1) I realize that this may be some work, but maybe “down” votes could be more specific. Some categories I’ve seen have been:
This material has already been explained by another LessWrong post or something somewhere else on the internet.
This material is not relevant to LesserWrong
This comment may be accurate, but it is phrased as quite mean-spirited.
I would assume that if there are a few things you are trying to discourage, having the ability for people to label those things would be a good step to measuring and minimizing them.
2) One massive challenge I’ve faced with LessWrong is that I have a very difficult time figuring out if something has been claimed already, and if I was supposed to know this. I spend a lot of time trying to figure this question out; and often the answer is unclear. In other cases I have written something but people would complain that it’s been stated elsewhere. Even EY’s writing alone is quite long, and the expectation that all posters be familiar with all of it seems quite tough. If this were the case, I imagine it could be nice to make this a lot more obvious (like having “common knowledge” sections of the site to familiarize yourself with before posting).
3) Overall, I’m really happy to see posts like this and to see this project gaining traction. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the combined effort of those improving LesserWrong can outdo much of the cruft, trolls, and negative forces that have appeared. Great job so far.
4) Not sure exactly if this is what you mean, but I could imagine an “archipelago” model leading to something like Reddit, with different forums for different subjects that could create different subcommunities. Right now LesserWrong seems to operate with one main channel. This may work for now, but splitting it up into topics seems like the obvious way to expand to me. For one, this would mean that people shouldn’t complain as much about things not fitting anywhere on LessWrong; it should be easy enough to simply avoid certain topics.
#1 is something we’ve been thinking about awhile, although implementing it in a way manner with a clear, clear UI is a fair bit of work so it’s not planned for near-term.
If this were the case, I imagine it could be nice to make this a lot more obvious (like having “common knowledge” sections of the site to familiarize yourself with before posting).
We’re working on distill things down further, but this is roughly the intent of the library page (with R:AZ and Codex being the most important and the curated sequences being next most important). This is certainly a lot of content. The recent Canon/Peer Review discussion may hopefully result in distilling these things further down, but when all is said and done there’s just a lot of content.
I think even if we distilled things further you’d still run into people criticizing you for repeating something, so I think the best approach there is to start with lower key posts (perhaps using a Shortform Feed to hash out the idea) before investing a lot of time into an effortpost.
(Oftentimes, new angles on old ideas are useful anyhow, but it’s still helpful to know what came before so you know how to cover it differently)
[Downvote categories] is something we’ve been thinking about awhile, although implementing it in a way manner with a clear, clear UI is a fair bit of work so it’s not planned for near-term.
Take a look at how lobste.rs does this.
(Actually, a lot of the functionality and UI stuff mentioned here, and in your recent thread, is something I’ve worked on when tinkering with my fork of lobste.rs, and I think there are a good few lessons / transferable design work / etc. there—email me if you’re interested in discussing it.)
Some quick thoughts:
1) I realize that this may be some work, but maybe “down” votes could be more specific. Some categories I’ve seen have been:
This material has already been explained by another LessWrong post or something somewhere else on the internet.
This material is not relevant to LesserWrong
This comment may be accurate, but it is phrased as quite mean-spirited.
I would assume that if there are a few things you are trying to discourage, having the ability for people to label those things would be a good step to measuring and minimizing them.
2) One massive challenge I’ve faced with LessWrong is that I have a very difficult time figuring out if something has been claimed already, and if I was supposed to know this. I spend a lot of time trying to figure this question out; and often the answer is unclear. In other cases I have written something but people would complain that it’s been stated elsewhere. Even EY’s writing alone is quite long, and the expectation that all posters be familiar with all of it seems quite tough. If this were the case, I imagine it could be nice to make this a lot more obvious (like having “common knowledge” sections of the site to familiarize yourself with before posting).
3) Overall, I’m really happy to see posts like this and to see this project gaining traction. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the combined effort of those improving LesserWrong can outdo much of the cruft, trolls, and negative forces that have appeared. Great job so far.
4) Not sure exactly if this is what you mean, but I could imagine an “archipelago” model leading to something like Reddit, with different forums for different subjects that could create different subcommunities. Right now LesserWrong seems to operate with one main channel. This may work for now, but splitting it up into topics seems like the obvious way to expand to me. For one, this would mean that people shouldn’t complain as much about things not fitting anywhere on LessWrong; it should be easy enough to simply avoid certain topics.
Thanks! Re: #4, I think that gets explored a bit in this thread:
https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/XmA3u9c3AYFLmQ7tZ/mapping-the-archipelago#Wuc9dZy92jM9QM9gK
#1 is something we’ve been thinking about awhile, although implementing it in a way manner with a clear, clear UI is a fair bit of work so it’s not planned for near-term.
We’re working on distill things down further, but this is roughly the intent of the library page (with R:AZ and Codex being the most important and the curated sequences being next most important). This is certainly a lot of content. The recent Canon/Peer Review discussion may hopefully result in distilling these things further down, but when all is said and done there’s just a lot of content.
I think even if we distilled things further you’d still run into people criticizing you for repeating something, so I think the best approach there is to start with lower key posts (perhaps using a Shortform Feed to hash out the idea) before investing a lot of time into an effortpost.
(Oftentimes, new angles on old ideas are useful anyhow, but it’s still helpful to know what came before so you know how to cover it differently)
Take a look at how lobste.rs does this.
(Actually, a lot of the functionality and UI stuff mentioned here, and in your recent thread, is something I’ve worked on when tinkering with my fork of lobste.rs, and I think there are a good few lessons / transferable design work / etc. there—email me if you’re interested in discussing it.)