Note that neither Lumifer, nor Dagon, nor Brillyant have ever made a top-level submission of original content to Less Wrong. It’s easy to be a critic.
Since Lumifer, Dagon, and Brillyant seem to want a site that never has anything new on it, may I suggest example.com? It hardly ever changes.
...what did people say they’d need to rejoin [Less Wrong]?
Feel free to read these yourselves (they’re not long), but I’ll go ahead and summarize: It’s all about the content. Content, content, content. No amount of usability improvements, A/B testing or clever trickery will let you get around content. People are overwhelmingly clear about this; they need a reason to come to the site and right now they don’t feel like they have one. That means priority number one for somebody trying to revitalize LessWrong is how you deal with this.
The problem with comments like Lumifer’s is not that they are incorrect. It’s that they create a bad incentive structure for content creators. Anyone who posts to LW is doing free labor in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the community’s beliefs. I believe that lukeprog, Eliezer, and Yvain have all complained that writing LW posts is not very rewarding. If there’s some probability that the Lumifers are the world are going to call your post “stupid” without offering any specific feedback, that makes the job even more thankless. And no, this is not necessarily something a person can predict in advance: a previous post chaosmage made got voted to +55, and the ideas in it were being used by a friend of mine years after it was made.
The cost of an occasional bad post is not very high: you read it until you realize it is bad and then you move on. But the cost of nasty comments like Lumifer’s can be quite high. Most online communities suck, and nasty comments are a big part of the reason why. If I was selling a product you could spray on an online community to prevent anything from growing there, I would name it Lumifer.
The problem with comments like Lumifer’s is not that they are incorrect. It’s that they create a bad incentive structure for content creators.
That’s a very interesting opposition to set up :-D
First, let’s take it as black-and-white. If I call a top-level post stupid and I’m “not … incorrect”, then let me point out that the incentive structure is entirely right: I don’t want content creators posting stupid stuff and I doubt many people would prefer to see more stupid posts on LW.
If we take it more reasonably as a trade-off, it certainly exists—both in the let’s-pick-polite-expressions dimension and in the let’s-avert-out-eyes-and-say-nothing dimension. However the principle stands—you want to provide negative incentives to stupid posts.
In general, I think we have a bigger disagreement. Your approach to “content” is that of a consumer—you want other people to feed you tasty bits of content. My approach is different. I find considerably more value in discussion (especially a spirited one) than in the posts themselves. From my point of view, most of the “content” is in comments, not in posts, and being able to participate in the give-and-take makes the conversation even more worthwhile.
As I said several times I dislike the high-priesthood view of science and I dislike the high-priesthood view of forums as well. I am not particularly interested in having a few high-status people bestow their wisdom upon me in exchange for adoration.
I am also not interested in providing incentives for any content. There are places on the ’net with LOTS AND LOTS of content—Facebook, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. etc. If you want “content”, go there: LW will never be able to compete. From LW I want specific and highly filtered content—that’s what makes LW special and interesting. If LW gets filled with half-assed stream-of-consciosness ramblings about random stuff, well, I don’t think it will work out well :-/
Anyone who posts to LW is doing free labor in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the community’s beliefs.
First, that’s false. Second, some of these attempts are… counterproductive.
But the cost of nasty comments like Lumifer’s can be quite high
Show me the data.
If I was selling a product you could spray on an online community to prevent anything from growing there, I would name it Lumifer.
Ah, how cute! Tell you what, when you startup gets to the MVP stage, ping me and we’ll discuss the brand name licensing terms :-P
From LW I want specific and highly filtered content
We want the same thing then. My way of achieving it is to write posts and comments when I have something interesting to say. For example, if I disagree with something, I usually don’t reply unless I can add a bit of insight to my disagreement, so it’s worth reading to everyone and not just the person I’m replying to.
From talking to you, it seems like you’re using the opposite strategy. You ask questions that are uninteresting on their own (or at least feel that way to me and others). When someone replies, you follow up with more of the same. Maybe you could try optimizing your comments for interest instead of “spirited discussion”?
