I agree. Low barriers to entry (and utterly generic discussions, like on which movies to watch) seem to have lowered the quality. I often find myself skimming discussions for names I recognize, and just read their comments—ironic, given that once upon a time the anti-kibitzer seemed pressing!
Lest this been seen as unwarranted arrogance: there are many values of p in [0,1] such that I would run a p risk of getting personally banned in return for removing the bottom p of the comments. I often write out a comment and delete it, because I think that, while above the standard of the adjacent comments, it is below what I think the minimal bar should be. Merely saying new, true things about the topic matter is not enough!
The Sequence Re-Runs seem to have had little participation, which is disappointing—I had great hope for those.
The Sequence Re-Runs seem to have had little participation, which is disappointing—I had great hope for those.
As someone who is rereading the sequences I think I have a data point as to why. First of all, the “one post a day” is very difficult for me to do. I don’t have time to digest a LW post every day, especially if I’ve got an exam coming up or something. Secondly, I joined the site after the effort started, so I would have had to catch up anyway. Thirdly, ideally I’d like to read at a faster average rate than one per day. But this hasn’t happened at all, my rate has actually been rather slower, which is kind of depressing.
I’ve actually been running a LW sequence liveblog, mostly for my own benefit during the digestive process. See here. I find myself wondering whether others will join me in the liveblogging business sooner or later. I find it a good way to enforce actually thinking about what I am reading.
What I did personally was read through them through relatively quickly. I might not have understood it at the same level of depth but if something is related to something in the sequences then I’ll know and know where I can find the information if there’s anything I’ve forgotten.
I read them, but engaging in discussion seems difficult. Am I just supposed to pretend all of the interesting comments below don’t exist and risk repeating something stupid on the Repeat post? Or should I be trying to get involved in a years-old discussion on the actual article? Sadly, this is something that has a sort of activation energy: if enough people were discussing the sequence repeats, I would discuss them too.
The Sequence Re-Runs seem to have had little participation, which is disappointing—I had great hope for those.
Perhaps we could save users one click by putting the summary of the article on the top of the main page with links “read the article” and “discuss the article” below. Sometimes saving users one click increases the traffic significantly.
The Sequence Re-Runs seem to have had little participation, which is disappointing—I had great hope for those.
Organizing reading the squence into classes of people (think Metaethics Class of 2012) that commit to reading them and debating them and then answer a quizz about seems more likely to get participation.
I agree. Low barriers to entry (and utterly generic discussions, like on which movies to watch) seem to have lowered the quality. I often find myself skimming discussions for names I recognize, and just read their comments—ironic, given that once upon a time the anti-kibitzer seemed pressing!
Lest this been seen as unwarranted arrogance: there are many values of p in [0,1] such that I would run a p risk of getting personally banned in return for removing the bottom p of the comments. I often write out a comment and delete it, because I think that, while above the standard of the adjacent comments, it is below what I think the minimal bar should be. Merely saying new, true things about the topic matter is not enough!
The Sequence Re-Runs seem to have had little participation, which is disappointing—I had great hope for those.
As someone who is rereading the sequences I think I have a data point as to why. First of all, the “one post a day” is very difficult for me to do. I don’t have time to digest a LW post every day, especially if I’ve got an exam coming up or something. Secondly, I joined the site after the effort started, so I would have had to catch up anyway. Thirdly, ideally I’d like to read at a faster average rate than one per day. But this hasn’t happened at all, my rate has actually been rather slower, which is kind of depressing.
I’ve actually been running a LW sequence liveblog, mostly for my own benefit during the digestive process. See here. I find myself wondering whether others will join me in the liveblogging business sooner or later. I find it a good way to enforce actually thinking about what I am reading.
What I did personally was read through them through relatively quickly. I might not have understood it at the same level of depth but if something is related to something in the sequences then I’ll know and know where I can find the information if there’s anything I’ve forgotten.
I read them, but engaging in discussion seems difficult. Am I just supposed to pretend all of the interesting comments below don’t exist and risk repeating something stupid on the Repeat post? Or should I be trying to get involved in a years-old discussion on the actual article? Sadly, this is something that has a sort of activation energy: if enough people were discussing the sequence repeats, I would discuss them too.
Perhaps we could save users one click by putting the summary of the article on the top of the main page with links “read the article” and “discuss the article” below. Sometimes saving users one click increases the traffic significantly.
Organizing reading the squence into classes of people (think Metaethics Class of 2012) that commit to reading them and debating them and then answer a quizz about seems more likely to get participation.
I still read them and usually remember to vote them up for MinibearRex bothering to post them, and comment if I have something to say.