While it is helpful to talk about what LWiki is not, we will need to give some guidelines as to what is suitable. Translating the consensus that I hear between Anna, ciphergoth, and myself on the purposes of LWiki, here are practical tips on what articles should be made:
Any non-standard word, acronym, phrase, or concept used on OB or LW. Anything someone with some background in math, psychology, economics, or philosophy would not recognize. I am currently classifying these things as “Jargon”.
A standard topic that is of particular importance to OB/LW. These articles should contain a short description (think dictionary, not encyclopedia entry), reference primarily on more widely-known resources such as Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and provide other references that are of interest to our community, but not suitable for adding to Wikipedia.
Study guides on a particular topic. Personally, I’d like to see the Mega-Cluster broken up into digestible chunks.
Maybe at some point, articles on applied controversies like Annoyance mentioned can be developed, but I think it’s important to develop a strong rationality reference first.
I like Anna’s suggestion of including open questions or possible points of investigation, but I think that would be better suited to a section in the article it is related to. Depending on how useful that turns out to be, we could set up an Open Question Portal.
Are there better ways to structure this or categories left out?
So, badger (or others), you’d rather I refrain from building a questions-first alternative index into the wiki, that has a link for each question, and that collects under that question both a concise summary of progress to date (dictionary-style, with collected links to relevant OB/LW articles and to some other background sources) and of gaps in our current analysis?
I was hoping the questions-list could function as an entry point for study guides for newcomers who want to answer particular questions, as well as for readers or prospective authors wanting to get a birds-eye view and see where the gaps are. (The links off the questions-list would include the detailed open problems within the entry on that particular question/topic, as you suggest.)
But whether a questions-based index into OB/LW is or isn’t allowed on the wiki, it would be nice to know, so that I know whether to write it. My inclination is to just go ahead and then see if people like it, but I’m not sure if ciphergoth is trying to veto that in his capacity as admin, or if there’s been enough opposition that I should heed that.
I think the main open question page is useful. However, reading over the questions there, they seem more like fundamental questions in rationality rather than the very specific issues to investigate I thought they would be. On that basis, I think that page could be productively developed as a beginner’s starting point.
I’d like to stay away from making pages corresponding directly to those questions though. “What specific biases or error patterns interfere with accurate belief-formation?” should just be called “Cognitive Biases”, and “What practical techniques can improve the accuracy of individuals’ beliefs?” should be “Individual Bias Reduction”. Then the question on the beginner’s page can just link to the topic or study guide.
The study guide pages can be more conversational listing references like the bias page you made, and I would love to see more pages developed like that. We will need to make a decision about how study guides should be integrated into the whole structure. I considered doing them as subpages, but it probably would be best to do everything as “topic study guide”.
If there are very specific open questions, then I think they should go in an open question section on the main topic article.
I’d like to stay away from making pages corresponding directly to those questions though. “What specific biases or error patterns interfere with accurate belief-formation?” should just be called “Cognitive Biases”.
Why? Also, are you just suggesting different titles, or are you suggesting some larger change in the content I’d been imagining? I’d been picturing a starting-point page with general open questions, as noted, linking to combined {study guide / open questions} pages for each topic, that summarize progress to date (mainly by a list of relevant OB/LW articles and other resources, with a sentence of so description of how each fits into the topic) and remaining very specific issues to investigate.
I’m mostly concerned about conventions and broad structure, not content, at this point. I agree entirely with the content you have produced (at least as a rough draft, as you acknowledge). Content can be refined as we go, but I feel it’s important to settle questions about overall structure early on.
For any particular topic, I’d like to see two paired articles:
“topic name” with a short description, references to Wikipedia, standard sources, and a straight list of related OB/LW articles, written in NPOV
“topic name study guide” with content like what you have done, written in a conversational tone
This might seem like a bikeshed argument, but short names make it easier to search for a topic or link to it from memory. I also like the explicit link between the reference and teaching articles if reasonable pairs exist.
Is there another short description that would work better than “study guide”? I can think of “outline”, just “guide”, “syllabus”, “open questions”, “questions”.
Does anyone else want to chime in on this? Ciphergoth?
I’m still unconvinced of the merits of the whole plan, but several people seem interested and I’d be delighted to learn that I’m mistaken and good will come of it, so I’m just standing back and seeing what gets built.
I don’t mind using short titles; your point about easy searching and linking makes sense I think.
I don’t want the thing I was envisioning to be called a “study guide”, though. Because I want the individual “study guide”-like pages to serve not only as a guide for newcomers but also as a summary of what we’ve produced so far as a community, and where the gaps in our analysis are. Your other suggestions don’t really unite the purposes either. We could just do e.g. “Heuristics and biases, conversational style”, but that doesn’t indicate purpose the way “study guide” does and I don’t much like the way it sounds. Maybe it would help if I understood what purpose or use-case you have in mind for the NPOV style articles, as a contrast class.
Yeah, I understand that. Is there a term you think would be fitting? “guide” is the best term I can think of. It also wouldn’t have to be just two types of articles. We could have “topic”, “topic study guide”, and “topic open questions” or something similar. I think “open questions” still sounds a little awkward, but that’s just quibbling if we can’t think of anything better.
