I’m sorry for discouraging you. I think writing the posts you described is a great idea. I hope that if you write them, people who’ve read this will be more inclined to upvote them if they like them, given increased awareness of the incentives problem I described.
Another option is to pursue multiple angles of attack in parallel. My angle requires a programmer or two to volunteer their time (may as well contact Scott now if you’re interested!); your angle requires people who have ideas to write them up. My guess is that these requirements don’t funge against each other very much. Plus, even if the community ultimately decides to go elsewhere, I’m sure your ideas will be welcomed in that new place if you just post whatever you were going to post to LW there, and that will be a valuable kickstart.
I also agree that having people repeatedly say “LW is dying” can easily become a self-fulling prophecy. Even if LW is no longer a check-once-a-day kind of place, it can still be a perfectly fine check-once-a-week kind of place. I probably should have been more careful in my phrasing.
I’m sorry for discouraging you. I think writing the posts you described is a great idea. I hope that if you write them, people who’ve read this will be more inclined to upvote them if they like them, given increased awareness of the incentives problem I described.
Another option is to pursue multiple angles of attack in parallel. My angle requires a programmer or two to volunteer their time (may as well contact Scott now if you’re interested!); your angle requires people who have ideas to write them up. My guess is that these requirements don’t funge against each other very much. Plus, even if the community ultimately decides to go elsewhere, I’m sure your ideas will be welcomed in that new place if you just post whatever you were going to post to LW there, and that will be a valuable kickstart.
I also agree that having people repeatedly say “LW is dying” can easily become a self-fulling prophecy. Even if LW is no longer a check-once-a-day kind of place, it can still be a perfectly fine check-once-a-week kind of place. I probably should have been more careful in my phrasing.
IAWYC.