You ask questions that are uninteresting on their own (or at least feel that way to me and others)
I am a bit curious, then, how did I manage to accumulate that much karma by merely being uninteresting...
People are different. They find interesting different things. It seems likely that our interests don’t overlap much—but I would be wary of making wide-ranging conclusions on that basis.
A couple of year ago, when we still had downvotes, there was an interesting thread about the values of “% positive” karma which you can see if you hover your mouse over the karma score box.
Because upvotes were always more plentiful than downvotes, the opinions expressed in that thread converged to something like:
~50% positive: LW hates you, you don’t fit in
70-80% positive: you’re fine
90% positive: you have been consumed by the hive mind, it’s probably too late for you to escape
Don’t think “troll” is a valid label for him—he just was… very enthusiastic and persistent about his disagreements with EY.
But is there a point you’re making? Is it that 75% is too little? Is it that the % positive is meaningless? It is that the karma score tells you nothing?
From my point of view, most of the “content” is in comments, not in posts, and being able to participate in the give-and-take makes the conversation even more worthwhile.
If content is content is content, why are your nasty comments typically about top-level contributions rather than comments? However little signal there may have been in chaosmage’s post, your reply contained even less. It was at DH3 at best, plausibly DH0.
If content is content is content, and most of the content is in the comments, shouldn’t we also call everyone in this thread who responded to chaosmage’s post in earnest stupid?
When you assess your own contributions, do you think they are stupid? Do you think they are good enough to be top-level posts? If not, why exactly should should we hold your comments to a lower standard than we hold top-level posts to? Especially if the discussion is where the value is supposed to be found.
Frankly, I find your contributions consistently uninteresting and banal. Just in this comment, you managed to
Misread my comment. “If we take it more reasonably as a trade-off”—that’s what I did. I discussed the both the costs and benefits of harsh replies (cf “The cost of an occasional bad post is not very high: you read it until you realize it is bad and then you move on.”)
Strawman my comment. “I am also not interested in providing incentives for any content. There are places on the ’net with LOTS AND LOTS of content—Facebook, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. etc.” That’s not what I advocated. I advocated taking in to account the counterfactual impact of nasty comments. Which is a point you still haven’t responded to. Maybe it would be sensible to make comments harsher if we start to have the “too much content” problem. But that’s not the current problem.
Introduce a non sequiter: “As I said several times I dislike the high-priesthood view of science and I dislike the high-priesthood view of forums as well. I am not particularly interested in having a few high-status people bestow their wisdom upon me in exchange for adoration.” How is this relevant to our discussion? The issue here is you being nasty without adding any signal. Despite their username, chaosmage is no “high priest”.
Respond at DH3 again: “First, that’s false.” Why is it false? As usual, you express disagreement without adding anything to the discussion.
Consistent with my position, I might tolerate you if your only issue was low-signal contributions. I might tolerate your constant need to disagree with everything if you weren’t a jerk about it: “Hey chaosmage, I’m skeptical that the future is this easy to predict.” I might even tolerate your toxic behavior if you were actually providing contributions of value. But your combination of low-signal contributions and toxic behavior is too much. You seem to think that flatly contradicting everything in sight makes you some kind of bold maverick. I see you as more of a poster child for this essay.
Show me the data.
During the period where LW declined, you have consistently been at or near the top of “TOP CONTRIBUTORS, 30 DAYS” on the sidebar. You spend more time participating than anyone else, so you set the tone for the forum. This was during a period where almost everyone agrees that things moved in the wrong direction.
At this point, due to all the time you spend here, Less Wrong has undergone evaporative cooling. Many of the users who remain are those who have an affinity for your brand of uninspired, disagreeable obstinacy. I know of at least 4 other people who agree with me that you, specifically, have been toxic for Less Wrong’s culture. Some of these people I have a lot of respect for, in the sense that I learn things from talking to them. (I never learn things from talking to you.) These people spend a lot less time contributing to LW as a result.
What if you are the harbringer of Eternal September? Have you ever considered that?
