I think it would be interesting and productive to discuss politics in this group.
But I’m not so enamoured of the technical set up for serious discussion. Even a mailing list seems superior. Can anyone point to productive discussions on difficult topics that used the current site/format?
For whatever reason, after a few nested levels, I feel an aversion to taking the discussion deeper in ways that I didn’t on mailing lists or even usenet. And maybe I’ve missed them, but I haven’t seen extended productive conversations here.
I like nested too. I’m saying I don’t see the conversations get nested enough, and think some of the reason is the list format.
For serious conceptual differences it takes multiple go arounds for people to even begin to identify the issue between them. I haven’t seen that happen much here. I think some of the reason is the list format.
I don’t find myself following any discussion or article past a couple of weeks. I don’t see others doing it either. Again, how many sustained discussions have you seen that have made any real progress on a serious difference of opinion?
I thought you were saying that nested was the problem. What sort of list format are you referring to?
As for debate causing an actual change of opinion, it’s happened once to me on a very high level, and a few other times for single issues. I’ve changed people’s mind on single issues before as well(usually by introducing new evidence), though not generally ones where they’ve held strong opinions and a decent knowledge base going in. That’s still not a lot given how much time I’ve spent on it, but it’s nonzero.
I think the sustained level of effort is important. Some things can be solved with 3 go arounds. Some things take a dozen. If the list just isn’t conducive to a dozen, you just don’t solve those issues.
As for an alternative, it seems that the fancy new web still hasn’t risen to the level of Usenet, where you could sort and filter by both thread and time. Here, you have to manually search by both, except for the direct replies to your posts (which is an admitted improvement over most web sites).
Usenet also had contextual regexp searches, targeting searches by field of the message, and then ranking posts to view based on those results. Wouldn’t it be nice to at least be able to follow the posts of particular people?
Anyway, I’ve griped about the de evolution of online discussion technology with the advent of browsing technology before.
I’ve been advocating for trn, but making a version of it for the web would apparently involve a large quantity of boring programming that no one wants to do.
Sounds better to me too. Hard to imagine that no web weenie has gotten around to it yet.
If not, it brings up another related topic—how to collaborate more effectively to actually produce things.
Is the current code available? Tweaking the current system could probably go far. Looking at the current stuff, I see a lot of infrastructure must already be there. There’s Friends, which provides the infrastructure for Ignore. There’s personal settings. There are article ratings. Adding at least personalized discussion level sorting and filtering. Personalized watch list would be nice too.
I think it would be interesting and productive to discuss politics in this group.
But I’m not so enamoured of the technical set up for serious discussion. Even a mailing list seems superior. Can anyone point to productive discussions on difficult topics that used the current site/format?
For whatever reason, after a few nested levels, I feel an aversion to taking the discussion deeper in ways that I didn’t on mailing lists or even usenet. And maybe I’ve missed them, but I haven’t seen extended productive conversations here.
I’m actually a fan of nested comments for debate, because it allows side arguments to take place without ruining the main arguments.
I like nested too. I’m saying I don’t see the conversations get nested enough, and think some of the reason is the list format.
For serious conceptual differences it takes multiple go arounds for people to even begin to identify the issue between them. I haven’t seen that happen much here. I think some of the reason is the list format.
I don’t find myself following any discussion or article past a couple of weeks. I don’t see others doing it either. Again, how many sustained discussions have you seen that have made any real progress on a serious difference of opinion?
I thought you were saying that nested was the problem. What sort of list format are you referring to?
As for debate causing an actual change of opinion, it’s happened once to me on a very high level, and a few other times for single issues. I’ve changed people’s mind on single issues before as well(usually by introducing new evidence), though not generally ones where they’ve held strong opinions and a decent knowledge base going in. That’s still not a lot given how much time I’ve spent on it, but it’s nonzero.
I think the sustained level of effort is important. Some things can be solved with 3 go arounds. Some things take a dozen. If the list just isn’t conducive to a dozen, you just don’t solve those issues.
As for an alternative, it seems that the fancy new web still hasn’t risen to the level of Usenet, where you could sort and filter by both thread and time. Here, you have to manually search by both, except for the direct replies to your posts (which is an admitted improvement over most web sites).
Usenet also had contextual regexp searches, targeting searches by field of the message, and then ranking posts to view based on those results. Wouldn’t it be nice to at least be able to follow the posts of particular people?
Anyway, I’ve griped about the de evolution of online discussion technology with the advent of browsing technology before.
I’ve been advocating for trn, but making a version of it for the web would apparently involve a large quantity of boring programming that no one wants to do.
Sounds better to me too. Hard to imagine that no web weenie has gotten around to it yet.
If not, it brings up another related topic—how to collaborate more effectively to actually produce things.
Is the current code available? Tweaking the current system could probably go far. Looking at the current stuff, I see a lot of infrastructure must already be there. There’s Friends, which provides the infrastructure for Ignore. There’s personal settings. There are article ratings. Adding at least personalized discussion level sorting and filtering. Personalized watch list would be nice too.
Here’s the code.
I meant the current code for the list, not the new trn code.
lesswrong.com’s code is on GitHub.
Here’s the “Hacking” document.
Edit: atucker apparently made a VirtualBox VM image to simplify getting LW running on your own machine.
That would be nice, yes. Hell, I’d be happy if they just got a lot less fixed-width, so comments could nest deeper without breaking.