Gram_Stone comments on Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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That's an interesting distinction, but I think the worst problem at LW is just that people rarely think of interesting things to write about. I don't know whether all the low-hanging fruit has been gathered, or if we should be thinking about ways to find good topics. Scott Alexander seems to manage.
That's the thing though. My hypothesis is that the 'people who seem to manage' have left because the site is a lukewarm compromise between the two extremes that they might prefer it to be. Thus, subreddits.
Like, what would a Class Project to make good contributors on LW look like? Does that sound feasible to you?
Oh man, I'm arguing that blogging ability is innate.
Obviously there's an innate portion to blogging ability. We can still manipulate the environmental portion.
I hope I didn't come off like I'm going to automatically shoot all suggestions to reinvigorate LW out of the sky. That's most of the problem with the userbase! I genuinely wonder what such a Class Project would look like, and would also be willing to participate if I am able.
Since my comment was written in the context of Nancy_Lebovitz's comment, I'm specifically curious about how one would go about molding current members into high-quality contributors. I see a lot of stuff above about finding ways to make the user experience more palatable, but that in itself doesn't seem to ensure the sort of change that I think most people want to see.