I suspect (but am not sure) that the cases in which long-running discussion would be valuable aren’t ones where a post-plus-comment system is ideal, even at the start before the discussion has petered out. They’re ones where A writes something substantial (of post-length), and then B writes something similarly substantial (also of post-length), and then A writes something similarly substantial, and so forth. In that case, B should be writing a post rather than a comment.
Writing top-level posts can be intimidating, and can be a lot of work. (They can be intimidating because they’re a lot of work—one feels daunted at the prospect. They can be a lot of work because they’re intimidating—fear of writing something unsatisfactory motivates research and polishing. This parenthesis is really just for fun.) Perhaps there’s space for something intermediate between a comment and a post, somehow, for exactly this situation? But I’m not sure what it would be, how it would work, or whether it would actually end up feeling like something intermediate.
In the absence of such a mechanism, I suggest: (1) If you have something to say in response to a post, and it feels as if it might turn into a discussion that will run for more than a day or two, consider making your response a post rather than a comment. (2) If a discussion in comments turns out to be substantive and potentially long-running, then (as a participant) consider making a post rather than a comment next. (It should begin with a pointer to the existing discussion and a brief summary, which will also probably help the discussion. And of course you should drop a link to the post into the discussion in comments.)
Having written this, I see that Ericf has said something similar much more briefly and adamzerner says: no, I’m talking about back-and-forth stuff. But it seems to me that quickfire back-and-forth of the sort that’s better staying in comments is seldom productive when extended beyond (say) a week, both because purely mechanically it becomes difficult and unpleasant to follow in a nested comment-thread setup and also because quick back-and-forth comments are mostly about what you might call “easy” responses: A says something, B realises that it conflicts with some ideas B already has, B remarks on that, A finds that what B says conflicts with ideas A already has, etc. This can be helpful, but usually there’s only so much “on the surface” that’s actually productive to say and long back-and-forth discussions tend to end up with everyone feeling that the other party is saying the same thing over and over and not really understanding, as a result of which they have to keep reiterating things that the other party hasn’t understood. (The other party, meanwhile, of course feels the same way.)
I think most discussions that are worth continuing at length involve, at some point, more serious engagement than that and deeper thinking, and that’s a point at which making a post rather than a comment makes sense.
There are a few things that are tagged as “the great conversations on LessWrong” in my mind, and those are specifically ones that took the form of posts-as-responses. Two specific examples that I’m thinking of would be
Wei Dai’s The Nature of Offense, which was a response to three earlier posts by Alicorn, orthonormal and Eliezer (posts which had in turn been responding to each other), and showed how each of them was a special case of a so-far unrecognized general principle of what offense is.
Morendil and my Red Paperclip Theory of Status; this was a post that Morendil and I co-authored after I had proposed a definition of status in the comments of a post that Morendil had made that was in turn responding to a number of other posts (mine one of them) about “what is status” on LW. I’m no doubt a little biased in considering this one of the great successes, but it felt pretty significant in that to me it felt like it did to the concept of status what Wei Dai’s post did to the concept of offense: pulled together all the threads of the conflicting theories that’d been proposed so far to provide an overall synthesis and definition that the main participants in the discussion (in this case me and Morendil; not everyone seems to have found the post’s model equally useful) agreed to have resolved it.
I would also want to be able to nominate Eliezer and Robin’s FOOM debate, but while that one is certainly long and has them engaging each other, ultimately it didn’t seem to bring their views substantially closer to each other—much unlike the two other examples I mentioned.
Hm, I’m finding it difficult to think in the abstract about the question of “extended discussion in the comments section vs having a follow up post”. I feel like it’s the sort of thing where it’s easier to think about a concrete example. Fortunately, I just came across one!
At this point in my conversation with bendini, I agreed with their point about a shift in cultural norms needing to come before any UI changes. I feel like this would be a good time to continue via a follow up post. However, before reaching this point, I think the back and forth discussion in the comments section worked well. I sense that in practice, using your judgement for this question of comment section vs follow up post would work out well.
But more to the point, I think my original idea of having these crazy month long discussions via the comments section is probably wrong. It’d probably make sense to continue via a follow up post before the discussion gets that long. Maybe not 100% of the time, but most of the time.
Writing top-level posts can be intimidating, and can be a lot of work. (They can be intimidating because they’re a lot of work—one feels daunted at the prospect. They can be a lot of work because they’re intimidating—fear of writing something unsatisfactory motivates research and polishing. This parenthesis is really just for fun.) Perhaps there’s space for something intermediate between a comment and a post, somehow, for exactly this situation? But I’m not sure what it would be, how it would work, or whether it would actually end up feeling like something intermediate.
This is a great point. I agree that this is an important barrier. I think the LW team has tried to address this with the concepts of personal blog posts having a low bar, and then also with shortform posts. And in some sense, with the concept of asking a question too. However, piggybacking off of bendini, I think that the real crux of the problem is social/cultural shifts, not UI shifts.
But it seems to me that quickfire back-and-forth of the sort that’s better staying in comments is seldom productive when extended beyond (say) a week, both because purely mechanically it becomes difficult and unpleasant to follow in a nested comment-thread setup
Agreed. This is an important practical consideration that I overlooked. Thanks for bringing it up.
and also because quick back-and-forth comments are mostly about what you might call “easy” responses:
I think I am more bullish than you about back-and-forth comments being useful/productive, but I don’t see it as an important point to discuss further, because big picture I agree that after however many days, it’ll usually make sense to continue the discussion by writing up a new post.
