Followup to: Whither OB?

Overcoming Bias currently plans to transition to a new format, including a new and more open sister site, tentatively entitled "Less Wrong". The new site will be built out of Reddit's source code, but you won't be limited to posting links - the new site will include a WYSIWYG HTML editor as well. All posts will appear on Less Wrong and will be voted up or down by the readers. Posts approved by the chief editors will be "promoted" to Overcoming Bias, which will serve as the front page of Less Wrong.

Once the initial site is up and running, the next items on the agenda include much better support for reading through sequences. And I'll organize more of my old posts (and perhaps some of Robin's) into sequences.

Threaded comments and comment voting/sorting are on the way. Anonymous commenting may go away briefly (it's not built into the Reddit codebase) but I suspect it's important for attracting new participation. So I do hope to bring back non-registration commenting, but it may go away for a while. On the plus side, you'll only have to solve a captcha once when signing up, not every time you post. And the 50-comment limit per page is on the way out as well.

Timeframe... theoretically, one to two weeks of work left.

I've reserved a final sequence on Building Rationalist Communities to seed Less Wrong. Also, I doubt I could stop blogging completely even if I tried. I don't think Robin plans to stop completely either. And it's worth remembering that OB's most popular post ever was a reader contribution. So don't touch that dial, don't unsubscribe that RSS feed. Exciting changes on the way.

PS: Changes also underway at the Singularity Institute, my host organization. Although no formal announcement has been made yet, Tyler Emerson is departing as Executive Director and Michael Vassar is coming on board as President. I mention this now because Michael Vassar is usually based out of the East Coast, but is in the Bay Area for only the next couple of days, and any Bay Area folks seriously interested in getting significantly involved might want to take this opportunity to talk to him and/or me. Email michael no space aruna at yahoo dot com.

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