Some reflections on the LW community after several months of active engagement
There seems to be some folks who might derive useful insights from a third-party, and mostly neutral, perspective of how the community appears after an honest and sustained effort of engagement, someone who doesn't really place AI risk as their top priority but who also doesn't completely ignore it like some critics, or opponents, of LW might. Notably I've encountered some folks who had strong personal opinions one way or another but refrained from writing them in a public, or even pseudo-anonymous, manner. There also appears to be a large group of lurkers or once-in-a-blue-moon posters who nonetheless have some views of the community and might benefit from someone willing to take the risk to do a write-up. First off, addressing the popular critiques and praises: There has definitely been some evaporative cooling of the community in the past decade or so. Some of the most insightful members have gone on to do bigger things, and the average quality of new posts is somewhat less than where it was a decade ago. Or so far as I can tell via the archives. This isn't very surprising as this is the common trajectory of every community that rapidly grows in size. It would have taken a super-human effort to retain the same level of quality going from 100 to 1000 users, let alone from 1000 to 10000, and so on. So I don't think that would have been a fair expectation to place on the moderators, or anyone else involved, of a decade ago. On the flip side, there is a larger cross-section of society represented in the 2022 userbase, And there has been a correspondent softening of the hard edges that may have been off putting to some a decade ago. Relatedly, the proportion of really bizarre or challenging writing has gone down, for better and for worse. For example, there definitely does appear to be some unique benefit from a community with lots of oddballs with jarring writing styles, but the downside is obvious because nobody really desires to have their norms be cons
It is interesting that somehow the LLMs had accurate knowledge of obscure facts like that yet was unable to say the exact source… but isnt the most obvious place "Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America: Volume 6 (Bilateral treaties, 1776-1949: Canada-Czechoslovakia)" the one to check first? (for anyone that had to dig it up manually)
Which other places could be more comprehensive or authoritative?