Why not another subforum on LW, next to Main and Discussion, say, Technical Discussion? Probably because you want to avoid the “friendliness” nomenclature, but it would be nice to find some way around that, otherwise it’s yet another raison d’être of this forum being outsourced.
LW seems to have a rather mixed reputation: if you want to attract mainstream researchers, trying to separate the research forum from the weirder stuff discussed on LW seems like a good idea.
This interests me. I haven’t been around here for very long, so if there are any particular incidents that have occurred in the past, I wouldn’t be aware of them (sans the basilisk, of course, because that whole thing just blew up). Why does LW have such a mixed reputation? I would chalk it up to the “Internet forum” effect, because most mainstream researchers probably don’t trust Internet forums, but MIRI seems to have the same thing going on, so it can’t (just) be that. Is it just due to the weirdness, possibly causing LW/MIRI to be viewed as crankish? Or something else?
Many people (specifically, people over at RationalWiki, and probably elsewhere as well) see the community as being insular, or as being a Yudkowsky Personality Cult, or think that some of the weirder-sounding ideas widely espoused here (cryonics, FAI, etc) “might benefit from a better grounding in reality”.
Still others reflexively write LW off based on the use of fanfiction (a word of dread and derision in many circles) to recruit members.
Even the jargon derived from the Sequences may put some people off. Despite the staunch avoidance of hot-button politics, they still import a few lesser controversies. For example, there still exist people who outright reject Bayesian probability, and there are many more who see Bayes’ theorem as a tool that is valid only in a very narrow domain. Brazenly disregarding their opinion can be seen as haughty, even if the maths are on your side.
Out on my parts of the internet, a major reason to reject LWisms is because they are perceived as coming from a “Silicon Valley tribe” that does not share values with the majority of people (i.e. similar to the attitude of the newsblog (?) Pando, which regularly skewers tech startups). The libertarians claiming to be “apolitical”, and the neoreactionaries, do not help this perception at all. (Although discussing more of this is probably unwise because politics SPIDERS.)
I wonder how much of that negative view comes from the two or three people on RW who in the past have invested a lot of time and energy describing LW in the most uncharitable way, successfully priming many readers.
There are many websites on the internet with a dominant author, specific slang, or weird ideas. People usually ignore them, if they don’t like them.
I am not saying that LW is flawless, only that it is difficult to distinguish between (a) genuine flaws of LW and (b) successfuly anti-LW memes which started for random reasons. Both of them are something people will complain about, but in one case they had to be taught to complain.
I wonder how much of that negative view comes from the two or three people on RW who in the past have invested a lot of time and energy describing LW in the most uncharitable way, successfully priming many readers.
If this is true, or a major factor, then creating a new website is unlikely to be the solution. There is no reason to assume the anti-fans won’t just write the same content about the new website, highlighting “the connection” to LW.
Far removed from starting with a “clean slate”, such a migration could even provide for a new negative spin on the old narrative and it could be perceived as the anti-fans “winning”, and nothing galvanizes like the (perceived) taste of blood.
Yep. At this moment, we need a strategy, not just how to make a good impression in general (and we have already not optimized for this), but also how to prevent active character assassination.
I am not an expert on this topic. And it probably shouldn’t be debated in public, because, obviously, selective quoting from such debate would be another weapon for the anti-fans. The mere fact that you care about your impression and debate other people’s biases can be spinned very easily.
It’s important to realize that we not only have to make a good impression on Joe the Rational Internet Reader, but also to keep social costs of cooperating with us reasonable low for Joe. At the end, we care not only about Joe’s opinion, but also about opinions of people around him.
Are you referring to the basilisk? Other than that, I can’t think of any real moderation disasters off the top of my head, and given the general quality of discourse here, I’m having a hard time seeing any real reason for zealous moderation, anyway.
I don’t know what is the best way to design a forum for technical discussion. I think that your suggestion is worth consideration. But I guess that some people like to keep their work and their play strictly separate. If you invite them to post on LessWrong, then they aren’t sure which mental folder—work or play—they should put it in, because you can find many things on LessWrong that cannot be described as “work”, many people come here to play. Perhaps it is hard for one place to straddle both work and play. Whether making things strictly separate is the most productive approach is a different question. Perhaps it depends on an individual person, the nature of their work and their hobbies, etc.
Yea, but it kind of worked in the past. There was plenty of technical discussion on LW, and I doubt the limiting factor was a work/play confusion. Especially since most people who participate won’t get paid to do so, so technically it’ll also be “play time” in any case.
