In what sense unmanageable? What would it make harder to do that is easy to do now?
It seems to me the current setup makes it harder to know if you’re posting a repeat, or to display a list of all top quotes.
Also, I think it leads to more barrel-scraping this way; it seems to me that for the most part we ran out of the really great quotes and now often things get posted that have no special rationality lesson, but instead appeal to the tastes and specific beliefs common in our particular community.
As for dupes, the search on the site is adequate for finding them—what’s needed is a recommendation on the quotes page for people to check before posting.
I think the quotes continue to be somewhat interesting, but it’s not so much that there are no great ones left (though I was surprised to discover recently that “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed” hadn’t been listed) as that they tend to keep hitting the same points.
There’s always room for improvement in the software. Once in a while, there’s a request for suggestions, so you might want to think about the changes you’d like to see.
I had enough experience with the site to know that very long threads don’t work well and to have a feeling for the quote threads adding up to a huge lump, but I had it in my mind as one chunk and didn’t realize that if you suggested a single quote thread, it was worth considering that you didn’t have my background knowledge.
I’m starting to feel it was a mistake to have so many of those threads instead of a single one.
A single thread would have been of unmanageable size.
In what sense unmanageable? What would it make harder to do that is easy to do now?
It seems to me the current setup makes it harder to know if you’re posting a repeat, or to display a list of all top quotes.
Also, I think it leads to more barrel-scraping this way; it seems to me that for the most part we ran out of the really great quotes and now often things get posted that have no special rationality lesson, but instead appeal to the tastes and specific beliefs common in our particular community.
Unmanageable because the site software doesn’t show more than 500 (top-level?) comments, and because large numbers of comments load more slowly.
There’s a way to find top-voted quotes—Best of Rationality Quotes 2009/2010 (Warning: 750kB page, 774 quotes). This could be considered a hint about the quantity problem.
There is another one for 2011.
As for dupes, the search on the site is adequate for finding them—what’s needed is a recommendation on the quotes page for people to check before posting.
I think the quotes continue to be somewhat interesting, but it’s not so much that there are no great ones left (though I was surprised to discover recently that “Nature to be commanded must be obeyed” hadn’t been listed) as that they tend to keep hitting the same points.
I see. Thank you.
It seems to me that there’s room for improvement to the software, then. However, I’ll shut up at this point.
You’re welcome.
There’s always room for improvement in the software. Once in a while, there’s a request for suggestions, so you might want to think about the changes you’d like to see.
To my mind, the redundancy problem with the quotes pages isn’t so much repeated quotes as different quotes which mean pretty much the same thing.
How many different things are there to say about rationality?
Well, the right question is “How many different brief things are there to say about rationality?”
If you’re allowed to go on at length, the sequences imply that there’s quite a bit to say.
I don’t think the question about brief statements has an a priori answer.
Thanks for asking about unmanageablility.
That fits neatly with the importance of being specific.
I had enough experience with the site to know that very long threads don’t work well and to have a feeling for the quote threads adding up to a huge lump, but I had it in my mind as one chunk and didn’t realize that if you suggested a single quote thread, it was worth considering that you didn’t have my background knowledge.