I probably won’t respond further in this thread, because I’ve found that arguing with you results in an exponentially growing tree of tiresome objections. You never seem to change your mind on anything and you seem to disagree just for the sake of disagreement. I don’t ever get the sense that you have an underlying model of the world that informs your comments. It seems like you are more about disagreeing with everything in sight. And you seem to think that because you are disagreeing with people, it’s OK for your comments to be held to a lower standard.
I will say that I really, really wish you would find somewhere else on the internet to hang out.
I think Lumifer can be annoying as hell at times. But has been entirely consistent from the very start and has continued to engage in entirely the same way with whatever members are posting here.
Perhaps the different post rating system in LW 2.0 (if successfully launched and managed) will allow members who don’t like this sort of thing to more easily avoid or hide from this kind of dialogue but I expect (hope?) Lumifer will remain immune to shifts in the incentive structure.
I find your contributions consistently uninteresting and banal … your combination of low-signal contributions and toxic behavior is too much.
Well, don’t read them, then. When you see the name “Lumifer”, just skip over the comment. It’s not too hard—I manage to ignore comments by some people here without calling them names or expressing hope that they will disappear.
Ignoring stuff you don’t want to see is a very basic internet skill. I wonder how you manage without it.
due to all the time you spend here, Less Wrong has undergone evaporative cooling
The theory that I, personally, am responsible for the LW decline has a few rather large holes. For one, by the time I got here Eliezer was already gone and Scott was making only very occasional comments. For another one, that “top contributors” leaderboard ranks by karma, not by volume—if I was prone to staying on top of it, this means that the existing LW population tended to like my comments.
What if you are the harbringer of Eternal September?
LOL, nope. Eternal September is about quite a different thing, anyway.
I really, really wish you would find somewhere else on the internet to hang out
Sorry, I don’t grant wishes. May I suggest that you learn to deal with the fact that not all people are interested in your seal of approval?
To be fair, I didn’t expect this to be voted very high. Not in these times. I was basically writing this down to have a public record of the talk I gave, and to look back at this years later and see how I did predicting things.
I do see your larger point though. I was clearly motivated to produce this by the large and friendly crowd at the European Less Wrong Community Weekends, where most people go by Crocker’s Rule and give way better feedback than Lumifer is able to. The little extra effort of writing down would have been worth it even if all the comments would have been Lumifer level quality. If LessWrong was the only place I put these ideas, the current environment here would indeed not feel very much worth the work of spelling them out in the first place.
Note that neither Lumifer, nor Dagon, nor Brillyant have ever made a top-level submission of original content to Less Wrong. It’s easy to be a critic.
Since Lumifer, Dagon, and Brillyant seem to want a site that never has anything new on it, may I suggest example.com? It hardly ever changes.
Source. Less Wrongers overwhelmingly want there to be more posts.
The problem with comments like Lumifer’s is not that they are incorrect. It’s that they create a bad incentive structure for content creators. Anyone who posts to LW is doing free labor in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the community’s beliefs. I believe that lukeprog, Eliezer, and Yvain have all complained that writing LW posts is not very rewarding. If there’s some probability that the Lumifers are the world are going to call your post “stupid” without offering any specific feedback, that makes the job even more thankless. And no, this is not necessarily something a person can predict in advance: a previous post chaosmage made got voted to +55, and the ideas in it were being used by a friend of mine years after it was made.
The cost of an occasional bad post is not very high: you read it until you realize it is bad and then you move on. But the cost of nasty comments like Lumifer’s can be quite high. Most online communities suck, and nasty comments are a big part of the reason why. If I was selling a product you could spray on an online community to prevent anything from growing there, I would name it Lumifer.
That’s a very interesting opposition to set up :-D
First, let’s take it as black-and-white. If I call a top-level post stupid and I’m “not … incorrect”, then let me point out that the incentive structure is entirely right: I don’t want content creators posting stupid stuff and I doubt many people would prefer to see more stupid posts on LW.
If we take it more reasonably as a trade-off, it certainly exists—both in the let’s-pick-polite-expressions dimension and in the let’s-avert-out-eyes-and-say-nothing dimension. However the principle stands—you want to provide negative incentives to stupid posts.
