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Lumifer comments on Engaging Intellectual Elites at Less Wrong - Less Wrong Discussion
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Hm. Let me throw out several points in random order:
-- I don't think LW is a "general-interest" forum. Not even "relatively". However that's fine -- there are really no such things as general-interest forums because their lack of focus kills them. What you have, actually, is online communities some of which spend their time chatting about whatever in the general section of their forums. But that general section is just for overflow, the community itself is formed and kept together by something that binds much tighter than general interest.
-- If I rephrase your post along the lines of "LW is a web-based club for smart people. How do we get more smart people to join our club?" -- would you object?
-- Size matters. In particular, online communities have certain optimal size for cohesiveness -- be too small and it's just a few old-timers making inside jokes; grow too big and you drown in a cacophony of noise. I've seen online communities mutate into something quite different from the original through massive growth. That may be fine in the grand scheme of things, but the original character is lost.
-- While attracting "elite" how are you going to get rid of hoi polloi? If people arrive, set up camp in LW, and start discussing Jennifer Anniston's butt and what a horrible hangover did they have today after being gloriously trashed yesterday, what are you going to do about it?
-- There is correlation between "being highly successful in real life" and "being able to avoid wasting time chattering away on the 'net".
-- I think I would support some additional granularity to this site (subreddit style), especially if we get some population growth. Nothing like Reddit itself, of course, but the existence of two parts and two parts only seems to be an artifact from the olden days (when you went to school up the hill both ways).
-- And finally, the important question: what do you want to achieve? Is it just having more smart people around to talk to, or there's more? In particular, with Pinky and the Brain flavour?
Quoting this because IMO it's the most important of the lot. Almost all the people I think of as 'old guard' barely post anymore because they're too busy working at CFAR and/or working on personal projects
Retirees have the wisdom of experience, are seasoned writers, and have few external obligations. Contributing to LW would not be a waste of their time or abilities.
How many retirees post here?
Do people know retired professors or other smart retired people who would do well on Less Wrong?
As one data point, my father has been retired for 7 years. He got a PhD in physics and then became a software engineer after deciding he didn't really enjoy research. He's interested in LessWrong-y topics like rationality, optimal philanthropy, and some of the areas of philosophy that are often discussed here. He's read and enjoyed some of the articles I've linked him to on LessWrong. He should be a shoe-in, right?
But he didn't grow up in a time when online communities were a thing. They're just not part of his life and he has no interest in joining one.
Just curious: do you know he has no interest, or do you assume he has no interest?
Yeah, I realized that while writing it. You're right - I don't know for sure that he has no interest at all. Although it is true that he hasn't made an account here despite reading and enjoying some posts here.
I have also never heard him mention any other online communities, and I talk to him often enough that I'd expect it to come up.
I think you may be underestimating the amount of gentle hand-holding necessary for someone to develop an affordance, and think it might be worth seriously presenting it to him as a potential hobby.
StackExchange site solves this problem by gradually increasing user powers with their karma. Then even if the old guard spends less time online, their actions are more visible.
On the other hand, there are not as many "actions" one can do on LW. And we probably wouldn't want to limit things like "announcing a new meetup" to old users.
Here is a list of possible LW actions that could require some karma threshold:
Beyond that, I don't know. Perhaps users with huge karma could get ×2 or ×3 multipliers when voting, but more than that would probably be a bad idea.
I laughed at that.
It strikes me as somewhat double-edged though, insomuch as Pinky and the Brain never actually succeed at their nightly plan (as far as I know). And since TRY often never gets further than "talk about", we might ask how the conversation actually contributes to the ultimate goal. So far I would say LW has had a net positive effect therein; I expect we'll continue to pay attention to that effect and shape it consciously.
Double-edged is good :-)