What’s better, recommending a resource to improve something or recommending a specific topic to improve with resource suggestions as reply’s?
Not really sure here, but I would probably focus on resources. At least they are more obviously structured (this is one resource, this is another resource) than topics (is this topic a part of that topic? are these two topics related?). Also easier to vote on—there can be two books on topic, one good and one bad. Voting on topics wouldn’t make sense; different people in different situations want to improve on different things. Even the resource-topic relationship is not clear; some resources say: “doing this improves your life in many aspects”.
by collecting data? Do you mean collecting the self-improvement resource suggestions themselves, or opinions/ratings/votes on the suggestions?
Collecting the resources which get positive votes. Maximizing the number of resources would be a lost purpose. We can’t read them all; the time is precious. We should only read the best ones (and the community vote is a heuristic to find them). But because different people want different things, it would be nice to have a little for everyone.
What if there are too many comments on the discussion for people to navigate through it?
I’d call it success. Really, I am more afraid of the opposite situation: too few people caring enough to comment; because then I wouldn’t know what to do. If there are too many comments, you could for example collect the resources and make a poll. Or just start another discussion a month later, where the first comment would contain the poll about the resources recommended in the previous discussion. Or anything else. The big problem is IMHO if people generally endorse the idea, but the discussion is followed by… silence.
Just to verify, in the comments area of the first discussion asking for self-improvement recommendations, write a comment polling people where to put the data, right?
Yeah. I am not sure about the options in the poll; perhaps: “put them in LW wiki”, “put them in LW article”, “create a new wiki” and “other (explain in a comment)”?
I’ll focus on resources rather than topics, and collect crowd opinion on resources.
I’d call it success. Really, I am more afraid of the opposite situation: too few people caring enough to comment; because then I wouldn’t know what to do. If there are too many comments, you could for example collect the resources and make a poll. Or just start another discussion a month later, where the first comment would contain the poll about the resources recommended in the previous discussion. Or anything else. The big problem is IMHO if people generally endorse the idea, but the discussion is followed by… silence.
Remember Instrumental rationality/self help resources, and more recently Proposal: periodic repost of the Best Learning resources? I think the success of those discussions means the idea is already a success. I saw that the post asking for resources became hard to navigate because all the different life categories listed generated too many recommendations. To avoid that, should I start discussions with different life categories every time? Other people have already tested the idea and it is popular, making an effective instrumental rationality resource collection program is the hard part.
How come you suggested a poll to overcome too any comments, and then reposting the discussion? I don’t think a poll would solve the too many comments problem because there are simply too many useful things to recommend improving. Many things would be useful. Look at all of lukeprog’s social skill resouces! Ask just for social skill resources, dump that in, then throw in another 20 recommendations and even more low impact suggestion and the discussion would be swamped. A poll with so many different resources will just exacerbate the problem.
The only solution I can think of is having many different discussions, each on a separate area of life or even separate categories in one area of life. Whether or not to space it out or just post ~7 discussions at once is the question.
Obviously you put more thoughts to it than I did. Yes, self-help can be a very wide category, a superset of all learning. I was thinking about something more narrow, like changing one’s habits or developing social skills.
So… uhm, I don’t know. Probably would try to split it to some categories, one per article, and put some time (a few days?) between them, if one category is enough to make a big discussion. Also, giving the specific category may help people remember some material that wouldn’t come to mind when thinking about “self-help” in general.
I’d say try the first topic, and you’ll see how it goes. Good luck!
Not really sure here, but I would probably focus on resources. At least they are more obviously structured (this is one resource, this is another resource) than topics (is this topic a part of that topic? are these two topics related?). Also easier to vote on—there can be two books on topic, one good and one bad. Voting on topics wouldn’t make sense; different people in different situations want to improve on different things. Even the resource-topic relationship is not clear; some resources say: “doing this improves your life in many aspects”.
Collecting the resources which get positive votes. Maximizing the number of resources would be a lost purpose. We can’t read them all; the time is precious. We should only read the best ones (and the community vote is a heuristic to find them). But because different people want different things, it would be nice to have a little for everyone.
I’d call it success. Really, I am more afraid of the opposite situation: too few people caring enough to comment; because then I wouldn’t know what to do. If there are too many comments, you could for example collect the resources and make a poll. Or just start another discussion a month later, where the first comment would contain the poll about the resources recommended in the previous discussion. Or anything else. The big problem is IMHO if people generally endorse the idea, but the discussion is followed by… silence.
Yeah. I am not sure about the options in the poll; perhaps: “put them in LW wiki”, “put them in LW article”, “create a new wiki” and “other (explain in a comment)”?
Thanks for the clarification.
I’ll focus on resources rather than topics, and collect crowd opinion on resources.
Remember Instrumental rationality/self help resources, and more recently Proposal: periodic repost of the Best Learning resources? I think the success of those discussions means the idea is already a success. I saw that the post asking for resources became hard to navigate because all the different life categories listed generated too many recommendations. To avoid that, should I start discussions with different life categories every time? Other people have already tested the idea and it is popular, making an effective instrumental rationality resource collection program is the hard part.
How come you suggested a poll to overcome too any comments, and then reposting the discussion? I don’t think a poll would solve the too many comments problem because there are simply too many useful things to recommend improving. Many things would be useful. Look at all of lukeprog’s social skill resouces! Ask just for social skill resources, dump that in, then throw in another 20 recommendations and even more low impact suggestion and the discussion would be swamped. A poll with so many different resources will just exacerbate the problem.
The only solution I can think of is having many different discussions, each on a separate area of life or even separate categories in one area of life. Whether or not to space it out or just post ~7 discussions at once is the question.
Obviously you put more thoughts to it than I did. Yes, self-help can be a very wide category, a superset of all learning. I was thinking about something more narrow, like changing one’s habits or developing social skills.
So… uhm, I don’t know. Probably would try to split it to some categories, one per article, and put some time (a few days?) between them, if one category is enough to make a big discussion. Also, giving the specific category may help people remember some material that wouldn’t come to mind when thinking about “self-help” in general.
I’d say try the first topic, and you’ll see how it goes. Good luck!