Really? Was there “juicy drama”? Did Robin ask Eliezer to leave?
That being the case, why was it decided to use the Reddit codebase? Why the Main and the Discussion? If it was just that Robin and Eliezer had differing thrusts, why didn’t Eliezer just start his own personal blog?
I am as much in the dark as you about these details. I’ve been reading since the beginning, but I’ve never been involved in the internal affairs (and probably wouldn’t be commenting if I had been).
On the question of a discussion forum vs. a blog, Eliezer’s intentions for LW were always for it to be not only a method of “raising the sanity waterline”, but also a method of recruiting people to the cause of rationality, and specifically people capable of working on AGI. Hence a format more suited for carrying on discussions than a blog with comments on articles entirely written by the owner and other people the owner has granted special dispensation to. Perhaps the fact that OB was and still is precisely the latter made it less suitable for what Eliezer wanted to do with it.
This tells you nothing about Richard’s history, but here’s one datapoint from another old-timer: I think I first encountered OB via Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog, and in particular this post from 2007-08-25. (I remember being struck by Tyler’s suggestion that OB, despite its name, was actually exemplifying bias in a good way.) Weak evidence in favour of this being right is that my first comment seems to have been in 2007-09 and that this one in 2007-10 says I’ve been reading “for a month or thereabouts”.
Really? Was there “juicy drama”? Did Robin ask Eliezer to leave?
That being the case, why was it decided to use the Reddit codebase? Why the Main and the Discussion? If it was just that Robin and Eliezer had differing thrusts, why didn’t Eliezer just start his own personal blog?
I am as much in the dark as you about these details. I’ve been reading since the beginning, but I’ve never been involved in the internal affairs (and probably wouldn’t be commenting if I had been).
On the question of a discussion forum vs. a blog, Eliezer’s intentions for LW were always for it to be not only a method of “raising the sanity waterline”, but also a method of recruiting people to the cause of rationality, and specifically people capable of working on AGI. Hence a format more suited for carrying on discussions than a blog with comments on articles entirely written by the owner and other people the owner has granted special dispensation to. Perhaps the fact that OB was and still is precisely the latter made it less suitable for what Eliezer wanted to do with it.
How did you find OB?
I don’t remember. I wasn’t previously aware of Eliezer or Robin.
This tells you nothing about Richard’s history, but here’s one datapoint from another old-timer: I think I first encountered OB via Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog, and in particular this post from 2007-08-25. (I remember being struck by Tyler’s suggestion that OB, despite its name, was actually exemplifying bias in a good way.) Weak evidence in favour of this being right is that my first comment seems to have been in 2007-09 and that this one in 2007-10 says I’ve been reading “for a month or thereabouts”.
[EDITED to add: yes, different username.]