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Sarunas comments on Open Thread, May 18 - May 24, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Gondolinian 18 May 2015 12:01AM

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Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 18 May 2015 01:03:37PM *  11 points [-]

In my view, you're asking the wrong question. The major contributors are doing great; they have attracted their own audiences. A better question might be: how can LW grow promising new posters in to future major contributors (who may later migrate off the platform)?

I had some ideas that don't require changing the LW source that I'll now create polls for:

Should Less Wrong encourage readers to write appreciative private messages for posts that they like?

Should we add something to the FAQ about how having people tear your ideas apart is normal and expected behavior and not necessarily a sign that you're doing anything wrong?

Should we add something to the FAQ encouraging people to use smiley faces when they write critical comments? (Smiley faces take up very little space, so don't affect the signal-to-noise-ratio much, and help reinforce the idea that criticism is normal and expected. The FAQ could explain this.)

We could start testing these ideas informally ASAP, make a FAQ change if polls are bullish on the ideas, and then announce them more broadly in a Discussion post if they seem to be working well. To keep track of how the ideas seem to be working out, people could post their experiences with them in this subthread.

Submitting...

Comment author: Sarunas 19 May 2015 07:30:15PM *  4 points [-]

I think that while appreciative messages are (I imagine) pleasant to get, I don't think they are the highest form of praise that a poster can get. I imagine that if I wrote a LW post, the highest form of praise to me would be comments that take the ideas expressed in a post (provided they are actually interesting) and develop them further, perhaps create new ideas that would build upon them. I imagine that seeing other people synthesizing their ideas with your ideas would be perhaps the best praise a poster could get.

While comments that nitpick the edge cases of the ideas expressed in a post obviously have their value, often they barely touch the main thesis of the post. An author might find it annoying having to respond to people who mostly nitpick his/her offhand remarks, instead of engaging with the main ideas of the post which the author finds the most interesting (that's why he/she wrote it). The situation when you write a comment and somehow your offhand remark becomes the main target of responses (whereas nobody comments on the main idea you've tried say) is quite common.

I am not saying that we should discourage people from commenting on remarks that are not central to the post or comment. I am trying to say that arguing about the main thesis is probably much more pleasant than arguing about offhand remarks, and, as I have said before, seeing other people take your ideas and develop them further is even more pleasant. Of course, only if those ideas are actually any good. That said, even if the idea is flawed, perhaps there is a grain of truth that can be salvaged? For example, maybe the idea works under some kind of very specific conditions? I think that most people would be more likely to post if they knew that even commenters discovered flaws in their ideas, the same commenters would be willing to help to identify whether something can be done to fix those flaws.

(This comments only covers LW posts (and comments) where posters present their own ideas. Not all posts are like that, e.g. many summarize arguments, articles and books by others)

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