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Rational_Brony comments on A place for casual, non-karmic discussion for lesswrongers? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I don't twit. That thing is in(s)ane. It must be the most frustrating, unfulfilling, obsession-inducing social medium I've ever attempted to use.
I'm sorry you feel that way. I am having the opposite experience. Maybe you're following the wrong folks?
It's not the posters that bother me, it's the format. I'm a wordy person who likes to take it slow and read things leisurely. Hence why the very concept of Twitter is anathema to me. Beyond its usefulness for instigating revolutions, I don't appreciate it much.
The writers at Cracked.com don't seem to think Twitter is all that useful for instigating revolutions, FWIW.
Well, besides the fact that the article is addled with subjectiveness and exaggeration in pure Cracked fashion, they did manage to make me feel rather stupid about myself. For a rationalist, news sources that achieve that are extremely valuable, and should be consulted often.
Following only a handful of low-noise feeds would not violate this rule. Are you unable to eat one cookie without eating the whole box?
How will it help? 140 characters is simply too short form for some kinds of posts.
How will it help what? Which posts? Why?
Well, maybe Rational_Brony wants to find posts with detailed explanation of some position/fact with a summary of corroborating evidence.
I treat that as preference for 1k-ish posts over ≤140-character posts.
On many forums posting a medium-length essay without too much polishing would be just "business as usual", on some other it would be "weird but OK". On Twitter it is declared impossible if you use it as supposed. You could use Twitter as an RSS-like stream for your blog, but leading conversation by linking blog posts with points and couterpoints doesn't seem to be widespread practice on Twitter.
EDIT: I answered before readng the entire thread; looks like I mostly guessed.
Hmm. This thread is forcing me to think about what character limits actually do. Also how reader interaction changes as count increases. Also difference between solo reading at leisure of a text that's graven in stone and social reading of a text that's being written collaboratively in the moment. Also different rates of "in the moment" (LW speed vs. Twitter speed).
That is indeed a terrible vice of mine. But see vi21maobk9vp (what kind of handle is that anyway?) for the other reason I find twitter unsatisfactory.
What's your answer to my questions about that reason?
Help with the fact that, given how short twitter posts are, it is very difficult to talk about stuff at comfortable length. There isn't even the comfort of a linear or tree structure like in fora or reddits, and while you can stack them by topic you need to sacrifice characters to do so. You can link to longer posts in blogs and fora, but then why not talk there? Also, every time you post a link, it has to be tinyfied, which is a pain in the neck. And the briefness of the format forces to rely on tacit understanding and common priors, which oftentimes aren't there, so the risk of illusion of double transparency is very high. .
Bottom line for me: Twitter incentivizes good compression, vivid analogies, and a warmer, less standoffish atmosphere. Tacit understanding and common priors flourish in a less prescriptive environment if a certain root density can be established to prevent erosion -- which I'd argue has occurred within a certain cluster of feeds.
You've lost me from "if" onwards. What's root density? Erosion?
A bunch of people with good epistemic hygiene talking to each other; trusting each other enough to be really playful because the underlying agreement about how the world works is so strong.
Upvoted for patience and directness.
Never had a problem with the latter; happy to see practice is paying off with the former.
Upvoted for both, downvoted for condescension. Result; neutral.
A while ago, someone posted a list with twittering LWers, and I started following them all, but now I've mostly unfollowed them again. Not because I don't like them, but because I don't like them on Twitter. I would have to follow not just them, but all the people they follow as well, to understand what they're saying, and then I wouldn't have time to do anything else with my day. I don't think Twitter is a good medium for ongoing discussions.
I don't understand the leap from following the followers of the people you follow to not having any time to do anything else. Then again, I have an abnormal amount of free time, and I spend a lot of it on Twitter. I don't know how I would feel if I had markedly less free time, but still wanted to participate.
Well, of course I'm exaggerating. But following not only those LWers, but the people they follow, would cost more time than I am willing to spend.
It'd be interesting to see a site like Twitter that hid all follower/following relationships.
Why?
Less of an implied popularity contest.
Popularity would still be expressed by number of replies from the "right" people. How do you hide that?
I can't think of a way, but LW feels like much less of a popularity contest, and it has that problem.
How would you feel about a market for better communicators on LW? Say, voluntary character limits (twice Twitter's? thrice?) and a Gunning Fog meter. Not sure how you'd establish successful compression, but if you could, more karma could be awarded for it than for a typical comment style.
I don't think verbosity is a big problem on LW. People not making posts for fear of being downvoted, or just not investing the time necessary to create good discussion/top-level posts, seems much bigger.
Accessibility is a problem, and verbosity is one of the causes.
It is much more segmented popularity contest because who are the "right" people vaires.
Follower count is a global instantly updated popularity contest, which may be considered worse.
Kate Evans earned a ton of followers quickly because her feed is really good (if occasionally opaque). Twitter is a segmented popularity contest, but the segments populated mostly by rationalists lend credence to the notion of a functional reputation market.