Why not another subforum on LW, next to Main and Discussion, say, Technical Discussion? Probably because you want to avoid the “friendliness” nomenclature, but it would be nice to find some way around that, otherwise it’s yet another raison d’être of this forum being outsourced.
LW seems to have a rather mixed reputation: if you want to attract mainstream researchers, trying to separate the research forum from the weirder stuff discussed on LW seems like a good idea.
This interests me. I haven’t been around here for very long, so if there are any particular incidents that have occurred in the past, I wouldn’t be aware of them (sans the basilisk, of course, because that whole thing just blew up). Why does LW have such a mixed reputation? I would chalk it up to the “Internet forum” effect, because most mainstream researchers probably don’t trust Internet forums, but MIRI seems to have the same thing going on, so it can’t (just) be that. Is it just due to the weirdness, possibly causing LW/MIRI to be viewed as crankish? Or something else?
Many people (specifically, people over at RationalWiki, and probably elsewhere as well) see the community as being insular, or as being a Yudkowsky Personality Cult, or think that some of the weirder-sounding ideas widely espoused here (cryonics, FAI, etc) “might benefit from a better grounding in reality”.
Still others reflexively write LW off based on the use of fanfiction (a word of dread and derision in many circles) to recruit members.
Even the jargon derived from the Sequences may put some people off. Despite the staunch avoidance of hot-button politics, they still import a few lesser controversies. For example, there still exist people who outright reject Bayesian probability, and there are many more who see Bayes’ theorem as a tool that is valid only in a very narrow domain. Brazenly disregarding their opinion can be seen as haughty, even if the maths are on your side.
Out on my parts of the internet, a major reason to reject LWisms is because they are perceived as coming from a “Silicon Valley tribe” that does not share values with the majority of people (i.e. similar to the attitude of the newsblog (?) Pando, which regularly skewers tech startups). The libertarians claiming to be “apolitical”, and the neoreactionaries, do not help this perception at all. (Although discussing more of this is probably unwise because politics SPIDERS.)
Mutant and proud!
:-)
I wonder how much of that negative view comes from the two or three people on RW who in the past have invested a lot of time and energy describing LW in the most uncharitable way, successfully priming many readers.
There are many websites on the internet with a dominant author, specific slang, or weird ideas. People usually ignore them, if they don’t like them.
I am not saying that LW is flawless, only that it is difficult to distinguish between (a) genuine flaws of LW and (b) successfuly anti-LW memes which started for random reasons. Both of them are something people will complain about, but in one case they had to be taught to complain.
If this is true, or a major factor, then creating a new website is unlikely to be the solution. There is no reason to assume the anti-fans won’t just write the same content about the new website, highlighting “the connection” to LW.
Far removed from starting with a “clean slate”, such a migration could even provide for a new negative spin on the old narrative and it could be perceived as the anti-fans “winning”, and nothing galvanizes like the (perceived) taste of blood.
Yep. At this moment, we need a strategy, not just how to make a good impression in general (and we have already not optimized for this), but also how to prevent active character assassination.
I am not an expert on this topic. And it probably shouldn’t be debated in public, because, obviously, selective quoting from such debate would be another weapon for the anti-fans. The mere fact that you care about your impression and debate other people’s biases can be spinned very easily.
It’s important to realize that we not only have to make a good impression on Joe the Rational Internet Reader, but also to keep social costs of cooperating with us reasonable low for Joe. At the end, we care not only about Joe’s opinion, but also about opinions of people around him.
Giving the moderation track record of LW, there’s also a case for having a new place with decent leadership.
Are you referring to the basilisk? Other than that, I can’t think of any real moderation disasters off the top of my head, and given the general quality of discourse here, I’m having a hard time seeing any real reason for zealous moderation, anyway.
When folks of this forum had an issue with mass downvoting, it took very long to get a response from the moderating team about the issue.
Most of the moderation was pretty intransparent.
I don’t know what is the best way to design a forum for technical discussion. I think that your suggestion is worth consideration. But I guess that some people like to keep their work and their play strictly separate. If you invite them to post on LessWrong, then they aren’t sure which mental folder—work or play—they should put it in, because you can find many things on LessWrong that cannot be described as “work”, many people come here to play. Perhaps it is hard for one place to straddle both work and play. Whether making things strictly separate is the most productive approach is a different question. Perhaps it depends on an individual person, the nature of their work and their hobbies, etc.
Yea, but it kind of worked in the past. There was plenty of technical discussion on LW, and I doubt the limiting factor was a work/play confusion. Especially since most people who participate won’t get paid to do so, so technically it’ll also be “play time” in any case.