A way to discuss ideas for the site, vote on them, and incentivize the generation of good ideas. I sense that having this would be huge. a) I sense that there are a lot of good ideas out there in people’s heads but that they haven’t shared. b) I sense that by discussing things, there could be a lot of refinement of current ideas, and a lot of generation of new ideas.
By ideas for the site, do you mean changes for the site code? And if you mean changes to the code, do you mean the change ideas, or the change implementations?
The backend is open source, and posts were made in 2011 and 2012 on how to make modifications to the code so that users could submit improvements. I don’t pay close attention, but my impression is that very few, if any, improvements have been submitted by users.
Issues can be reported (i.e. requests made) at the Google Code page. But resources to implement those changes are minimal, as I understand it.
It seems to me that the primary piece missing is the effort. Either volunteers need to familiarize themselves with the codebase and then make changes, or volunteers need to put up enough cash to hire devs to make changes. (Presumably the folks at Trike Apps, who would need to approve those changes anyway.)
A way for people to assign monetary value to requests (“I would pay $20 for five separate subreddits”) and aggregate those pledges into prizes would perhaps be interesting and solve some of the core problems (while causing other, hopefully more minor, problems). Either it’s clear that something is worth doing, it gets done, and the doer is rewarded, or it’s clear that something is not worth doing, and it remains deliberately undone.
If we have a way to actually implement improvements to the site, I’d be interested in learning how to do so. I have some development experience. Monetary rewards could certainly motivate me to do so (get me to do it sooner), but I’ll probably start researching and working anyway.
As adamzerner asked in another comment, will my contributions actually make it to the site? I need to do more research.
By ideas for the site, do you mean changes for the site code? And if you mean changes to the code, do you mean the change ideas, or the change implementations?
I mean features.
Issues can be reported (i.e. requests made) at the Google Code page. But resources to implement those changes are minimal, as I understand it.
My impression is that because of trivial inconveniences, these are actually huge problems. I’m not sure though. I’m an inexperience developer, and in looking at it I feel like I don’t know where to start. Plus, it has the feeling of a dead project (because it is), and this is very demotivating. “Will anyone respond to the Issue I create? The pull request I issue? Is this even the right place for me to do that stuff?”
It seems to me that the primary piece missing is the effort.
Right. I should have talked about this in my post, but my thoughts are still very unrefined. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking:
My overarching point in this post is that improving LW is a high level action that could be very very impactful. I don’t know how to argue this well yet. Some outside view evidence might be that Eliezer judged it worth it to invest his time in the Sequences and in HPMOR to develop the rationality community. I think that there’s still a ton of room for improvement, and that it wouldn’t take that much effort.
I think that others could be convinced of this (although I definitely don’t expect this post to do it).
I think that if others were convinced of this, they’d want to contribute. Well, enough people anyway. There seems to be a lot of people who are capable of contributing, and we’d only need a handful. (I wish I could give a good estimate on how many man-months it’d take.)
I think that trivial inconveniences are a big reason why people don’t contribute (sort of). I sense that if a reasonably organized plan was laid out, it seemed like it’d be impactful, and contributing was low friction, we’d get more than enough volunteers.
I think trivial inconveniences are a huge part of it. I once was part of this group that created a website, and the owner put an edit button on the main page. If you clicked it you could see the source code of the entire website and modify any part of it.
I only have basic knowledge of HTML and javascript, but I ended up spending a bunch of time improving the site. I mean it wasn’t a lot, I think I just did some minor editing and added a few pages that embedded an IRC client and an embedded version of our subreddit.
But to my memory, it’s the only time I’ve contributed anything to any kind of open source project. And just because it was so trivial to jump in and get started.
By ideas for the site, do you mean changes for the site code? And if you mean changes to the code, do you mean the change ideas, or the change implementations?
The backend is open source, and posts were made in 2011 and 2012 on how to make modifications to the code so that users could submit improvements. I don’t pay close attention, but my impression is that very few, if any, improvements have been submitted by users.
Issues can be reported (i.e. requests made) at the Google Code page. But resources to implement those changes are minimal, as I understand it.
It seems to me that the primary piece missing is the effort. Either volunteers need to familiarize themselves with the codebase and then make changes, or volunteers need to put up enough cash to hire devs to make changes. (Presumably the folks at Trike Apps, who would need to approve those changes anyway.)
A way for people to assign monetary value to requests (“I would pay $20 for five separate subreddits”) and aggregate those pledges into prizes would perhaps be interesting and solve some of the core problems (while causing other, hopefully more minor, problems). Either it’s clear that something is worth doing, it gets done, and the doer is rewarded, or it’s clear that something is not worth doing, and it remains deliberately undone.
If we have a way to actually implement improvements to the site, I’d be interested in learning how to do so. I have some development experience. Monetary rewards could certainly motivate me to do so (get me to do it sooner), but I’ll probably start researching and working anyway.
As adamzerner asked in another comment, will my contributions actually make it to the site? I need to do more research.
I mean features.
My impression is that because of trivial inconveniences, these are actually huge problems. I’m not sure though. I’m an inexperience developer, and in looking at it I feel like I don’t know where to start. Plus, it has the feeling of a dead project (because it is), and this is very demotivating. “Will anyone respond to the Issue I create? The pull request I issue? Is this even the right place for me to do that stuff?”
Right. I should have talked about this in my post, but my thoughts are still very unrefined. Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking:
My overarching point in this post is that improving LW is a high level action that could be very very impactful. I don’t know how to argue this well yet. Some outside view evidence might be that Eliezer judged it worth it to invest his time in the Sequences and in HPMOR to develop the rationality community. I think that there’s still a ton of room for improvement, and that it wouldn’t take that much effort.
I think that others could be convinced of this (although I definitely don’t expect this post to do it).
I think that if others were convinced of this, they’d want to contribute. Well, enough people anyway. There seems to be a lot of people who are capable of contributing, and we’d only need a handful. (I wish I could give a good estimate on how many man-months it’d take.)
I think that trivial inconveniences are a big reason why people don’t contribute (sort of). I sense that if a reasonably organized plan was laid out, it seemed like it’d be impactful, and contributing was low friction, we’d get more than enough volunteers.
I think trivial inconveniences are a huge part of it. I once was part of this group that created a website, and the owner put an edit button on the main page. If you clicked it you could see the source code of the entire website and modify any part of it.
I only have basic knowledge of HTML and javascript, but I ended up spending a bunch of time improving the site. I mean it wasn’t a lot, I think I just did some minor editing and added a few pages that embedded an IRC client and an embedded version of our subreddit.
But to my memory, it’s the only time I’ve contributed anything to any kind of open source project. And just because it was so trivial to jump in and get started.