I will read and comment every frontpage post on LW for the rest of November (starting today the 11th). The constraints for time are that I need to comment on everything posted and made to frontpage in the day (before midnight CET) before 2am CET the next day. That leaves me some time to read the late night (for me) posts.
I notice myself being excited about this general idea but wary of this implementation: this might cause people to post more, which might rapidly create a situation where you don’t actually have the bandwidth to comment on literally everything, and the perfect might become the enemy of the good.
It might be safer to commit to commenting on N posts per day (maybe always commenting on the post with the least comments from the past day/week/month, or something).
Thanks for the feedback and the worries! I actually already added caveats to my original challenge, including giving me a bit more time to comment. This is easier for me to implement than a policy about the posts with the least comments or karma, because these things change. And I also like the challenge of reading beyond what I would usually read on LW.
On the effect of my challenge, I somehow doubt that just having me comment more will make everyone post more. That being said, there are indeed more posts these last few days than for many previous days. I leave myself some margin to not comment on everything if there are 30+ frontpage posts per day, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
I’m adding two three caveats, to make this both useful and feasible:
I don’t have to answer questions, because this is one context where I think that feedback without a point to make is not really valuable.
I don’t have to comment on Covid tagged posts, because I don’t want to.
I don’t have to comment on all posts by 2am CET, notably because some big complex posts can be posted really close to midnight CET, and that’s really too hard. So I should just read and comment all post for a given day before 11pm59 the next day.
Worth noting, you can comment on questions without answering them (the site treats them differently). I’ve found that most question posts contain enough information that can be meaningful responded to without attempting to answer the question
Logging my failures, which might help in understand what is feasible and unfeasible in this challenge:
1st day (11th November): Failed to comment on The Darwin Game—Rounds 1 to 2, which is cool but I’m not following the game, so I have nothing to say about it.
3rd day (13th November): Failed to comment on A framework for thinking about single predictions, because I’m really not into forecasting, and don’t know enough to provide any kind of constructive feedback.
8th day (18th November): Failed to comment on Solomonoff Induction and Sleeping Beauty because I don’t have the background and the post doesn’t reexplain the main points necessary for me to get it, and failed to comment on Propinquity Cities So Far because I could not understand half the things I was reading—to much economics for my current level.
13th day to 17th day (23rd November to 27th November): Complete failure. I did comment some posts, but there is not a single day in this interval where I commented every post. Oops.
20th day (30th November): Half a failure. Missed 3⁄4 posts.
My comment challenge:
I will read and comment every frontpage post on LW for the rest of November (starting today the 11th). The constraints for time are that I need to comment on everything posted and made to frontpage in the day (before midnight CET) before 2am CET the next day. That leaves me some time to read the late night (for me) posts.
I notice myself being excited about this general idea but wary of this implementation: this might cause people to post more, which might rapidly create a situation where you don’t actually have the bandwidth to comment on literally everything, and the perfect might become the enemy of the good.
It might be safer to commit to commenting on N posts per day (maybe always commenting on the post with the least comments from the past day/week/month, or something).
Thanks for the feedback and the worries! I actually already added caveats to my original challenge, including giving me a bit more time to comment. This is easier for me to implement than a policy about the posts with the least comments or karma, because these things change. And I also like the challenge of reading beyond what I would usually read on LW.
On the effect of my challenge, I somehow doubt that just having me comment more will make everyone post more. That being said, there are indeed more posts these last few days than for many previous days. I leave myself some margin to not comment on everything if there are 30+ frontpage posts per day, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
I’m adding
twothree caveats, to make this both useful and feasible:I don’t have to answer questions, because this is one context where I think that feedback without a point to make is not really valuable.
I don’t have to comment on Covid tagged posts, because I don’t want to.
I don’t have to comment on all posts by 2am CET, notably because some big complex posts can be posted really close to midnight CET, and that’s really too hard. So I should just read and comment all post for a given day before 11pm59 the next day.
Worth noting, you can comment on questions without answering them (the site treats them differently). I’ve found that most question posts contain enough information that can be meaningful responded to without attempting to answer the question
True. I think I’ll still keep questions as optional, because I do think that feedback without an answer is less useful than for regular posts.
Logging my failures, which might help in understand what is feasible and unfeasible in this challenge:
1st day (11th November): Failed to comment on The Darwin Game—Rounds 1 to 2, which is cool but I’m not following the game, so I have nothing to say about it.
3rd day (13th November): Failed to comment on A framework for thinking about single predictions, because I’m really not into forecasting, and don’t know enough to provide any kind of constructive feedback.
4th day (14th November): Failed to comment on Specialized Labor and Counterfactual Compensation because it’s a complex subject in which I know almost nothing about and which doesn’t interests me.
8th day (18th November): Failed to comment on Solomonoff Induction and Sleeping Beauty because I don’t have the background and the post doesn’t reexplain the main points necessary for me to get it, and failed to comment on Propinquity Cities So Far because I could not understand half the things I was reading—to much economics for my current level.
10th day (20th November): Failed to comment on Simpson’s paradox and the tyranny of strata because I didn’t know the paradox well enough to judge this post. One day late for commenting on Inner Alignment in Salt-Starved Rats because I was tired and busy.
12th day (22nd November): Failed to comment on It’s not economically inefficient for a UBI to reduce recipient’s employment because I had nothing relevant to add to the discussion, and it seemed like the kind of post where comments without content are a negative.
13th day to 17th day (23rd November to 27th November): Complete failure. I did comment some posts, but there is not a single day in this interval where I commented every post. Oops.
20th day (30th November): Half a failure. Missed 3⁄4 posts.