I daresay what distinguishes this tribe is preventing symbols from having more value than the reality to which they point.
That being said, I am not saying don’t polish—it is just a popular candidate for bikeshedding and I think you can deliver a hard majority of the value sans polish because of the makeup of the community. I would expect similar projects that developed the data to a good state before starting on a platform for presenting the data to succeed more often than projects which do the reverse, or work on them simultaneously.
But what if a neat 80⁄20 of good presentation is a way to get people to add more data? I see it more likely that a pretty website will act as a schelling point compared to some obscure sheet. Especially if we plug it into lesserwrong.com.
This is a good point, and if we were talking about a tool aimed at the general public, I would agree with you.
It is also true that when we are talking about voluntary collaboration, it can easily be the case where someone pops up for whom a website is very easy.
But I urge you to consider that the second person to respond to your post went ahead and put the data in a spreadsheet anyway on their own initiative, and what this implies about the userbase you are after. I notice that whenever I read a post about a trick or method on here or elsewhere in the diaspora, people commonly respond with whether it works for them, what other method they used to receive the same goal, etc. I expect the fundamental challenge in getting user data to be that users want to see the results of the data but not offer it themselves, but in this environment you have users who habitually offer the relevant data anyway.
I therefore expect you could get a reasonable dataset together using this same format. In fact, I suggest a Sequence of Cookbook Development might do the trick. This is the kind of thing I want to see in Frontpage, which would have the added benefit of wide visibility in the community. You could do one for objectives and methods (what data is useful? how much should we ask for? about what?). Then you could do a Data I post where you ask for the data, in the previously determined format, on the previously determined topics, and for more things people are interested in. You could run as many additional Data posts as you wanted, as long as good info kept rolling in. Another post could present the scores, updated every so often with new data.
When that sequence ran its course, you’d probably have a reasonable chunk of data and a goodly chunk of feedback, for zero infrastructure or presentation investment (beyond what you are making anyway). The important thing is that getting this far would be cheap and add value. Then a website becomes a question of adding more value or not.
Of course it is completely acceptable to just really want to do a website, and if it will make you happy you should do it. I sort of assumed this would all be drudgery of one sort or other, which may be completely wrong!
I agree with your premises, but not your conclusion. Symbols are important. We want LW to be a tribe, not a company.
We can start with a spreadsheet, but let’s make it look nice and polished eventually.
I daresay what distinguishes this tribe is preventing symbols from having more value than the reality to which they point.
That being said, I am not saying don’t polish—it is just a popular candidate for bikeshedding and I think you can deliver a hard majority of the value sans polish because of the makeup of the community. I would expect similar projects that developed the data to a good state before starting on a platform for presenting the data to succeed more often than projects which do the reverse, or work on them simultaneously.
But what if a neat 80⁄20 of good presentation is a way to get people to add more data? I see it more likely that a pretty website will act as a schelling point compared to some obscure sheet. Especially if we plug it into lesserwrong.com.
This is a good point, and if we were talking about a tool aimed at the general public, I would agree with you.
It is also true that when we are talking about voluntary collaboration, it can easily be the case where someone pops up for whom a website is very easy.
But I urge you to consider that the second person to respond to your post went ahead and put the data in a spreadsheet anyway on their own initiative, and what this implies about the userbase you are after. I notice that whenever I read a post about a trick or method on here or elsewhere in the diaspora, people commonly respond with whether it works for them, what other method they used to receive the same goal, etc. I expect the fundamental challenge in getting user data to be that users want to see the results of the data but not offer it themselves, but in this environment you have users who habitually offer the relevant data anyway.
I therefore expect you could get a reasonable dataset together using this same format. In fact, I suggest a Sequence of Cookbook Development might do the trick. This is the kind of thing I want to see in Frontpage, which would have the added benefit of wide visibility in the community. You could do one for objectives and methods (what data is useful? how much should we ask for? about what?). Then you could do a Data I post where you ask for the data, in the previously determined format, on the previously determined topics, and for more things people are interested in. You could run as many additional Data posts as you wanted, as long as good info kept rolling in. Another post could present the scores, updated every so often with new data.
When that sequence ran its course, you’d probably have a reasonable chunk of data and a goodly chunk of feedback, for zero infrastructure or presentation investment (beyond what you are making anyway). The important thing is that getting this far would be cheap and add value. Then a website becomes a question of adding more value or not.
Of course it is completely acceptable to just really want to do a website, and if it will make you happy you should do it. I sort of assumed this would all be drudgery of one sort or other, which may be completely wrong!