Sample solution: We could expand the scale of the existing system. Add multiple discussion tiers; increase the karma requirement to post to Main, add a lower karma requirement to comment in Main, add a yet lower karma requirement to vote in Main. Do the same thing to Discussion, with lower limits. Add multiple tiers of discussion, where users have to graduate at each level to move up.
Most of your suggestions have been made before, and are probably on some wish list. How do you get any of it done on zero budget is the issue. So the real question is how to get the necessary budget for the site development, not which features should be implemented.
I know nothing of Less Wrong’s maintenance approach—it seems to be maintained by a small handful of very busy people—but it would seriously surprise me if this community, disproportionately composed of programmers as it is, couldn’t come up with the code to implement any solution the administrators found suitable.
This surprise has been repeatedly expressed, and volunteers raised their hands, but almost nothing came out of it. As far as I know, Trike does a small amount of code maintenance and an occasional simple feature, that’s it.
I wonder, does it have an API? Though, if it doesn’t, I suppose someone could just as easily add one.
That said, I’ll admit it: I’m perfectly capable of writing and/or extending the Lesswrong codebase, but I’m not going to. At least, not right now.
Does the site need improvements? Lesswrong seems worth helping, but it also appears to me that things are working just fine right now. Is there reason to think this is incorrect?
You could generalize this to “Become reddit (i.e. anyone can make a new subreddit/discussion-section), and allow mods to set karma levels for joining/voting/commenting/submitting on a per-subreddit basis”.
Yes, if only we had a general theory of Outside Context Problems.
Sample solution: We could expand the scale of the existing system. Add multiple discussion tiers; increase the karma requirement to post to Main, add a lower karma requirement to comment in Main, add a yet lower karma requirement to vote in Main. Do the same thing to Discussion, with lower limits. Add multiple tiers of discussion, where users have to graduate at each level to move up.
[Edited for tone]
Most of your suggestions have been made before, and are probably on some wish list. How do you get any of it done on zero budget is the issue. So the real question is how to get the necessary budget for the site development, not which features should be implemented.
I know nothing of Less Wrong’s maintenance approach—it seems to be maintained by a small handful of very busy people—but it would seriously surprise me if this community, disproportionately composed of programmers as it is, couldn’t come up with the code to implement any solution the administrators found suitable.
This surprise has been repeatedly expressed, and volunteers raised their hands, but almost nothing came out of it. As far as I know, Trike does a small amount of code maintenance and an occasional simple feature, that’s it.
I wonder, does it have an API? Though, if it doesn’t, I suppose someone could just as easily add one.
That said, I’ll admit it: I’m perfectly capable of writing and/or extending the Lesswrong codebase, but I’m not going to. At least, not right now.
Does the site need improvements? Lesswrong seems worth helping, but it also appears to me that things are working just fine right now. Is there reason to think this is incorrect?
You could generalize this to “Become reddit (i.e. anyone can make a new subreddit/discussion-section), and allow mods to set karma levels for joining/voting/commenting/submitting on a per-subreddit basis”.
I’d hesitate to go quite that far, as that seems more likely to splinter the community than anything else.