It was two weeks ago, so I don't remember my previous reasoning exactly, but your interpretation seems correct, or at least I agree with it now.
My previous reaction was probably based on: "Brendon is spending too much time thinking about the right wiki software, and before people start suggesting exotic solutions, I should quickly jump in and say that in my experience wikis other than MediaWiki are full of bugs." That was the main idea; and the other idea was: "Getting data is the hard part; switching from one wiki to another wiki is trivial compared with that. Get the hard part started as soon as possible."
And today, there is a bit of: "So, two weeks later and Brendon is still talking about the idea... and here is something he could have done instead." -- Sorry for being harsh here; I am actually happy that someone wants to do this. It's just... anything that ever gets done, is started by someone doing it first and hoping that other people will join later. If you wait until you gather people, you will never start. People gather around projects already in motion.
Honestly, I am not sure if LW wiki is a good place for collecting self-improvement materials. Probably not, because they will not have enough evidence behind them, so it will just be: "X thinks this works, Y thinks it doesn't (and here are the results of the LW opinion poll)". But still... if you collect the data on the LW wiki and someone says loudly enough "this doesn't belong here", you just move the data elsewhere. That's the easy problem. The difficult problem is you don't have the data yet, and not even a realistic way to collect it.
So probably a coherent advice would be:
Start a discussion on LW to collect the data; now. In the discussion, create a meta thread with a poll about whether it is a good idea to post results on LW wiki. (Worst case: You will put the results on some other wiki, or on your own blog.)
(Or do something else. But do it. Worst case: you learn from your mistakes, and move to a better plan, but you are not wasting time.)
Thanks for suggesting concrete actions, I'll go ahead and post it ASAP.
Questions before I start (thanks in advance)!
What's better, recommending a resource to improve something or recommending a specific topic to improve with resource suggestions as reply's? Ex. Watch The Blueprint Decoded to learn PUA vs improve PUA and add resources as replies.
What do you mean by collecting data? Do you mean collecting the self-improvement resource suggestions themselves, or opinions/ratings/votes on the suggestions?
What if there are too many comments on the disc
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.