LessWrong seems to have two main topics for discussion; rationality and AI. This, of course, is caused by Eliezer Yudkowsky's sequences (and interests), which are mostly about rationality, but also include a lot of writing about AI. LessWrong currently has two sections, Main and Discussion. This is meant to separate the purpose and quality of the post. I think usability of the site has improved greatly since adding the Discussion section. Should split the discussion section, and have one for rationality and one for AI?
Advantages
- It would make LW more pleasant for rationality enthusiasts who don't want to sort through lots of AI discussions.
- It would make LW more pleasant for AI enthusiasts who don't want to sort through lots of rationality discussions.
- It would not split up the community as much as a new AI community site would.
- It would increase LW's capacity for discussion.
- Newcomers could learn about rationality, while people who want higher quality of discussion on AI topics could have it.
Disadvantages
- Many posts about both subjects are highly relevant about both subjects
- It would make LW less pleasant for enthusiasts of both subjects.
- It would split up the community more than doing nothing.
- Everybody has their ideas for separate sections, and we can't do them all.
Possible alternative, We already have a tagging system but it is underutilised. Possibly an alternative would be to add an option of "filter by tag" to the new queue so we can easily separate out things we have a particular interest in. And to encourage people to use tags more frequently. Then we could easily filter by "AI" or "rationality" or indeed an arbitrary topic of interest, while still having everything visible by default.