From my experiences trying similar things over IRC, I have found that the lack of anything holding you to your promises definitely is a detriment to most people. I have found a few for whom that’s not the case, but that’s very much the exception. That’s definitely a failure mode to look out for, doing this online (especially in text) won’t work for many people. In addition, this discrepancy can create friction between people.
The general structure of the failure tends to be one person feeling vaguely bad about not talking as much, or missing a session. And then when they don’t have many vectors to viscerally receive signals of disapproval, of the kind that would cause them to be uncomfortable and go through with it even when they don’t want to, it becomes easiest to do it the next time. Schelling Fences are easier to break without face to face interaction.
There should be ways to bypass that problem. One of the memes around LW is actively reinforcing positive things, instead of relying on implied approval. If you can create a culture of actively rewarding success, and treating apathy as something to be stamped out at every point, then you can do it. You can also make a point to create norms where one goes out of their way to help someone who falls behind to figure out what the true problem is. If you can manage that, instead of silence or simple berating, then you can make it work. Ideas around Tell Culture can help you with this. Unfortunately, this also requires diverting a lot of focus into preserving those conditions. Creating community norms is hard, but that seems like the way you avoid that problem.
I don’t mean to imply that you want to start a community around this along the lines of the LW study hall, but this is what I have found from my attempts. Maybe someone will find it helpful.
From my experiences trying similar things over IRC, I have found that the lack of anything holding you to your promises definitely is a detriment to most people. I have found a few for whom that’s not the case, but that’s very much the exception. That’s definitely a failure mode to look out for, doing this online (especially in text) won’t work for many people. In addition, this discrepancy can create friction between people.
The general structure of the failure tends to be one person feeling vaguely bad about not talking as much, or missing a session. And then when they don’t have many vectors to viscerally receive signals of disapproval, of the kind that would cause them to be uncomfortable and go through with it even when they don’t want to, it becomes easiest to do it the next time. Schelling Fences are easier to break without face to face interaction.
There should be ways to bypass that problem. One of the memes around LW is actively reinforcing positive things, instead of relying on implied approval. If you can create a culture of actively rewarding success, and treating apathy as something to be stamped out at every point, then you can do it. You can also make a point to create norms where one goes out of their way to help someone who falls behind to figure out what the true problem is. If you can manage that, instead of silence or simple berating, then you can make it work. Ideas around Tell Culture can help you with this. Unfortunately, this also requires diverting a lot of focus into preserving those conditions. Creating community norms is hard, but that seems like the way you avoid that problem.
I don’t mean to imply that you want to start a community around this along the lines of the LW study hall, but this is what I have found from my attempts. Maybe someone will find it helpful.