I suspect (but am not sure) that the cases in which long-running discussion would be valuable aren’t ones where a post-plus-comment system is ideal, even at the start before the discussion has petered out. They’re ones where A writes something substantial (of post-length), and then B writes something similarly substantial (also of post-length), and then A writes something similarly substantial, and so forth. In that case, B should be writing a post rather than a comment.
Writing top-level posts can be intimidating, and can be a lot of work. (They can be intimidating because they’re a lot of work—one feels daunted at the prospect. They can be a lot of work because they’re intimidating—fear of writing something unsatisfactory motivates research and polishing. This parenthesis is really just for fun.) Perhaps there’s space for something intermediate between a comment and a post, somehow, for exactly this situation? But I’m not sure what it would be, how it would work, or whether it would actually end up feeling like something intermediate.
In the absence of such a mechanism, I suggest: (1) If you have something to say in response to a post, and it feels as if it might turn into a discussion that will run for more than a day or two, consider making your response a post rather than a comment. (2) If a discussion in comments turns out to be substantive and potentially long-running, then (as a participant) consider making a post rather than a comment next. (It should begin with a pointer to the existing discussion and a brief summary, which will also probably help the discussion. And of course you should drop a link to the post into the discussion in comments.)
Having written this, I see that Ericf has said something similar much more briefly and adamzerner says: no, I’m talking about back-and-forth stuff. But it seems to me that quickfire back-and-forth of the sort that’s better staying in comments is seldom productive when extended beyond (say) a week, both because purely mechanically it becomes difficult and unpleasant to follow in a nested comment-thread setup and also because quick back-and-forth comments are mostly about what you might call “easy” responses: A says something, B realises that it conflicts with some ideas B already has, B remarks on that, A finds that what B says conflicts with ideas A already has, etc. This can be helpful, but usually there’s only so much “on the surface” that’s actually productive to say and long back-and-forth discussions tend to end up with everyone feeling that the other party is saying the same thing over and over and not really understanding, as a result of which they have to keep reiterating things that the other party hasn’t understood. (The other party, meanwhile, of course feels the same way.)
I think most discussions that are worth continuing at length involve, at some point, more serious engagement than that and deeper thinking, and that’s a point at which making a post rather than a comment makes sense.
There are a few things that are tagged as “the great conversations on LessWrong” in my mind, and those are specifically ones that took the form of posts-as-responses. Two specific examples that I’m thinking of would be
Wei Dai’s The Nature of Offense, which was a response to three earlier posts by Alicorn, orthonormal and Eliezer (posts which had in turn been responding to each other), and showed how each of them was a special case of a so-far unrecognized general principle of what offense is.
Morendil and my Red Paperclip Theory of Status; this was a post that Morendil and I co-authored after I had proposed a definition of status in the comments of a post that Morendil had made that was in turn responding to a number of other posts (mine one of them) about “what is status” on LW. I’m no doubt a little biased in considering this one of the great successes, but it felt pretty significant in that to me it felt like it did to the concept of status what Wei Dai’s post did to the concept of offense: pulled together all the threads of the conflicting theories that’d been proposed so far to provide an overall synthesis and definition that the main participants in the discussion (in this case me and Morendil; not everyone seems to have found the post’s model equally useful) agreed to have resolved it.
I would also want to be able to nominate Eliezer and Robin’s FOOM debate, but while that one is certainly long and has them engaging each other, ultimately it didn’t seem to bring their views substantially closer to each other—much unlike the two other examples I mentioned.
Thanks for contributing these examples!
Eliezer and Robin’s debate also wasn’t really no LessWrong and happened outside of it.
Hm, I’m finding it difficult to think in the abstract about the question of “extended discussion in the comments section vs having a follow up post”. I feel like it’s the sort of thing where it’s easier to think about a concrete example. Fortunately, I just came across one!
At this point in my conversation with bendini, I agreed with their point about a shift in cultural norms needing to come before any UI changes. I feel like this would be a good time to continue via a follow up post. However, before reaching this point, I think the back and forth discussion in the comments section worked well. I sense that in practice, using your judgement for this question of comment section vs follow up post would work out well.
But more to the point, I think my original idea of having these crazy month long discussions via the comments section is probably wrong. It’d probably make sense to continue via a follow up post before the discussion gets that long. Maybe not 100% of the time, but most of the time.
This is a great point. I agree that this is an important barrier. I think the LW team has tried to address this with the concepts of personal blog posts having a low bar, and then also with shortform posts. And in some sense, with the concept of asking a question too. However, piggybacking off of bendini, I think that the real crux of the problem is social/cultural shifts, not UI shifts.
Agreed. This is an important practical consideration that I overlooked. Thanks for bringing it up.
I think I am more bullish than you about back-and-forth comments being useful/productive, but I don’t see it as an important point to discuss further, because big picture I agree that after however many days, it’ll usually make sense to continue the discussion by writing up a new post.
maybe scheduled a chat? text or audio or something like that to discuss an article?
Makes sense.