long way.
We encourage you to look through the questions page to find questions that either have existing knowledge about or catch your curiosity about. Read through existing answers and then see what you can add. All of the following can be useful contributions in addition to direct answers:
Answering questions is also a great way to practice the neglected virtue of scholarship. A couple of LessWrong members have written guides helpful for getting started with scholarship. Lukeprog wrote Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently and gwern wrote a lengthy Internet Search Tips guide.
How do I interact with questions?
Question pages might seem confusing at first. They’re not so bad. Beneath the question text you will see a textbook with three options: “New Answer”, “Ask Related Question”, and “New Comment” as pictured.
New Answer: An answer can be any response which sheds light on the question being asked, even if it’s not a complete or comprehensive answer. Some users choose to make smaller contributions as comments. There’s a bit of fuzzy line here so don’t worry about it too much. You have the ability to move responses back and forth between being comments or answers if you change your mind.
New Comment: Comments on questions can be used to ask clarifying questions and other thoughts which aren’t really answers to the question asked. You can also comment on other people’s Answers, allowing for discussion of those answers.
Ask Related Question: For large questions, sometimes you can’t answer a question directly and instead to ask another question first. You can respond to a question by asking what you think is a related question. These will then be linked in the Question UI.
Asking a (smaller) related question and then making progress on answering it is a great way to help get large research questions answered by the community.
Community Events Page
What is the LessWrong community event page?
LessWrong is both an online and offline community where members around the globe meet up in person for small and large gatherings including local meetups, regional retreats, and conferences.
The community events page is where LessWrong members can find each other in the physical world and create events and groups.
You can find the page at www.lesswrong.com/community, via the left sidebar (desktop) or bottom buttons (mobile).
What are all these categories of meetups?
The community page displays four non-exclusive categories of events and groups. These include explicitly “LessWrong” themed events plus those overlapping and adjacent communities.
These four include explicitly LessWrong themed events plus those from overlapping and adjacent communities.
What happens at rationality meetups?
Depends on the meetup! Some meetups focus on formal rationality practice while others are just opportunity’s for like-minded people to socialize - many meetups or groups split their time between the two.
What are the larger community events?
The community events page has information for large events too. Examples include the Bay Area Summer Solstice Celebration, Athena Rationality Workshop, European Community Weekend, and MIRI Summer Fellows Program.
What resources can help me run my local rationality meetup?
There is a resources section on the bottom of the community events page. Just scroll to the bottom!
Moderation
What do LessWrong moderators do?
LessWrong aims to be a well-kept garden. It is warded by a team of active moderators who ensure that discussion and content are of high quality, and that behaviors which would diminish the value of LessWrong are prevented.
Who can moderate on LessWrong?
LessWrong has a split moderation system. Most moderation activity is performed by LessWrong’s moderation team; however, users who meet certain karma thresholds can moderate their own posts plus set the moderation guidelines that appear on their posts.
Users with over 50 karma can moderate their own posts when they remain as Personal blogposts.
Users with over 2000 karma can moderate their own posts even when they have been promoted to Frontpage status.
The site automatically rate limits people who have been heavily downvoted.
What moderation actions can I take on my own posts?
If you meet the karma thresholds (50 on Personal blogposts, 2000 on Frontpage posts), you can perform the following moderation actions on your posts:
Before you can moderate your own posts, you must set moderation style on your post. The following options are available:
If you select norm enforcing, you should set your custom moderation policy which will be shown at the top of the comment section and at the bottom of the new comment form of posts you can moderate.
We encourage you to take moderation actions consistent with the moderation policy you have set on your posts.
What actions and duties do the LessWrong team moderators perform?
Moderators perform the following routine regular duties:
Moderations perform the following less-common actions:
In extremely extreme and exceedingly severe cases:
What powers do moderators have?
Moderators generally have access to the site data, most of this time this is accessed at the request of a user in the process of debugging a technical issue. We take data privacy seriously. We don’t just read private messages.
Note: if a comment of yours is ever deleted, you will automatically receive a private message with its contents.
More generally, most moderators are also site developers who may build new tools over time. We'll try to keep this section updated but it may not always be comprehensive.
What is the LessWrong moderation policy/philosophy?
Unfortunately, we do not have a recent and up to date document that speaks coherently for the whole site, however habryka’s post on Models of moderation is a good start. Our moderation policy tends to happen via case-law (i.e. a particular situation comes up, we make a decision based on our overall assessment of the situation, and write up our reasoning). We do try to be pretty public about our moderation reasoning when it comes up.
We do have a hard rule against mass downvoting, mass upvoting, or voting with sockpuppet accounts. The line between "downvoting a lot, when you legitimately want to" and "mass downvoting" is somewhat blurry, but if it seems like you are doing so in an adversarial way we are likely to ban your account and/or remove your ability to vote.
We also have a hard rule against ban evasion. If you make a new account to avoid a ban, or rate limit or other restriction, we're likely to notice, ban the new account and potentially ban your old account as well depending on the circumstances.
Who are the moderators?
The LessWrong core team plus a few others form the current moderation team. You can see who they are on the team page.
How do I become a moderator?
We are not currently recruiting any new moderators and there is no current process.
That said, moderators would be recruited from among those we believe possess excellent judgment and understand LessWrong, its purpose, its culture, and its values. The best way to demonstrate this would be through consistently valuable participation on LessWrong.
What is LessWrong’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Use?
Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use can be viewed here.
Note that the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is the relevant legal party for this privacy policy and terms of use. When Eliezer Yudkowsky founded the LessWrong website in 2009, he created it as the property of MIRI (then named the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, aka SIAI).
While we’re at it, we can add that the current LessWrong team operates legally as a part of a related organization, the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR) while retaining autonomy over its internal decision-making and all decisions about the LessWrong website.
For the intertwined history of MIRI and CFAR, see this answer to a LessWrong question.