My friend kytael (not his real name, but his Less Wrong handle) has been on Less Wrong since 2010, has been a volunteer for the CFAR, and lived in the Bay Area for several months as part of the meatspace rationalist community there. For a couple of years, I was only a lurker on Less Wrong, and occasionally read some posts. I didn't bother to read the Sequences, but I already studied cognitive science, and I attended lots of meetups where the Sequences were discussed, so I understand much of the canon material of Less Wrong rationality, even if I wouldn't use the same words to describe the comments. It's only in the last year, and a bit, that I got more involved in my local meetup, which motivated me to get involved in the site. I find myself agreeing with lots of the older Sequence posts, and the highest quality posters (lukeprog, Yvain, gwern, etc.) from a few years ago, but I too am deeply concerned about the decline of vitality on Less Wrong, as I have only started to get excited about it's online aspects.

Anyway, when I too asked kytael:

What should the purpose of this site be? Is it supposed to be building a movement or filtering down the best knowledge?

(I asked him more, o... (read more)

I'm not really a very old user, maybe three years (and after becoming more active in real-life meetups I switched to an alt that used my real name, so I'm not as inactive as I look, though still pretty inactive these days). But I have to say, it subjectively feels like the quality of everything on lesswrong is lower than it was when I joined.

And I'll tell you what I perceive the difference to be:

1) All my favorite writers stopped writing here. I have to go elsewhere to find their content. Previously, I felt that most of the stuff I read here was at a level above me in terms of insightfulness and level of philosophical rigor... and now, with a few exceptions, I don't.

2) The user-base shifted such that it was no longer a homogeneous entity which I labeled as an in-group. People here don't just automatically share my outlook on morality, epistemology, "free will", consciousness, and even politics anymore. Previously, the core sequences were pretty in-line with what I initially believed, and the entire userbase shared those views. That's not to say I don't value diversity of opinion, but there is something special about a group that agrees with you on every core issue. The ... (read more)

I'd really like idea D. Open threads aren't terrific for developing ideas due to the navigation and visibility problems.

See also http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/04/open-thread/#comment-95554

I once posted to Main (http://lesswrong.com/lw/6uw/how_to_enjoy_being_wrong/).

Afterwards, I felt bad about it somehow - like I had done something wrong or unappreciated -- despite having a substantially positive karma balance on that post. I think the reason was that almost all the top-level comments were neutral or negative and there was not much encouraging discussion, and I think the post might have been moved to Discussion - it was certainly not promoted.

It's actually interesting to go back and look at that because I now realize that that was a reasonably successful post and probably should have encouraged me further. Instead it did not. I wonder if something similar has happened to others.

I haven't posted here for that long but I think that a more co-operative and cheerful style of discussion would strengthen the community, encourage people to post more, and ultimately strengthen the rationalist cause. In short, it would seem that adopting such more benevolent norms would be the rational thing to do...

My prior here is that we're just seeing less visitors overall

Trike should be able to check this. My guess is that the site has a lot higher view rate than 2-3 years ago, from both casual and registered users, but maybe they do not vote as often as before (or are more negative than before?), keeping the average karma/post steady.

Also, does the median karma per post match the mean, or is the latter skewed by high-karma outliers?

B-- posting links to articles-- is already possible. It's fallen out of fashion, I'm not sure why. So far as I remember, link posts in Discussion went over well enough so long as there was a substantial excerpt or a summary rather than just the link.

Similarly to what some others have written, my attitude toward LessWrong is that it would best thrive with this model:

1. Embrace the Eternal September.

If LessWrong is successful at encouraging epistemic and especially instrumental rationality, people who have benefited from the material here will find less value in staying and greater opportunities elsewhere. LessWrong doesn't need to be a place to stay any more than does a schoolhouse. Its purpose could be to teach Internet users rationality skills they don't learn in ordinary life or public school, and... (read more)

I gave my own reasons for mostly abandoning this site in a post.

There were additional specific factors, some involving Eliezer's high-handed interventions to remove or downgrade things I'd posted without, I think, considering them carefully. A big one was when gwern responded to a post of mine with a vicious attack, not on my post, but on me as a person. I replied with something to the effect of, "As a rationalist, you should recognize that attacking someone has a cost, so what exactly is the benefit to you here?" He responded by saying that he j... (read more)

Problem 1: The subject area is defined too narrowly. Instead of limiting ourselves to "refining the art of human rationality", I would like the forum to allow any content which is interesting to an audience of atheist humanists who favor solving problems through a rational / analytic approach and who cherish a rationalist style of discourse. This also applies to how the forum markets itself outside.

Problem 2: Much of the time, the forum feels too much like a battle arena and too little like a community. In particular, I felt great disillusionment... (read more)

Which of the proposed solutions do you prefer?

[pollid:701]

Did anything specific happen (or stop happening) in the fall of 2011?

I also notice that the "featured articles" are for the most part re-postings of old articles. When did this start?

I think LWers and online communities in general should realize that, just like any other economic good, they are subject to obsolescence.

Also, not necessarily the reason for the decline in activity needs to be treated to make LW popular again. A refocus might just be more effective.

Just like any product, an online community needs to know its niche and market that niche heavily.

I think the most effective step to undertake is for the group to make an effort and decide what direction it want to give to the site: be it a repository, a place for discussing rati... (read more)

I think discussion as currently practiced puts off a class of potential new lesswrongers. I would expect discussion in a non-faith-based rationalist community to include regular challenges to almost all core beliefs. Instead, if a new-ish lesswronger comes in and posts an unpopular interpretation of something, she is karma-bombed out of there.

I think a rational community needs to distinguish between "garbage" and "annoying." With garbage perhaps beneficially being taken out (although in a hierarchical message system it is that imp... (read more)