On the idea of a vision for a future, if I were starting a site from scratch, I would love to see it focus on something like “discussions on any topic, but with extremely high intellectual standards”. Some ideas:
In addition to allowing self-posts, a major type of post would be a link to a piece of content with an initial seed for discussion
Refine upvotes/downvotes to make it easier to provide commentary on a post, e.g. “agree with the conclusion but disagree with the argument”, or “accurate points, but ad-hominem tone”.
A fairly strict and clearly stated set of site norms, with regular updates, and a process for proposing changes
Site erring on the side of being over-opinionated. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the community hub
Votes from highly-voted users count for more.
Integration with predictionbook or something similar, to show a user’s track record in addition to upvotes/downvotes. Emphasis on getting many people to vote on the same set of standardized predictions
A very strong bent on applications of rationality/clear thought, as opposed to a focus on rationality itself. I would love to see more posts on “here is how I solved a problem I or other people were struggling with”
No main/discussion split. There are probably other divisions that make sense (e.g. by topic), but this mostly causes a lot of confusion
Better notifications around new posts, or new comments in a thread. Eg I usually want to see all replies to a comment I’ve made, not just the top level
Built-in argument mapping tools for comments
Shadowbanning, a la Hacker News
Initially restricted growth, e.g. by invitation only
“Refine upvotes/downvotes to make it easier to provide commentary on a post, e.g. “agree with the conclusion but disagree with the argument”, or “accurate points, but ad-hominem tone”.”—this seems complex and better done via a comment
Some sort of emoticon could work, like what Facebook does.
Personally, I find the lack of feedback from an upvote or downvote to be discouraging. I understand that many people don’t want to take the time to provide a quick comment, but personally I think that’s silly as a 10 second comment could help a lot in many cases. If there is a possibility for a 1 second feedback method to allow a little more information than up or down, I think it’s worth trying.
Integration with predictionbook or something similar, to show a user’s track record in addition to upvotes/downvotes. Emphasis on getting many people to vote on the same set of standardized predictions
This would be a top recommendation of mine as well. There are quite a few prediction tracking websites now: PredictionBook, Metaculus, and Good Judgement Open come to mind immediately, and that’s not considering the various prediction markets too.
I’ve started writing a command line prediction tracker which will integrate with these sites and some others (eventually, at least). PredictionBook and Metaculus both seem to have APIs which would make the integration rather easy. So integration with LessWrong should not be particularly difficult. (The API for Metaculus is not documented best I can tell, but by snooping around the code you can figure things out...)
It’s a thumbs-up that is in the lower left corner of a comment or post (next to a thumbs-down). It looks like the top of these two thumbs-ups (or the bottom one after you’ve clicked it):
If you don’t see it, it may be that they’ve turned off voting for new or low-karma accounts.
Ya, that must be it. I’ve been on here for like 3 years (not with this account though) but only after the diaspora. Really excited that things are getting posted again. One major issue with such a system is that I now feel pressure to post popular content. A major feature of this community is that nothing is dismissed out of hand. You can propose anything you want so long as it’s supported by a sophisticated argument. The problem with only giving voting privileges to >x karma accounts is that people, like myself, will feel a pressure to post things that are generally accepted.
Now to be clear I’m not opposed to such a filter. I’ve personally noticed that for example, slatestarcodex doesn’t have the same consistently high quality comments as lesswrong. For example people will have comments like “what’s falsification?”etc. So I acknowledge that such a filter might be useful. At the same time however I’m pointing out one potential flaw with such a filter, that it lends itself to creating an echo-chamber.
On the idea of a vision for a future, if I were starting a site from scratch, I would love to see it focus on something like “discussions on any topic, but with extremely high intellectual standards”. Some ideas:
In addition to allowing self-posts, a major type of post would be a link to a piece of content with an initial seed for discussion
Refine upvotes/downvotes to make it easier to provide commentary on a post, e.g. “agree with the conclusion but disagree with the argument”, or “accurate points, but ad-hominem tone”.
