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casebash comments on Ideas on growth of the community - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (85)
I made a post recently that Less Wrong Lacks Direction that seems very similar to point 3. Less Wrong has moderation, but it doesn't have leadership. There is almost no concerted group action. Everyone has their own ideas of what Less Wrong needs to do next, and they are all different.
I think Why our kind can't co-operate is an excellent article. Whenever you post an idea, you might get a few upvotes, but you'll also get a lot of comments saying that something else is a better idea instead.
The reason why Less Wrong is getting less readers is because Less Wrong has much less content. Either 1) we need someone crazy like Scott Alexander who will solo producing huge amounts of content 2) we need some way to encourage the posting of new content. The ability to create separate sections of Less Wrong would be a great way to increase the amount of content posted. The programming wouldn't even be that hard, the issue is that the moderators still haven't commented on whether they'd turn it on if someone went out and did it.
To be honest, that's basically why I post in open threads. I want other people to tell me something else is better, or that I'm missing something, etc. I don't recall ever being offended by that, but I have been disappointed by how few replies I've received.
I was not talking about "this elevation is higher than yours". I mean, if you got better idea that solves my problem more efficiently, thank you very much. I was talking about the ideas which are at the same level. You need hot chocolate, which is hot and sweet, but all you have is coffee and lemonade. You can drink coffee, it's warm but bitter, and you can drink lemonade, which is sweet, but cold. Someone says, take lemonade, someone says take coffee. In the end, it doesn't matter which one you take. Both solve the problem partially, but community will take none, because it's not perfect. Translated to the case I wanted to cover: let's say we have part of the community which wants to improve the world we live in. Some think building better government will help, some think doing research, improving technology etc will help, some think we should start at the bottom and help the ones in the greatest need. They will fight each other, although they could give each team it's task and do it that way. This is my intention on the long stick. To make teams. Each member could help solving problems he feels he could solve, without spam from other teams, etc.
In the end, I just wanted to help solving our inability to organize.
I was confused by casebash's reply, but your explanation of the same suggestion makes sense.
Pointing out when we are engaging in analysis paralysis and thus becoming less effective would be a good habit, I think. I'm not good at it, but I'll see what I can do.
Constructive feedback is great - except when you're trying to actually get something done. Often it is better to go with a less than perfect plan, as opposed to doing nothing at all
I agree with you completely. Just want to point out that LW lacks directions. It's complete bullshit that we should all focus on one thing. And having all directions interfere is just making it harder to do anything sensible.
Why do you believe that separate sections will increase the amount of content that's posted?
He just gave you a reason.
If you organize content, you would get rid of that sort of things. Imagine going on reddit, to math subreddit, and commenting on some theorem "yeah, but it's better to develop new political system than solving these equations". It's just bizarre, and for a reason: not everyone on this world should be solving the same problem.
I actually appreciated ChristianKl's question, I didn't answer it as well as I could have
Because different sections could have different rules or norms on what kind of content is acceptable. Sections wouldn't necessarily increase the amount of content by themselves, but they would if they were well selected. Take for example an off-topic question section. Some conversation already occur - via special threads - but if there was a separate section, many more would happen.
What kind of offtopic discussion do you think would be good to happen that don't already happen in the open thread of stupid question threads?
The stupid questions threads only happen once every few weeks.
But I'd love to see separate areas for politics or social skills.
As far as a separate area for politics goes, we had a while a separate recurring thread for it. Now we have Omnilibrium. What's wrong with those solutions and why do you rather want a new section?
As far as social skills how about opening up a new recurring thread for it or specific threads on subaspects? Threads already seem quite successful in establishing different rules and norms.
I'm not a fan of Omnilibrium's UI, but I guess that's the lesser issue. The bigger issue is how often do people actually post there? How active is the community? I suspect it's not going to be very large because it's a separate site that people have to visit.
If that's the key problem we might add the Omnilibrium threads to "Recent on Rationality Blogs"
Not just that, but you also get a lot of comments nitpicking a minor detail that hardly affects the main points. For me, at least, that sort of response discourages to post anything that isn't perfect (which nothing ever is).
You don't necessarily need one person. The Sequences started due to a conversation between Yudkwosky and Hanson.