For me, (1) and (2) are linked. I dabbled on LW, and presented some of my own ideas in the comments sections. None of them piqued anyone’s interest, even if they were on pillar topics like FAI. I stopped being interested in LW, because:
EY stopped being as active, and no one with his clarity and perspective took his place as an article writer. I didn’t see as many interesting ideas to talk about.
I wasn’t able to engage others in the comment sections. I didn’t see anyone I was on the same wavelength with to talk about the ideas I did see.
I don’t just come to a site like LW to self-improve. I come to engage with intelligent, rational people. I don’t get the new site layout. The “Posts” vs “Discussion” split appears totally arbitrary now that they are parallel. Is this place a wiki or a forum or a social news site? Everything is very unfocused, and there isn’t enough of a userbase to keep that many interesting discussions going. I check in maybe once a month now, and it looks more and more like a knowledge-management site than a discussion forum.
I wasn’t able to engage others in the comment sections. I didn’t see anyone I was on the same wavelength with to talk about the ideas I did see.
I agree that it can be difficult to get a start commenting on LW. The karma system favors regulars, because people skip over comments whose user names they do not recognize and/or have low votes, and this is a self-reinforcing process. Again I think experimenting, in this case with the way comments are presented, could be beneficial.
EY stopped being as active, and no one with his clarity and perspective took his place as an article writer. I didn’t see as many interesting ideas to talk about.
I actually prefer Luke as an article writer. Eliezer is the better writer in terms of clarity and language skills, but Luke is a better researcher and brings up a lot of interesting ideas.
I agree that Main isn’t very active lately, but Discussion tends to have fairly good discussions.
For me, (1) and (2) are linked. I dabbled on LW, and presented some of my own ideas in the comments sections. None of them piqued anyone’s interest, even if they were on pillar topics like FAI. I stopped being interested in LW, because:
EY stopped being as active, and no one with his clarity and perspective took his place as an article writer. I didn’t see as many interesting ideas to talk about.
I wasn’t able to engage others in the comment sections. I didn’t see anyone I was on the same wavelength with to talk about the ideas I did see.
I don’t just come to a site like LW to self-improve. I come to engage with intelligent, rational people. I don’t get the new site layout. The “Posts” vs “Discussion” split appears totally arbitrary now that they are parallel. Is this place a wiki or a forum or a social news site? Everything is very unfocused, and there isn’t enough of a userbase to keep that many interesting discussions going. I check in maybe once a month now, and it looks more and more like a knowledge-management site than a discussion forum.
I agree that it can be difficult to get a start commenting on LW. The karma system favors regulars, because people skip over comments whose user names they do not recognize and/or have low votes, and this is a self-reinforcing process. Again I think experimenting, in this case with the way comments are presented, could be beneficial.
Fair enough. It is definitely a bit of a turn-off to get downvotes with no comments, but every community has their common ways of communicating.
I actually prefer Luke as an article writer. Eliezer is the better writer in terms of clarity and language skills, but Luke is a better researcher and brings up a lot of interesting ideas.
I agree that Main isn’t very active lately, but Discussion tends to have fairly good discussions.
It definitely seems like Main is an announcement section for meetups, and Discussion is where discussions happen.
I’ll check out some of Luke’s articles!