In general, I think we have a bigger disagreement. Your approach to “content” is that of a consumer—you want other people to feed you tasty bits of content. My approach is different. I find considerably more value in discussion (especially a spirited one) than in the posts themselves. From my point of view, most of the “content” is in comments, not in posts, and being able to participate in the give-and-take makes the conversation even more worthwhile.
As I said several times I dislike the high-priesthood view of science and I dislike the high-priesthood view of forums as well. I am not particularly interested in having a few high-status people bestow their wisdom upon me in exchange for adoration.
I am also not interested in providing incentives for any content. There are places on the ’net with LOTS AND LOTS of content—Facebook, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. etc. If you want “content”, go there: LW will never be able to compete. From LW I want specific and highly filtered content—that’s what makes LW special and interesting. If LW gets filled with half-assed stream-of-consciosness ramblings about random stuff, well, I don’t think it will work out well :-/
First, that’s false. Second, some of these attempts are… counterproductive.
Show me the data.
Ah, how cute! Tell you what, when you startup gets to the MVP stage, ping me and we’ll discuss the brand name licensing terms :-P
We want the same thing then. My way of achieving it is to write posts and comments when I have something interesting to say. For example, if I disagree with something, I usually don’t reply unless I can add a bit of insight to my disagreement, so it’s worth reading to everyone and not just the person I’m replying to.
From talking to you, it seems like you’re using the opposite strategy. You ask questions that are uninteresting on their own (or at least feel that way to me and others). When someone replies, you follow up with more of the same. Maybe you could try optimizing your comments for interest instead of “spirited discussion”?
I am a bit curious, then, how did I manage to accumulate that much karma by merely being uninteresting...
People are different. They find interesting different things. It seems likely that our interests don’t overlap much—but I would be wary of making wide-ranging conclusions on that basis.
Sheer volume of comments is the main reason. You’re receiving about 2x as many downvotes as cousin_it, proportionally speaking.
A couple of year ago, when we still had downvotes, there was an interesting thread about the values of “% positive” karma which you can see if you hover your mouse over the karma score box.
Because upvotes were always more plentiful than downvotes, the opinions expressed in that thread converged to something like:
~50% positive: LW hates you, you don’t fit in
70-80% positive: you’re fine
:-D
One of our worst trolls ever was XiXiDu, who had 75%.
Don’t think “troll” is a valid label for him—he just was… very enthusiastic and persistent about his disagreements with EY.
But is there a point you’re making? Is it that 75% is too little? Is it that the % positive is meaningless? It is that the karma score tells you nothing?
If content is content is content, why are your nasty comments typically about top-level contributions rather than comments? However little signal there may have been in chaosmage’s post, your reply contained even less. It was at DH3 at best, plausibly DH0.
If content is content is content, and most of the content is in the comments, shouldn’t we also call everyone in this thread who responded to chaosmage’s post in earnest stupid?
When you assess your own contributions, do you think they are stupid? Do you think they are good enough to be top-level posts? If not, why exactly should should we hold your comments to a lower standard than we hold top-level posts to? Especially if the discussion is where the value is supposed to be found.
Frankly, I find your contributions consistently uninteresting and banal. Just in this comment, you managed to
Misread my comment. “If we take it more reasonably as a trade-off”—that’s what I did. I discussed the both the costs and benefits of harsh replies (cf “The cost of an occasional bad post is not very high: you read it until you realize it is bad and then you move on.”)
Strawman my comment. “I am also not interested in providing incentives for any content. There are places on the ’net with LOTS AND LOTS of content—Facebook, Reddit, Buzzfeed, etc. etc.” That’s not what I advocated. I advocated taking in to account the counterfactual impact of nasty comments. Which is a point you still haven’t responded to. Maybe it would be sensible to make comments harsher if we start to have the “too much content” problem. But that’s not the current problem.
