Various people raised concerns that growth might ruin the culture after reading my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread. There has been some discussion about whether endless September, a phenomenon that kills online discussion groups, is a significant threat to LessWrong and what can be done. I really care about it, so I volunteered to code a solution myself for free if needed. Luke invited debate on the subject (the debate is here) and will be sent the results of this poll and asked to make a decision. It was suggested by him in an email that I wait a little while and then post my poll (meta threads are apparently annoying to some, so we let people cool off). Here it is, preceded by a Cliff's notes summary of the concerns.
Why this is worth your consideration:
- Yvain and I checked the IQ figures in the survey against other data this time, and the good news is that it's more believable that the average LessWronger is gifted. The bad news is that LessWrong's IQ average has decreased on each survey. It can be argued that it's not decreasing by a lot or we don't have enough data, but if the data is good, LessWrong's average has lost 52% of it's giftedness since March of 2009.
- Eliezer documented the arrival of poseurs (people who superficially copycat cultural behaviors - they are reported to over-run subcultures) which he termed "Undiscriminating Skeptics".
- Efforts to grow LessWrong could trigger an overwhelming deluge of newbies.
- LessWrong registrations have been increasing fast and it's possible that growth could outstrip acculturation capacity. (Chart here)
- The Singularity Summit appears to cause a deluge of new users that may have similar effect to the September deluges of college freshman that endless September is named after. (This chart shows a spike correlated with the 2011 summit where 921 users joined that month, which is roughly equal to the total number of active users LW tends to have in a month if you go by the surveys or Vladmir's wget.)
- A Slashdot effect could result in a tsunami of new users if a publication with lots of readers like the Wall Street Journal (they used LessWrong data in this article) decides to write an article on LessWrong.
- The sequences contain a lot of the culture and are long meaning that "TLDR" may make LessWrong vulnerable to cultural disintegration. (New users may not know how detailed LW culture is or that the sequences contain so much culture. I didn't.)
- Eliezer said in August that the site was "seriously going to hell" due to trolls.
- A lot of people raised concerns.
Two Theories on How Online Cultures Die:
Overwhelming user influx.
There are too many new users to be acculturated by older members, so they form their own, larger new culture and dominate the group.
Trending toward the mean.
A group forms because people who are very different want a place to be different together. The group attracts more people that are closer to mainstream than people who are equally different because there are more mainstream people than different people. The larger group attracts people who are even less different in the original group's way for similar reasons. The original group is slowly overwhelmed by people who will never understand because they are too different.
Poll Link:
Request for Feedback:
In addition to constructive criticism, I'd also like the following:
-
Your observations of a decline or increase in quality, culture or enjoyment at LessWrong, if any.
-
Ideas to protect the culture.
-
Ideas for tracking cultural erosion.
- Ways to test the ideas to protect the culture.
Well that is interesting and unexpected.
This seems to be more of a matter of notification strategies - one where you have to check a "calendar" and one where the "calendar" comes to you. I am pattern-matching the concept "reminder" here. It seems to me that reminders, although important and possibly completely necessary for running a functional group, would be more along the lines of a behavioral detail as opposed to a fundamental leadership quality. I don't know why you're likening this to obedience.
We do not have infinite capacity for critical thinking. True. I don't call trusting other people's opinions obedience. I call it trust. That is rare for me. Very rare for anything important. Next door to trust is what I do when I'm short on time or don't have the energy: I half-ass it. I grab someone's opinion, go "Meh, 70% chance they're right?" and slap it in.
I don't call that obedience, either.
I call it being overwhelmingly busy.
Organizing trivial details is something I call organizing. I don't call it obedience.
When I think of obedience I think of that damned nuisance demand that punishes me for being right. This is not because I am constantly right - I'm wrong often enough. I have observed, though, that some people are more interested in power than in wielding it meaningfully. They don't listen and use power as a way to avoid updating (leading them to be wrong frequently). They demand this thing "obedience" and that seems to be a warning that they are about act as if might makes right.
My idea of leadership looks like this:
If you want something new to happen, do it first. When everyone else sees that you haven't been reduced to a pile of human rubble by the new experience, they'll decide the "guinea pig" has tested it well enough that they're willing to try it, too.
If you really want something to get done, do it your damn self. Don't wait around for someone else to do it, nag others, etc.
If you want others to behave, behave well first. After you have shown a good intent toward them, invite them to behave well, too. Respect them and they will usually respect you.
If there's a difficulty, figure out how to solve it.
Give people something they want repeatedly and they come back for it.
If people are grateful for your work, they reciprocate by volunteering to help or donating to keep it going.
To me, that's the correct way of going about it. Using force (which I associate with obedience) or expecting people not to have thoughts of their own is not only completely unnecessary but pales in comparison effectiveness-wise.
Maybe my ideas about obedience are completely orthogonal to yours. If you still think obedience has some value I am unaware of, I'm curious about it.
Thank you for your interest. It feels good.
I have a romantic interest right now who, although we have not officially deemed our status a "relationship" are considering one another as potential seriously partners.
This came to both of us as a surprise. I had burned out on dating and deleted my dating profile. I was like:
insane amount of dating alienation * ice cube's chance of finding compatible partner > benefits of romance
(Narratives by LW Women thread if you want more)
And so now we're like ... wow this amount of compatibility is special. We should not waste the momentum by getting distracted by other people. So we decided that in order to let the opportunity unfold naturally, we would avoid pursuing other serious romantic interests for now.
So although I am technically available, my expected behavior, considering how busy I am, would probably be best classified as "dance card full".
We seem to have different connotations on "obedience", and might be talking about slightly different concepts. You're observations about how most people use power, and the bad kind of obedience, are spot-on.
The topic came up because of the "I'd kneel to anyone who declared themselves king" thing. I don't think such a behaviour pattern has to go to bad power abusing obedience and submission. I think it's just a really strategically useful thing to support someone who is going to act as the group-agency. You seem to agree on the important... (read more)