Comment author: Romashka 28 June 2016 05:16:14PM 1 point [-]

But how did it all begin? How did all these people find each other.

(I'm asking because I have this monster of rational!Highlander:TS living in my head for the last five years, too involved to write it down and too comfy to forget:)

Comment author: richard_reitz 30 June 2016 01:46:16AM 1 point [-]

When I first read In Fire Forged, I really liked it, but saw things I could improve. So, I left some high-quality reviews on fanfiction.net (that is, reviews that demonstrated I somewhat knew what I was talking about) and then solicited the author. From there, networking (people who you collaborated with can collaborate with you).

Back-engineering, I'd tentatively suggest just posting somewhere with reasonable visibility that selects for writers you'd like to collaborate as, and then ask anyone interested to ping you. Alternatively, you could develop a relationship working on someone else's writing and then ask them to look at your's.

Comment author: Cariyaga 27 June 2016 12:36:36PM *  2 points [-]

It is exceptional. If you have the time, once you get caught up I'd suggest getting involved in decision-making! It's really fun to be involved and also like crack for apparently multiple readers, including myself, and at least one of the writers (who has the common "I'll just refresh one more time before sleeping...") problem.

The people there are actually really mature and empathetic too, though I think that the forum itself is partially to thank for that. The rating system on posts (Like, Hug, Insightful, Informative, Funny) does a lot to encourage empathy.

Comment author: richard_reitz 30 June 2016 01:22:00AM *  1 point [-]

You guys voted to develop Righteous Face Punching Style and add Kagome to your party. What do you need my help in decision-making for? (But, seriously, I probably shouldn't have taken the time to get caught up, much less actively participate. Fun read, though!)

Comment author: Cariyaga 27 June 2016 12:55:06AM 2 points [-]

There is another collaborative writing project I follow, though it is an actual work of multiple people. Hosted on Sufficient Velocity, Marked for Death is also a rational naruto fic.

As mentioned, it has multiple authors -- Eaglejarl and Velorien -- as well as two other people that help them out, one on the mechanics (it is player-driven and functions as a collaborative story in that regard as well) and one on worldbuilding, AugSphere and Jackercracks respectively. If you wish to speak to them about their experiences with this and compare it to your own, I'm sure they could get help too.

Comment author: richard_reitz 27 June 2016 03:38:57AM 2 points [-]

Ha! I give Lighting Up the Dark—also by Velorien—last pass editing.

Thanks for the rec. It looks really good.

Comment author: cousin_it 21 June 2016 01:20:26PM 1 point [-]

Interesting! I'd love to try it in my spare time.

Do you have any examples of pieces that were written collaboratively? Do you keep a history of changes and discussions? How do you determine the direction of the story, is there a single leader who makes the big decisions, or is it more egalitarian?

Comment author: richard_reitz 21 June 2016 03:28:38PM *  0 points [-]

Do you have any examples of pieces that were written collaboratively?

In addition to In Fire Forged (in which I did first-round micro, in addition to contributing to worldbuilding), I give a last pass micro to Lighting Up the Dark (rational Naruto fanfic). I contributed a little to the Second Secular Sermon, although verse is really not my thing. I also have a partnership with Gram Stone that includes looking over each other's LW posts.

Do you keep a history of changes and discussions?

In Fire Forged has a Skype group, which keeps an archive of our discussion. Since Google Docs aren't the final publishing form, you can keep comments around, although in practice, once we've resolved an issue, the comment/suggestion usually goes away, so things don't get more cluttered. If you're interested, this is the Google Doc for this piece. But Google Docs doesn't keep a changelog, I have no desire to look back at one, nobody I've talked to has indicated any desire to look back at one, so there is no history of changes.

How do you determine the direction of the story, is there a single leader who makes the big decisions, or is it more egalitarian?

I more fully discussed this here, but the tl;dr is that experience indicates a single-leader setup usually works best, and is also the only setup I've come across. That said, it's egalitarian in the sense that the primary author doesn't give any special consideration to the words they've written or the ideas they've had; in the end, you want the best ideas expressed by the best words on the page. I can't imagine the author who would pass up improvements to their creative baby just because they weren't the ones to come up with them.

Comment author: Crab 20 June 2016 08:24:36PM 2 points [-]

The title misled me: I though this would be useful if me and another person decided to write a piece of fiction together.

Apparently this post is for people who write things and let other people comment on them, make little changes and suggest edits. But there is still one main author.

