I am generally opposed to methods that propose to save LW by reducing activity instead of by increasing activity. My reasons for not writing more posts for LW have mostly to do with my current life situation and lack of unallocated time, which may or may not change in the near future. It may be worth discussing ways to make writing posts for Main (or discussion or wherever we’d like to target) easier or more fun.
I am generally opposed to methods that propose to save LW by reducing activity instead of by increasing activity.
+1. This is one of those terrible ideas that people keep proposing for online communities in general, and it pretty much never works out well. It resembles an appeal to fundamentalism, nostalgia for when a site was young. The primary fallacy is that when it was young, it didn’t actually know what it was doing, and that’s why it was interesting.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Christian was suggesting reducing activity. It sounded like he was just proposing that people post all content that currently goes in Open Threads in Discussion instead.
It sounded like he was just proposing that people post all content that currently goes in Open Threads in Discussion instead.
I think the barrier to posting a post in Discussion is higher than posting a comment in the Open Threads, and thus less of them will happen. I also think doing Open Threads on a monthly timescale, instead of a weekly one, will lead to less comments in the open thread.
I think a guide on “This is how you post to Discussion! :D” will be more effective at getting people to use Discussion the way ChristianKI wants than reducing the frequency of the Open Thread posts. (That’s an example of what I think a method that increases activity looks like.)
There are also UI and systematic barriers. It is much easier to find the comment box than the Create new article button, for example, and there is a karma minimum for articles but there is not for comments.
Introspection suggests there’s a higher emotional barrier to making a post.
Making a post requires more clicks.
Making a post requires more karma.
As an empirical matter, it should be possible to track the number of non-Open Thread posts in discussion over time, number of comments on those posts, as well as the number of comments in OTs over time, focusing especially on the region before and after the switch from monthly to weekly OTs. My prediction is that the number of comments in OTs increased as it went from monthly to weekly, and increased again when the Recent Open Threads link was added. Your prediction is that the number of non-OT posts decreased, which seems plausible to me. I am uncertain whether total comments increased or decreased, but suspect they increased.
Introspection suggests there’s a higher emotional barrier to making a post.
I think a lot has to do that we at the moment has a rule that certain topics aren’t important enough to be in discussion. That’s a rule that we could change.
I am generally opposed to methods that propose to save LW by reducing activity instead of by increasing activity. My reasons for not writing more posts for LW have mostly to do with my current life situation and lack of unallocated time, which may or may not change in the near future. It may be worth discussing ways to make writing posts for Main (or discussion or wherever we’d like to target) easier or more fun.
+1. This is one of those terrible ideas that people keep proposing for online communities in general, and it pretty much never works out well. It resembles an appeal to fundamentalism, nostalgia for when a site was young. The primary fallacy is that when it was young, it didn’t actually know what it was doing, and that’s why it was interesting.
Edit: Now a blog post.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think Christian was suggesting reducing activity. It sounded like he was just proposing that people post all content that currently goes in Open Threads in Discussion instead.
I think the barrier to posting a post in Discussion is higher than posting a comment in the Open Threads, and thus less of them will happen. I also think doing Open Threads on a monthly timescale, instead of a weekly one, will lead to less comments in the open thread.
I think a guide on “This is how you post to Discussion! :D” will be more effective at getting people to use Discussion the way ChristianKI wants than reducing the frequency of the Open Thread posts. (That’s an example of what I think a method that increases activity looks like.)
I think you may have meant this instead: the barrier to posting a post in discussion is higher than posting a comment in the Open Threads.
Yeah, I had it flipped. Fixed, thanks!
Isn’t the barrier a convention? Christian is trying to change the convention.
There are also UI and systematic barriers. It is much easier to find the comment box than the Create new article button, for example, and there is a karma minimum for articles but there is not for comments.
Also, the create article UI doesn’t resemble anything I’ve seen anywhere else, and dealing with the html is a pain.
And uses a gratuitously different syntax from the comments.
Why do you think that’s the case?
Introspection suggests there’s a higher emotional barrier to making a post.
Making a post requires more clicks.
Making a post requires more karma.
As an empirical matter, it should be possible to track the number of non-Open Thread posts in discussion over time, number of comments on those posts, as well as the number of comments in OTs over time, focusing especially on the region before and after the switch from monthly to weekly OTs. My prediction is that the number of comments in OTs increased as it went from monthly to weekly, and increased again when the Recent Open Threads link was added. Your prediction is that the number of non-OT posts decreased, which seems plausible to me. I am uncertain whether total comments increased or decreased, but suspect they increased.
I think a lot has to do that we at the moment has a rule that certain topics aren’t important enough to be in discussion. That’s a rule that we could change.
How do you expect to enforce any rule change?
Basically by discussing what rules are good for LW and then in the case we find a consensus communicate that consensus.