While it is helpful to talk about what LWiki is not, we will need to give some guidelines as to what is suitable. Translating the consensus that I hear between Anna, ciphergoth, and myself on the purposes of LWiki, here are practical tips on what articles should be made:
Any non-standard word, acronym, phrase, or concept used on OB or LW. Anything someone with some background in math, psychology, economics, or philosophy would not recognize. I am currently classifying these things as “Jargon”.
A standard topic that is of particular importance to OB/LW. These articles should contain a short description (think dictionary, not encyclopedia entry), reference primarily on more widely-known resources such as Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and provide other references that are of interest to our community, but not suitable for adding to Wikipedia.
Study guides on a particular topic. Personally, I’d like to see the Mega-Cluster broken up into digestible chunks.
Maybe at some point, articles on applied controversies like Annoyance mentioned can be developed, but I think it’s important to develop a strong rationality reference first.
I like Anna’s suggestion of including open questions or possible points of investigation, but I think that would be better suited to a section in the article it is related to. Depending on how useful that turns out to be, we could set up an Open Question Portal.
Are there better ways to structure this or categories left out?
So, badger (or others), you’d rather I refrain from building a questions-first alternative index into the wiki, that has a link for each question, and that collects under that question both a concise summary of progress to date (dictionary-style, with collected links to relevant OB/LW articles and to some other background sources) and of gaps in our current analysis?
I was hoping the questions-list could function as an entry point for study guides for newcomers who want to answer particular questions, as well as for readers or prospective authors wanting to get a birds-eye view and see where the gaps are. (The links off the questions-list would include the detailed open problems within the entry on that particular question/topic, as you suggest.)
But whether a questions-based index into OB/LW is or isn’t allowed on the wiki, it would be nice to know, so that I know whether to write it. My inclination is to just go ahead and then see if people like it, but I’m not sure if ciphergoth is trying to veto that in his capacity as admin, or if there’s been enough opposition that I should heed that.
For what it’s worth, I like your ideas.
It seems to me that much of the value of a wiki should be a distillation and structured introduction to the material.
Here are my thoughts on the open question topic:
I think the main open question page is useful. However, reading over the questions there, they seem more like fundamental questions in rationality rather than the very specific issues to investigate I thought they would be. On that basis, I think that page could be productively developed as a beginner’s starting point.
I’d like to stay away from making pages corresponding directly to those questions though. “What specific biases or error patterns interfere with accurate belief-formation?” should just be called “Cognitive Biases”, and “What practical techniques can improve the accuracy of individuals’ beliefs?” should be “Individual Bias Reduction”. Then the question on the beginner’s page can just link to the topic or study guide.
The study guide pages can be more conversational listing references like the bias page you made, and I would love to see more pages developed like that. We will need to make a decision about how study guides should be integrated into the whole structure. I considered doing them as subpages, but it probably would be best to do everything as “topic study guide”.
If there are very specific open questions, then I think they should go in an open question section on the main topic article.
Why? Also, are you just suggesting different titles, or are you suggesting some larger change in the content I’d been imagining? I’d been picturing a starting-point page with general open questions, as noted, linking to combined {study guide / open questions} pages for each topic, that summarize progress to date (mainly by a list of relevant OB/LW articles and other resources, with a sentence of so description of how each fits into the topic) and remaining very specific issues to investigate.
I’m mostly concerned about conventions and broad structure, not content, at this point. I agree entirely with the content you have produced (at least as a rough draft, as you acknowledge). Content can be refined as we go, but I feel it’s important to settle questions about overall structure early on.
For any particular topic, I’d like to see two paired articles:
“topic name” with a short description, references to Wikipedia, standard sources, and a straight list of related OB/LW articles, written in NPOV
“topic name study guide” with content like what you have done, written in a conversational tone
This might seem like a bikeshed argument, but short names make it easier to search for a topic or link to it from memory. I also like the explicit link between the reference and teaching articles if reasonable pairs exist.
Is there another short description that would work better than “study guide”? I can think of “outline”, just “guide”, “syllabus”, “open questions”, “questions”.
Does anyone else want to chime in on this? Ciphergoth?
I’m still unconvinced of the merits of the whole plan, but several people seem interested and I’d be delighted to learn that I’m mistaken and good will come of it, so I’m just standing back and seeing what gets built.
I don’t mind using short titles; your point about easy searching and linking makes sense I think.
I don’t want the thing I was envisioning to be called a “study guide”, though. Because I want the individual “study guide”-like pages to serve not only as a guide for newcomers but also as a summary of what we’ve produced so far as a community, and where the gaps in our analysis are. Your other suggestions don’t really unite the purposes either. We could just do e.g. “Heuristics and biases, conversational style”, but that doesn’t indicate purpose the way “study guide” does and I don’t much like the way it sounds. Maybe it would help if I understood what purpose or use-case you have in mind for the NPOV style articles, as a contrast class.
Yeah, I understand that. Is there a term you think would be fitting? “guide” is the best term I can think of. It also wouldn’t have to be just two types of articles. We could have “topic”, “topic study guide”, and “topic open questions” or something similar. I think “open questions” still sounds a little awkward, but that’s just quibbling if we can’t think of anything better.