Re: fragmentation of interests. Posts on LessWrong seem to easily slide into a number of clear categories (epistemic rationality, fighting akrasia, decision theory math, social events...) It would be great if the site was organized to group posts together, so that if I don’t know math and just want to follow the best self-help tips it would be easy to do so.
This can work very well with the “one post a week” idea, which I’m in favor of. Consistent schedule + high quality is what keeps people coming back. That’s why so many webcomics religiously stick to their posting schedule (like XKCD’s M-W-F). We can have a post every X days in each of 3-4 basic categories, so I’ll know that one Wednesday is AI-post day, the next Saturday is akrasia post day, the next Wednesday is social post day etc.
The main challenge would be getting enough good posts, two thoughts on that:
If the good writers contribute enough stuff upfront it can create a good buffer that will allow the editors to plan the best schedule, i.e. how many days between posts can be kept consistently.
I think a lot of people are already intimidated about posting given the very high standards. If quality is a concern more than quantity, I don’t think that people with something important to say will be too discouraged by having to submit to moderation. A lot of us have our own blogs, tumblrs, Facebooks etc. Since I know that LW has a much wider reach than my own blog, I wouldn’t mind trying to “win the week” on LW first, and posting on my platform as a fallback if I don’t make it.
Waiting for moderation on what you wrote requires delaying gratification, which is very hard… but not something that a real rationalist would have trouble overcoming, no? ;-)
Re: fragmentation of interests. Posts on LessWrong seem to easily slide into a number of clear categories (epistemic rationality, fighting akrasia, decision theory math, social events...) It would be great if the site was organized to group posts together, so that if I don’t know math and just want to follow the best self-help tips it would be easy to do so.
This can work very well with the “one post a week” idea, which I’m in favor of. Consistent schedule + high quality is what keeps people coming back. That’s why so many webcomics religiously stick to their posting schedule (like XKCD’s M-W-F). We can have a post every X days in each of 3-4 basic categories, so I’ll know that one Wednesday is AI-post day, the next Saturday is akrasia post day, the next Wednesday is social post day etc.
The main challenge would be getting enough good posts, two thoughts on that:
If the good writers contribute enough stuff upfront it can create a good buffer that will allow the editors to plan the best schedule, i.e. how many days between posts can be kept consistently.
I think a lot of people are already intimidated about posting given the very high standards. If quality is a concern more than quantity, I don’t think that people with something important to say will be too discouraged by having to submit to moderation. A lot of us have our own blogs, tumblrs, Facebooks etc. Since I know that LW has a much wider reach than my own blog, I wouldn’t mind trying to “win the week” on LW first, and posting on my platform as a fallback if I don’t make it.
Waiting for moderation on what you wrote requires delaying gratification, which is very hard… but not something that a real rationalist would have trouble overcoming, no? ;-)