See my answer to Error, but for the “how likely” question the only possible answer that I can see is “One step at a time”.
First you need an idea that’s both exciting and gelled enough have some shape which survives shaking and poking.
If enough people are enthusiastic about the idea, you write a white paper.
If enough people (or the right people) are enthusiastic about the white paper, you write a spec sheet for software.
If enough people continue to be enthusiastic about the idea, the white paper, and the spec sheet, you start coding.
If you get this far, you can start thinking about OSS projects, startups, and all these kinds of things.. :-)
P.S. Oh, and you shouldn’t think of this project as “How do we reanimate LW and keep it shambling for a bit longer”. You should think about it as “What kind of a new discussion framework can we bestow on the soon-to-be-grateful world” :-)
I get the impression most projects do that backwards, and that that’s a large part of how we got into this giant mess of incompatible discussion APIs.
Somewhere later in this sequence I’m going to address the social problem of convincing people to buy back in. The very short version is: Make it more powerful than what they’ve got, so they have an incentive to move. Make sure they are still running their own shows, because status and sovereignity matters. And make it more convenient to migrate than to manage what they’ve got, because convenience is everything.
Once you get three or four diasporists back, network effects does the rest. But it needs to be an improvement to the individual migrant even if nobody else does it, otherwise the coordination problem involved is incredibly hard to beat.
You should think about it as “What kind of a new discussion framework can we bestow on the soon-to-be-grateful world” :-)
Sometimes I think the best way to promote my ideas would be to start an NNTP-backed forum hosting service. I know it’s within my capabilities.
Then I realize that 1. that would be a lot of work, and I have a day job, 2. nobody cares except me, and 3. I would be competing with Reddit.
See my answer to Error, but for the “how likely” question the only possible answer that I can see is “One step at a time”.
First you need an idea that’s both exciting and gelled enough have some shape which survives shaking and poking.
If enough people are enthusiastic about the idea, you write a white paper.
If enough people (or the right people) are enthusiastic about the white paper, you write a spec sheet for software.
If enough people continue to be enthusiastic about the idea, the white paper, and the spec sheet, you start coding.
If you get this far, you can start thinking about OSS projects, startups, and all these kinds of things.. :-)
P.S. Oh, and you shouldn’t think of this project as “How do we reanimate LW and keep it shambling for a bit longer”. You should think about it as “What kind of a new discussion framework can we bestow on the soon-to-be-grateful world” :-)
I get the impression most projects do that backwards, and that that’s a large part of how we got into this giant mess of incompatible discussion APIs.
Somewhere later in this sequence I’m going to address the social problem of convincing people to buy back in. The very short version is: Make it more powerful than what they’ve got, so they have an incentive to move. Make sure they are still running their own shows, because status and sovereignity matters. And make it more convenient to migrate than to manage what they’ve got, because convenience is everything.
Once you get three or four diasporists back, network effects does the rest. But it needs to be an improvement to the individual migrant even if nobody else does it, otherwise the coordination problem involved is incredibly hard to beat.
Sometimes I think the best way to promote my ideas would be to start an NNTP-backed forum hosting service. I know it’s within my capabilities.
Then I realize that 1. that would be a lot of work, and I have a day job, 2. nobody cares except me, and 3. I would be competing with Reddit.