Introduce a non sequiter: “As I said several times I dislike the high-priesthood view of science and I dislike the high-priesthood view of forums as well. I am not particularly interested in having a few high-status people bestow their wisdom upon me in exchange for adoration.” How is this relevant to our discussion? The issue here is you being nasty without adding any signal. Despite their username, chaosmage is no “high priest”.
Respond at DH3 again: “First, that’s false.” Why is it false? As usual, you express disagreement without adding anything to the discussion.
Consistent with my position, I might tolerate you if your only issue was low-signal contributions. I might tolerate your constant need to disagree with everything if you weren’t a jerk about it: “Hey chaosmage, I’m skeptical that the future is this easy to predict.” I might even tolerate your toxic behavior if you were actually providing contributions of value. But your combination of low-signal contributions and toxic behavior is too much. You seem to think that flatly contradicting everything in sight makes you some kind of bold maverick. I see you as more of a poster child for this essay.
During the period where LW declined, you have consistently been at or near the top of “TOP CONTRIBUTORS, 30 DAYS” on the sidebar. You spend more time participating than anyone else, so you set the tone for the forum. This was during a period where almost everyone agrees that things moved in the wrong direction.
At this point, due to all the time you spend here, Less Wrong has undergone evaporative cooling. Many of the users who remain are those who have an affinity for your brand of uninspired, disagreeable obstinacy. I know of at least 4 other people who agree with me that you, specifically, have been toxic for Less Wrong’s culture. Some of these people I have a lot of respect for, in the sense that I learn things from talking to them. (I never learn things from talking to you.) These people spend a lot less time contributing to LW as a result.
What if you are the harbringer of Eternal September? Have you ever considered that?
I probably won’t respond further in this thread, because I’ve found that arguing with you results in an exponentially growing tree of tiresome objections. You never seem to change your mind on anything and you seem to disagree just for the sake of disagreement. I don’t ever get the sense that you have an underlying model of the world that informs your comments. It seems like you are more about disagreeing with everything in sight. And you seem to think that because you are disagreeing with people, it’s OK for your comments to be held to a lower standard.
I will say that I really, really wish you would find somewhere else on the internet to hang out.
I think Lumifer can be annoying as hell at times. But has been entirely consistent from the very start and has continued to engage in entirely the same way with whatever members are posting here.
Perhaps the different post rating system in LW 2.0 (if successfully launched and managed) will allow members who don’t like this sort of thing to more easily avoid or hide from this kind of dialogue but I expect (hope?) Lumifer will remain immune to shifts in the incentive structure.
I completely agree with everything you said here.
Tsk, tsk. Such a nasty comment… X-)
Well, don’t read them, then. When you see the name “Lumifer”, just skip over the comment. It’s not too hard—I manage to ignore comments by some people here without calling them names or expressing hope that they will disappear.
Ignoring stuff you don’t want to see is a very basic internet skill. I wonder how you manage without it.
The theory that I, personally, am responsible for the LW decline has a few rather large holes. For one, by the time I got here Eliezer was already gone and Scott was making only very occasional comments. For another one, that “top contributors” leaderboard ranks by karma, not by volume—if I was prone to staying on top of it, this means that the existing LW population tended to like my comments.
LOL, nope. Eternal September is about quite a different thing, anyway.
Sorry, I don’t grant wishes. May I suggest that you learn to deal with the fact that not all people are interested in your seal of approval?
Well said.
To be fair, I didn’t expect this to be voted very high. Not in these times. I was basically writing this down to have a public record of the talk I gave, and to look back at this years later and see how I did predicting things.
I do see your larger point though. I was clearly motivated to produce this by the large and friendly crowd at the European Less Wrong Community Weekends, where most people go by Crocker’s Rule and give way better feedback than Lumifer is able to. The little extra effort of writing down would have been worth it even if all the comments would have been Lumifer level quality. If LessWrong was the only place I put these ideas, the current environment here would indeed not feel very much worth the work of spelling them out in the first place.
I was criticising the criticism of this post.
I feel like you’re taking all of this way too seriously.
Fix the “RECENT ON RATIONALITY BLOGS”
I agree although i do not dislike Lumifer’s comments in general, just the overly negative ones.