I think the most difficult part is sorting and collecting the texts. Even if you choose a wrong software - if you make a good choice of the material, you can switch to another software later.
Generally, I would recommend using MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia. You don't get other software tested by so many users. I have repeated experience with people suggesting using other kinds of wiki, because they have this or that additional feature, only to find out that the main feature - editing pages - is full of bugs. I prefer if the software does one thing and does it well. -- I don't know what those "social networking features" are specifically, but I would guess they don't really add much value to the project. The wiki has talk pages, and you can always install a forum or chat as a separate software.
As a first iteration I would probably do a main page with a list of topics, a page per topic (such as "programming"), and a separate page for each significant material where the main ideas could be summarized.
The difficult part will be collecting the material, describing the material, and protecting the site against vandals or mindkilled people (as self-improvement is often dangerously close to self-delusion).
I may be missing something, how come you did not oppose the idea of a separate website in Instrumental rationality/self help resources?
That LW discussion was basically exactly what you were just suggesting except nothing was posted on the wiki.
I think the issue with those discussions is that there is too much knowledge out there. That discussion had 99 comments, and that was not even a drop in the bucket. Also, there are articles and comments written everyday on self-improvement, and those will all slowly be lost and outdated.
It does not look like the wiki is being used for organizing self-improvement articles. Should I make an announcement telling everyone to do that, or just make a separate wiki? It seems like a separate site with its own purpose, community, rules, organization, and article format would be better than using the LW wiki.
To me it seems that Viliam_Bur is saying roughly the same thing in both examples. You try to do something that's very hard.
In the first case he gave suggestions about how to go about doing it.
In the second case he proposed that you do something more simple instead.
The thing is that you are a newcomer on LessWrong and don't have much cloud in this community to get people to follow you to another website. Given the way you write about the problem you also seem to be naive and don't really know what you are doing.
I wrote the above before going through you...
Article Prerequisite: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality
Introduction
The goal of this post is to explore the idea of rationality training, feedback and ideas are greatly appreciated.
Less Wrong’s stated mission is to help people become more rational, and it has made progress toward that goal. Members read and discuss useful ideas on the internet, get instant feedback because of the voting system, and schedule meetups with other members. Less Wrong also helps attract more people to rationality.
Less Wrong helps with sharing ideas, but it fails to help people put elements of epistemic and instrumental rationality into practice. This is a serious problem, but it would be hard to fix without altering the core functionality of Less Wrong.
Having separate websites for reading and discussing ideas and then actually using those ideas would improve the real world performance of the Less Wrong community while maintaining the idea discussion, “marketing”, and other benefits of the Less Wrong website.
How to create a useful website for self improvement
1. Knowledge Management
When reading blogs, people only see recent posts and those posts are not significantly revised. A wiki would allow for the creation of a large body of organized knowledge that is frequently revised. Each wiki post would have a description, benefits of the topic described, resources to learn the topic, user submitted resources to learn the topic, and reviews of each resource. Posts would be organized hierarchically and voted on for usefulness to help readers effectively improve what they are looking for. Users could share self-improvement plans to help others improve effectiveness in general or in a specific topic as quickly as possible.
2. Effective Learning
Resources to learn topics should be arranged or written for effective skill acquisition, and there may be different resource categories like exercises for deliberate practice or active recall questions for spaced repetition.
3. Quality Contributors
Contributors would, at the very least, need to be familiar with how to write articles that supported the skill acquisition process agreed upon by the entire community. Required writing and research skills would produce higher quality work. I am not sure if being a rationalist would improve the quality of articles.
Problems
1. Difficult requirements
The number of prerequisites necessary to contribute to and use the wiki would really lower the amount of people who will be able to benefit from the wiki. It's a trade off between effectiveness and popularity. What elements should be included to maximize the effectiveness of the website?
2. Interest
There has to be enough interest in the website, or else a different project should be started instead. How many people in the Less Wrong community, and the world at large, would be interested in self improvement and rationality?
3. Increasing the effectiveness of non altruistic people
How much of the target audience wants to improve the world? If most do not, then the wiki would essentially be a net negative on the world. What should the criteria be to view and contribute to the wiki? Perhaps only Less Wrong members should be able to view and edit the wiki, and contributors must read a quick start guide and pass a quick test before being allowed to post.