A fairly strict and clearly stated set of site norms, with regular updates, and a process for proposing changes
Site erring on the side of being over-opinionated. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the community hub
Votes from highly-voted users count for more.
Integration with predictionbook or something similar, to show a user’s track record in addition to upvotes/downvotes. Emphasis on getting many people to vote on the same set of standardized predictions
A very strong bent on applications of rationality/clear thought, as opposed to a focus on rationality itself. I would love to see more posts on “here is how I solved a problem I or other people were struggling with”
No main/discussion split. There are probably other divisions that make sense (e.g. by topic), but this mostly causes a lot of confusion
Better notifications around new posts, or new comments in a thread. Eg I usually want to see all replies to a comment I’ve made, not just the top level
Built-in argument mapping tools for comments
Shadowbanning, a la Hacker News
Initially restricted growth, e.g. by invitation only
“Refine upvotes/downvotes to make it easier to provide commentary on a post, e.g. “agree with the conclusion but disagree with the argument”, or “accurate points, but ad-hominem tone”.”—this seems complex and better done via a comment
For the Russian LessWrong slack chat we agreed on the following emoji semantics:
:+1: means “I want to see more messages like this”
:-1: means “I want to see less messages like this”
:plus: means “I agree with a position expressed here”
:minus: means “I disagree”
:same: means “it’s the same for me” and is used for impressions, subjective experiences and preferences, but without approval connotations
:delta: means “I have changed my mind/updated”
We also have 25 custom :fallacy_*: emoji for pointing out fallacies, and a few other custom emoji for other low-effort, low-noise signaling.
It all works quite well and after using it for a few months the idea of going back to simple upvotes/downvotes feels like a significant regression.
Shared here: What reacts do you to be able to give to posts? (emoticons, cognicons, and more)
This Slack-specific emoji capability is akin to Facebook Reactions; namely a wider array of aggregated post/comment actions.
Some sort of emoticon could work, like what Facebook does.
Personally, I find the lack of feedback from an upvote or downvote to be discouraging. I understand that many people don’t want to take the time to provide a quick comment, but personally I think that’s silly as a 10 second comment could help a lot in many cases. If there is a possibility for a 1 second feedback method to allow a little more information than up or down, I think it’s worth trying.
I’m reminded of Slashdot. Not that you necessarily want to copy that, but that’s some preexisting work in that direction.
This would be a top recommendation of mine as well. There are quite a few prediction tracking websites now: PredictionBook, Metaculus, and Good Judgement Open come to mind immediately, and that’s not considering the various prediction markets too.
I’ve started writing a command line prediction tracker which will integrate with these sites and some others (eventually, at least). PredictionBook and Metaculus both seem to have APIs which would make the integration rather easy. So integration with LessWrong should not be particularly difficult. (The API for Metaculus is not documented best I can tell, but by snooping around the code you can figure things out...)
On that topic how you upvote? I’ve never been able to figure it out. I can’t find any upvote button. Does anyone know where the button is?
It’s a thumbs-up that is in the lower left corner of a comment or post (next to a thumbs-down). It looks like the top of these two thumbs-ups (or the bottom one after you’ve clicked it):
If you don’t see it, it may be that they’ve turned off voting for new or low-karma accounts.
Ya, that must be it. I’ve been on here for like 3 years (not with this account though) but only after the diaspora. Really excited that things are getting posted again. One major issue with such a system is that I now feel pressure to post popular content. A major feature of this community is that nothing is dismissed out of hand. You can propose anything you want so long as it’s supported by a sophisticated argument. The problem with only giving voting privileges to >x karma accounts is that people, like myself, will feel a pressure to post things that are generally accepted.
Now to be clear I’m not opposed to such a filter. I’ve personally noticed that for example, slatestarcodex doesn’t have the same consistently high quality comments as lesswrong. For example people will have comments like “what’s falsification?”etc. So I acknowledge that such a filter might be useful. At the same time however I’m pointing out one potential flaw with such a filter, that it lends itself to creating an echo-chamber.
Could you say more about what you have in mind here?
Maybe something like this? https://debatemap.live (note: I’m the developer of it)