Comment author: richard_reitz 21 June 2016 03:08:23PM 1 point [-]

I'm sorry my title misled you.

(Since writing has trouble carrying intent: I genuinely feel bad that the title I chose caused you to believe something that wasn't true. I wish I was smart enough to have come up with a title that more precisely communicated what I was and wasn't discussing.)

This is perhaps a case of different projects being best served by different practices. There's certainly nothing stopping you from making a Google Doc where two (or more) authors have editing permission (as opposed to commenting permission).

But it's absolutely true that I'm writing from the perspective of having one primary author. This is because every piece I've worked on has had one primary author. Paul Graham writes: "Design usually has to be under the control of a single person to be any good." Indeed, almost all books of fiction I'm aware of were published by one author. A quick survey indicates that even most TV shows—which have writing staffs—usually have one author, although it's somewhat more common to have several people collaborate as equals to put together a story, which is then written up by one person. This was more or less how Buffy got written, as described by Jane Espenson.

It would certainly have been a major breakthrough if I'd discovered how to have multiple authors consistently work together to make good work. But that's above my pay grade; if a bunch of professional writers who have been in the business for decades have a strong preference for single authorship, I see that as a strong indication that I should generally prefer single authorship.

Also, if this piece comes off as having collaborators mostly making small edits, that's partly because it's true, but partly my own bias. Certainly, in In Fire Forged, we had one or two people who primarily worked with the author on macro level issues (plot, characterization, thematic consistency, etc), while I worked on the micro level. But it's also partly because it's true; outside of two fanfics (plus a poem), I mostly work on nonfiction blog posts. In these, the author knows what they want to say and have said it, and just need to say it better. They may or may not benefit from a fact check (usually not, at least for the pieces I've worked on), but beyond that, most of the room for improvement comes in the form of little changes.

Lastly, I have to thank you. This is the first thing I've actually published. An earlier draft contained a section discussing what I've just said, but I cut it because I didn't think it contained material that was useful to either author or collaborator. Obviously, I was wrong! So, now I have a slightly better sense of when cutting stuff goes too far.

Comment author: CronoDAS 18 June 2016 09:52:58PM 2 points [-]

Is "In Fire Forged" RationalFic?

Comment author: richard_reitz 18 June 2016 09:56:47PM *  2 points [-]

Yes; Eliezer recommended it in an Author's Note, which is how I got involved.

It's also not dead so much as on a very extended hiatus. Our author started a computer game company and has been prohibitively busy for a while now. There's a blog with updates about the lack of updates.

Comment author: richard_reitz 18 June 2016 07:49:11PM *  1 point [-]

If anyone would like a collaborator for something they're writing for LessWrong or diaspora, please PM me. Anyone interested in being a collaborator can reply to this comment, thereby creating a collaborator repository.

Comment author: richard_reitz 02 May 2016 05:38:30AM 0 points [-]

my classes continue to perform with increasingly minimal note-taking and homework.

Which homework hasn't been assigned because of Anki? Remembering back to my high school English classes, the only homework I can remember doing was reading readings and writing essays. I can't see how either could be displaced by Anki.

Comment author: Huluk 26 March 2016 12:55:37AM *  26 points [-]

[Survey Taken Thread]

By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.

Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.

Comment author: richard_reitz 26 March 2016 02:36:43AM 40 points [-]

I have taken the survey.

Comment author: Lumifer 10 March 2016 10:00:13PM 3 points [-]

RTS is a bit of a special case because a lot of the skill involved is micromanagement and software is MUCH better at micromanagement than humans.

I don't expect to see highly sophisticated AI in games (at least adversarial, battle-it-out games) because there is no point. Games have to be fun which means that the goal of the AI is to gracefully lose to the human player after making him exert some effort.

You might be interested in Angband Borg.

Comment author: richard_reitz 10 March 2016 11:03:32PM *  4 points [-]

And yet, humans currently have the edge in Brood War. Humans are probably doomed once StarCraft AIs get AlphaGo-level decision-making, but flawless micro—even on top of flawless* macro—won't help you if you only have zealots when your opponent does a muta switch. (Zealots can only attack ground and mutalisks fly, so zealots can't attack mutalisks; mutalisks are also faster than zealots.)

*By flawless, I mean macro doesn't falter because of micro elsewhere; often, even at the highest levels, players won't build new units because they're too busy controlling a big engagement or heavily multitasking (dropping at one point, defending a poke elsewhere, etc). If you look at it broadly, making the correct units is part of macro, but that's not what I'm talking about when I say flawless macro.

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