That’s an interesting distinction, but I think the worst problem at LW is just that people rarely think of interesting things to write about. I don’t know whether all the low-hanging fruit has been gathered, or if we should be thinking about ways to find good topics. Scott Alexander seems to manage.
whether all the low-hanging fruit has been gathered
Still there is the issue that it is a format of publishing sorted by publishing date. It is not like a library where it is just as easy to find a book published 5 years ago than the one published yesterday because they are sorted by topic or the author’s name or something. Sequences and the wiki help this, still, a timeless view of the whole thing would be IMHO highly useful. A good post should not be “buried” just because it is 4 years old.
There’s a tremendous amount of material on LW. Do you have ideas about how to identify good posts and make them easier to find?
I can think of a solutions, but they might just converge on a few posts. Have a regular favorite posts thread. Alternatively, encourage people to look at high-karma older posts.
There’s a tremendous amount of material on LW. Do you have ideas about how to identify good posts and make them easier to find?
Actually, we could probably use off-the-shelf (literally) product recommendation software. The DB knows what posts people have upvoted and downvoted, and which posts they haven’t looked at yet (in order to get the “new since last visit” colored comment border).
That’s the thing though. My hypothesis is that the ‘people who seem to manage’ have left because the site is a lukewarm compromise between the two extremes that they might prefer it to be. Thus, subreddits.
Like, what would a Class Project to make good contributors on LW look like? Does that sound feasible to you?
Oh man, I’m arguing that blogging ability is innate.
I hope I didn’t come off like I’m going to automatically shoot all suggestions to reinvigorate LW out of the sky. That’s most of the problem with the userbase! I genuinely wonder what such a Class Project would look like, and would also be willing to participate if I am able.
Since my comment was written in the context of Nancy_Lebovitz’s comment, I’m specifically curious about how one would go about molding current members into high-quality contributors. I see a lot of stuff above about finding ways to make the user experience more palatable, but that in itself doesn’t seem to ensure the sort of change that I think most people want to see.
That’s an interesting distinction, but I think the worst problem at LW is just that people rarely think of interesting things to write about. I don’t know whether all the low-hanging fruit has been gathered, or if we should be thinking about ways to find good topics. Scott Alexander seems to manage.
Still there is the issue that it is a format of publishing sorted by publishing date. It is not like a library where it is just as easy to find a book published 5 years ago than the one published yesterday because they are sorted by topic or the author’s name or something. Sequences and the wiki help this, still, a timeless view of the whole thing would be IMHO highly useful. A good post should not be “buried” just because it is 4 years old.
There’s a tremendous amount of material on LW. Do you have ideas about how to identify good posts and make them easier to find?
I can think of a solutions, but they might just converge on a few posts. Have a regular favorite posts thread. Alternatively, encourage people to look at high-karma older posts.
Actually, we could probably use off-the-shelf (literally) product recommendation software. The DB knows what posts people have upvoted and downvoted, and which posts they haven’t looked at yet (in order to get the “new since last visit” colored comment border).
That’s the thing though. My hypothesis is that the ‘people who seem to manage’ have left because the site is a lukewarm compromise between the two extremes that they might prefer it to be. Thus, subreddits.
Like, what would a Class Project to make good contributors on LW look like? Does that sound feasible to you?
Oh man, I’m arguing that blogging ability is innate.
Obviously there’s an innate portion to blogging ability. We can still manipulate the environmental portion.
I hope I didn’t come off like I’m going to automatically shoot all suggestions to reinvigorate LW out of the sky. That’s most of the problem with the userbase! I genuinely wonder what such a Class Project would look like, and would also be willing to participate if I am able.
Since my comment was written in the context of Nancy_Lebovitz’s comment, I’m specifically curious about how one would go about molding current members into high-quality contributors. I see a lot of stuff above about finding ways to make the user experience more palatable, but that in itself doesn’t seem to ensure the sort of change that I think most people want to see.