Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.

LessWrong has a lot of threads that go like:

Someone: "Gee, it would sure be nice if we had this cool new feature on LessWrong!"

EY/similar person: "Gee, it sure would. Too bad we don't have any development resources."

How would one go about volunteering to do this sort of thing?

I assume that if volunteer work is accepted, it would require testing to prove that it is a quality and non-malicious change before they actually run it on the servers.

(Nevermind. I see now that Luke has responded, making this irrelevant.)

6lukeprog13y

Unfortunately, the code base takes a fair bit of time to learn. It is cheaper to pay for LW development from its current developers than to take risks with volunteer developers learning the code base and implementing changes. A better destination for volunteer developers, I think, is CFAR app development, e.g. improving their calibration app, developing new apps for training particular rationality skills, etc. The contact person for this should be Anna Salamon. Coming up with your own volunteer projects is hard, because people outside the organization can't possibly know the details of what's going on — e.g. the many past failed attempts at volunteer development for LW. Thus, volunteer projects are better generated by MIRI staff, and those are listed here.

13Epiphany13y

I attempted to volunteer (I'm a web developer) but that didn't go anywhere. First, I wanted to help LW grow (in my "LessWrong could grow a lot" thread). Then I realized that LW was at serious risk for eternal September and growing it would risk hastening progress toward cultural collapse. So, I did several more threads on that to see if anyone had good arguments about us not being at risk, or good suggestions on how to stop it. I compiled a list of suggestions and held a vote asking people whether they think there is a significant risk and which solution, if any, they wanted. The result was that the majority of respondents think there is a significant risk, and this was presented to Luke, but he said he doesn't want to do anything at this time. That was, to put it mildly, a bit of a buzz kill in regards to my volunteering energy level. My advice to you is to make sure of the following things: 1. That you and Luke (yes, Luke seems to be the contact person) both agree on a project that is to be done. Luke liked the idea of growing LW, but he didn't like the idea of preventing cultural collapse. I can't, in good conscience, grow LW if there is a significant risk of it contributing to cultural collapse, and the group thinks that there is a significant risk. So, we unfortunately appear to be at a stalemate. 2. That Luke is cool with you specifically making changes. (Luke will need to go to some trouble to verify that you're a good developer. This will take time, and he may or may not be willing to invest it.) There are multiple people who are interested in doing volunteer work. Myself, you, and at least one other have expressed interest, and I could have swore there were more. Considering that, and the fact that this website is basically full of programmers up to the eyebrows, and the fact that they could ask for volunteers at any time, I really think lack of development resources is not an obstacle. If you attempt to explore and/or tackle the following obstacles

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Open Thread, February 1-14, 2013

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