Failure seems like the default outcome. How do we avoid that? Have there been other similar LessWrong projects like this that worked or didn't? Maybe we can learn from them.
Group projects can work without financial incentives. Most contributors to wikis and open-source software, and web forums like this one, aren't paid for that.
Assume we've made it work well, hypothetically. How did we do it?
It reminds me a lot of the "mastermind group" thing, where we had weekly hangouts to talk about our goals etc. The America/Europe group eventually petered out (see here for retrospective by regex), the Eurasia/Australia group appears to be ongoing albeit with only two (?) participants.
There have also been online reading groups for the sequences, iirc. I don't know how those went though.
forums, wikis, open source software
I see a few relevant differences:
Update 7/9/17: I propose that Learners individually reach out to Teachers, and set up meetings. It seems like the most practical way of getting started, but I am not sure and am definitely open to other ideas. Other notes:
Update 6/28/17: With 14 people currently interested, it does seem that there's enough to get started. However, I'd like to give it a bit more time and see how much overall interest we get.
Idea: we coordinate to teach each other things via video chat.
So, this seems like something that would be mutually beneficial. To get started, we'd need:
Personally, I'm not sure how much I can offer as far as doing the teaching. I worked as a web developer for 1.5 years and have been teaching myself computer science. I could be helpful to those unfamiliar with those fields, but probably not too much help for those already in the field and looking to grow. But I'm interested in learning about lots of things!
Perhaps a good place to start would be to record in some spreadsheet, a) people who want to teach, b) what topics, and c) who is interested in being a Learner. Getting more specific about who wants to learn what may be overkill, as we all seem to have roughly similar interests. Or maybe it isn't.
If you're interested in being a Learner or a Teacher, please add yourself to this spreadsheet.