This is, I think, the largest social obstacle to reconstitution. Crossposting blog posts from the diaspora is a decent workaround, though—if more than a few can be convinced to do it.
Speaking as a writer for different communities, there are 2 problems with this:
Duplicate content: unless explicitly canonized via headers, Google is ambiguous about which version should rank for keywords. This hits small & upcoming authors like a ton of bricks, because by default, the LW version is going to get ranked (on basis of authority), and their own content will be marked both as a duplicate, and as spam, and their domain deranked as a result.
“An audience of your own”: if a reasonable reader can reasonably assume, that “all good content will also be cross-posted to LW anyways”, that strongly eliminates the reason why one should have the small blogger in their RSS reader / checking once a day in the first place.
The HN “link aggregator” model works, because by directly linking to a thing, you will bump their ranking; if it ranks up to the main page, it drives an audience there, who can be captured (via RSS, or newsletters); and therefore have limited downside of participation.
My willingness to cross post from Putanumonit will depend on the standards of quality and tone in LW 2.0. One of my favorite things about LW was the consistency of the writing: the subject matter, the way the posts were structured , the language used and the overall quality. Posting on LW was intimidating, but I didn’t necessarily consider it a bad thing because it meant that almost every post was gold.
In the diaspora, everyone sets their own standards. I consider myself very much a rationality blogger and get linked from r/LessWrong and r/slatestarcodex, but my posts are often about things like NBA stats or Pokemon, I use a lot of pictures and a lighter tone, and I don’t have a list of 50 academic citations at the bottom of each post. I feel that my much writing isn’t a good fit for G Wiley’s budding rationalist community blog, let alone old LW.
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a tradeoff between catching more of the diaspora and having consistent standards. The scale goes from old LW standards (strictest) → cross posting → links with centralized discussion → blogroll (loosest). Any point on the scale could work, but it’s important to recognize the tradeoff and also to make the standards extremely clear so that each writer can decide whether they’re in or out.
I have been doing exactly this. My short-term goal is to get something like 5-10 writers posting here. So far, some people are willing, and some have some objections which we’re going to have to figure out how to address.
This is, I think, the largest social obstacle to reconstitution. Crossposting blog posts from the diaspora is a decent workaround, though—if more than a few can be convinced to do it.
Speaking as a writer for different communities, there are 2 problems with this:
Duplicate content: unless explicitly canonized via headers, Google is ambiguous about which version should rank for keywords. This hits small & upcoming authors like a ton of bricks, because by default, the LW version is going to get ranked (on basis of authority), and their own content will be marked both as a duplicate, and as spam, and their domain deranked as a result.
“An audience of your own”: if a reasonable reader can reasonably assume, that “all good content will also be cross-posted to LW anyways”, that strongly eliminates the reason why one should have the small blogger in their RSS reader / checking once a day in the first place.
The HN “link aggregator” model works, because by directly linking to a thing, you will bump their ranking; if it ranks up to the main page, it drives an audience there, who can be captured (via RSS, or newsletters); and therefore have limited downside of participation.
“Strong LW diaspora writers” is a small enough group that it should be straightforward to ask them what they think about all of this.
My willingness to cross post from Putanumonit will depend on the standards of quality and tone in LW 2.0. One of my favorite things about LW was the consistency of the writing: the subject matter, the way the posts were structured , the language used and the overall quality. Posting on LW was intimidating, but I didn’t necessarily consider it a bad thing because it meant that almost every post was gold.
In the diaspora, everyone sets their own standards. I consider myself very much a rationality blogger and get linked from r/LessWrong and r/slatestarcodex, but my posts are often about things like NBA stats or Pokemon, I use a lot of pictures and a lighter tone, and I don’t have a list of 50 academic citations at the bottom of each post. I feel that my much writing isn’t a good fit for G Wiley’s budding rationalist community blog, let alone old LW.
I guess what I’m saying is that there’s a tradeoff between catching more of the diaspora and having consistent standards. The scale goes from old LW standards (strictest) → cross posting → links with centralized discussion → blogroll (loosest). Any point on the scale could work, but it’s important to recognize the tradeoff and also to make the standards extremely clear so that each writer can decide whether they’re in or out.
I have been doing exactly this. My short-term goal is to get something like 5-10 writers posting here. So far, some people are willing, and some have some objections which we’re going to have to figure out how to address.
The big downside of this is that it divides the discussion.
But what’s so bad about divided discussion? In some ways it helps by increasing the surface area to which the relevant ideas are exposed.