Re: 1, I vote for Vaniver as LW’s BDFL, with authority to decree community norms (re: politics or anything else), decide on changes for the site; conduct fundraisers on behalf of the site; etc. (He already has the technical admin powers, and has been playing some of this role in a low key way; but I suspect he’s been deferring a lot to other parties who spend little time on LW, and that an authorized sole dictatorship might be better.)
Anyone want to join me in this, or else make a counterproposal?
Agree with both the sole dictatorship and Vaniver as the BDFL, assuming he’s up for it. His posts here also show a strong understanding of the problems affecting less wrong on multiple fronts.
Who is empowered to set Vaniver or anyone else as the BDFL of the site? It would be great to get into a discusion of “who” but I wonder how much weight there will be behind this person. Where would the BDFL’s authority eminate from? Would he be granted, for instance, ownership of the lesswrong.com domain? That would be a sufficient gesture.
I’m empowered to hunt down the relevant people and start conversations about it that are themselves empowered to make the shift. (E.g. to talk to Nate/Eliezer/MIRI, and Matt Fallshaw who runs Trike Apps.).
I like the idea of granting domain ownership if we in fact go down the BDFL route.
An additional additional point is that the dictator can indeed quit and is not forced to kill themselves to get out of it. So it’s actually not FL. And in fact, it’s arguably not even a dictatorship, as it depends on the consent of the governed. Yes, BDFL is intentionally outrageous to make a point. What’s yours?
I’ll second the suggestion that we should consider other options. While I know Vaniver personally and believe he would do an excellent job, I think Vaniver would agree that considering other candidates too would be a wise choice. (Narrow framing is one of the “villians” of decision making in a book on decision making he suggested to me, Decisive.) Plus, I scanned this thread and I haven’t seen Vaniver say he is okay with such a role.
I think Vaniver would agree that considering other candidates too would be a wise choice.
I do agree; one of the reasons why I haven’t accepted yet is to give other people time to see this, think about it, and come up with other options.
(I considered setting up a way for people to anonymously suggest others, but ended up thinking that it would be difficult to find a way to make it credibly anonymous if I were the person that set it up, and username2 already exists.)
I’m concerned that we’re only voting for Vaniver because he’s well known
Also because he already is a moderator (one of a few moderators), so he already was trusted with some power, and here we just saying that it seems okay to give him more powers. And because he already did some useful things while moderating.
Do we know anyone who actually has experience doing product management? (Or has the sort of resume that the best companies like to see when they hire for product management roles. Which is not necessarily what you might expect.)
I do. I was a product manager for about a year, then founder for a while, and am now manager for a data science team, where part of my responsibilities are basically product management for the things related to the team.
That said, I don’t think I was great at it, and suspect most of the lessons I learned are easily transferred.
Edit: I actually suspect that I’ve learned more from working with really good product managers than I have from doing any part of the job myself. It really seems to be a job where experience is relatively unimportant, but a certain set of general cognitive patterns is extremely important.
I’ve done my fair bit of product management, mostly on resin.io and related projects (etcher.io and resinos.io) and can offer some help in re-imagining the vision behind lw.
Re: 1, I vote for Vaniver as LW’s BDFL, with authority to decree community norms (re: politics or anything else), decide on changes for the site; conduct fundraisers on behalf of the site; etc. (He already has the technical admin powers, and has been playing some of this role in a low key way; but I suspect he’s been deferring a lot to other parties who spend little time on LW, and that an authorized sole dictatorship might be better.)
Anyone want to join me in this, or else make a counterproposal?
Agree with both the sole dictatorship and Vaniver as the BDFL, assuming he’s up for it. His posts here also show a strong understanding of the problems affecting less wrong on multiple fronts.
Seconding Anna and Satvik
I also vote for Vaniver as BDFL.
Who is empowered to set Vaniver or anyone else as the BDFL of the site? It would be great to get into a discusion of “who” but I wonder how much weight there will be behind this person. Where would the BDFL’s authority eminate from? Would he be granted, for instance, ownership of the lesswrong.com domain? That would be a sufficient gesture.
I’m empowered to hunt down the relevant people and start conversations about it that are themselves empowered to make the shift. (E.g. to talk to Nate/Eliezer/MIRI, and Matt Fallshaw who runs Trike Apps.).
I like the idea of granting domain ownership if we in fact go down the BDFL route.
that’s awesome. I’m starting to hope something may come of this effort.
An additional point is that you you can only grant the DFL part. The B part cannot be granted but can only be hoped for.
An additional additional point is that the dictator can indeed quit and is not forced to kill themselves to get out of it. So it’s actually not FL. And in fact, it’s arguably not even a dictatorship, as it depends on the consent of the governed. Yes, BDFL is intentionally outrageous to make a point. What’s yours?
The person who owns the website doesn’t need consent of the people who visit the website to make changes to the website.
Funny how I didn’t notice anyone become outraged.
And, of course, BDFL’s powers do NOT depend on the consent of the governed—it’s just that the governed have the ability to exit.
As to the point, it’s merely reminding of the standard trade-off with dictator-like rulers. They are like a little girl:
I’m concerned that we’re only voting for Vaniver because he’s well known, but I’ll throw in a tentative vote for him.
Who are our other options?
I’ll second the suggestion that we should consider other options. While I know Vaniver personally and believe he would do an excellent job, I think Vaniver would agree that considering other candidates too would be a wise choice. (Narrow framing is one of the “villians” of decision making in a book on decision making he suggested to me, Decisive.) Plus, I scanned this thread and I haven’t seen Vaniver say he is okay with such a role.
I do agree; one of the reasons why I haven’t accepted yet is to give other people time to see this, think about it, and come up with other options.
(I considered setting up a way for people to anonymously suggest others, but ended up thinking that it would be difficult to find a way to make it credibly anonymous if I were the person that set it up, and username2 already exists.)
Also because he already is a moderator (one of a few moderators), so he already was trusted with some power, and here we just saying that it seems okay to give him more powers. And because he already did some useful things while moderating.
Do we know anyone who actually has experience doing product management? (Or has the sort of resume that the best companies like to see when they hire for product management roles. Which is not necessarily what you might expect.)
I do. I was a product manager for about a year, then founder for a while, and am now manager for a data science team, where part of my responsibilities are basically product management for the things related to the team.
That said, I don’t think I was great at it, and suspect most of the lessons I learned are easily transferred.
Edit: I actually suspect that I’ve learned more from working with really good product managers than I have from doing any part of the job myself. It really seems to be a job where experience is relatively unimportant, but a certain set of general cognitive patterns is extremely important.
OK, I vote for Satvik as the person to choose who the BDFL is :D
I’ve done my fair bit of product management, mostly on resin.io and related projects (etcher.io and resinos.io) and can offer some help in re-imagining the vision behind lw.
It would be good to know what he thinks the direction of LW should be, but I would really like to see a new BDFL.
I agree that Vaniver should be.
I concur with placing Vaniver in charge. Mainly, we need a leader and a decision maker empowered to execute on suggestions.
I agree, assuming that “technical admin powers” really include access to everything he might need for his work (database, code, logs, whatever).
Throwing in another vote for Vaniver.
Having a BDFL would be great. Vaniver seems to be a good candidate.
I have reservations about this, especially the weird ‘for life’ part.