I'm not suggesting that removing 70% of commenters would lead to a more vibrant community. I am suggesting that removing (or hiding) 70% of comments would lead to a more vibrant community.
I think after you make a habit of removing 70% of comments, about 70% of your commenters would decamp for better pastures. Not to mention the quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem.
Let me offer you an alternative: an ignore list. Anyone can make invisible any comment or any commenter he dislikes or thinks not worth his time, but the vanishing act is for his eyes only, the rest of the visitors still see everything there is. Each can tailor the the appearance of the site to his individual taste.
That's not a perfect solution for a variety of reasons, but I think it's better than site-wide pruning of "unworthy" comments.
Not to mention the quis custodiet ipsos custodes? problem.
You can't create an algorithm for generally promoting good comments -- that would have to be an artificial intelligence that would recognize a good comment from a bad one. You can only create algorithms that make it more easy or more difficult to protect the community values... whatever they are.
Imagine a website with 10 people, where 11th person comes a writes a good comment. But for some irrational reasons, the original 10 people all dislike the comment. Does the system allow them to remove the...
Is Less Wrong, despite its flaws, the highest-quality relatively-general-interest forum on the web? It seems to me that, to find reliably higher-quality discussion, I must turn to more narrowly focused sites, e.g. MathOverflow and the GiveWell blog.
Many people smarter than myself have reported the same impression. But if you know of any comparably high-quality relatively-general-interest forums, please link me to them!
In the meantime: suppose it's true that Less Wrong is the highest-quality relatively-general-interest forum on the web. In that case, we're sitting on a big opportunity to grow Less Wrong into the "standard" general-interest discussion hub for people with high intelligence and high metacognition (shorthand: "intellectual elites").
Earlier, Jonah Sinick lamented the scarcity of elites on the web. How can we get more intellectual elites to engage on the web, and in particular at Less Wrong?
Some projects to improve the situation are extremely costly:
Code changes, however, could be significantly less costly. New features or site structure elements could increase engagement by intellectual elites. (To avoid priming and contamination, I'll hold back from naming specific examples here.)
To help us figure out which code changes are most likely to increase engagement on Less Wrong by intellectual elites, specific MIRI volunteers will be interviewing intellectual elites who (1) are familiar enough with Less Wrong to be able to simulate which code changes might cause them to engage more, but who (2) mostly just lurk, currently.
In the meantime, I figured I'd throw these ideas to the community for feedback and suggestions.