Kuro5hin had an editorial system, where all posts started out in a special section where they were separate and only visible to logged in users. Commenters would label their comments as either “topical” or “editorial”, and all editorial comments would be deleted when the post left editing; and votes cast during editing would determine where the post went (front page, less prominent section, or deleted).
Unfortunately, most of the busy smart people only looked at the posts after editing, while the trolls and people with too much free time managed the edit queue, eventually destroying the quality of the site and driving the good users away. It might be possible to salvage that model somehow, though.
We upvote much more than we downvote—just look at the mean comment and post scores. Also, the number of downvotes a user can make is capped at their karma.
The only change I’d make is to hide editorial comments when the post leaves editing (instead of deleting them), with a toggle option for logged-in users to carry on viewing them.
Unfortunately, most of the busy smart people only looked at the posts after editing, while the trolls and people with too much free time managed the edit queue, eventually destroying the quality of the site and driving the good users away. It might be possible to salvage that model somehow, though.
I think it is. There are several tricks we could use to give busy-smart people more of a chance to edit posts.
On Kuro5hin, if I remember right, posts left the editing queue automatically after 24 hours, either getting posted or kicked into the bit bucket. Also, users could vote to push the story out of the queue early. If Less Wrong reimplemented this system, we could raise the threshold for voting a story out of editing early, or remove the option entirely. We could even lengthen the period it spends in the editing stage. (This would also have the advantage of filtering out impatient people who couldn’t wait 3 days or whatever for their story to post.)
LW’s also just got a much smaller troll ratio than Kuro5hin did, which would help a lot.
It seems like there’s at least some interesting in doing something to deal with helping people to develop posting skills through a means other than simply writing lots of articles and bombarding the community with them. The editorial system seems like it has a lot of promising aspects.
The main thing is, it seems more valuable to implement a weak system than to simply talk about implementing a stronger system so whether the editorial system is the best that can be done depends on whether the people in charge of the community are interested in implementing it.
If they turn out to not be, I still wonder whether there’s a few people out there that can volunteer to help make posts better and a few people who can volunteer to not bombard LW but instead to develop their skills in a quieter way (nb: that doesn’t refer to anyone in particular except, potentially, myself). Personally, I still think that would be useful, even if suboptimal.
Does the lack of a response from EY imply that he’s not interested in that sort of change and, if so, is it EY who would be the one to make the decision?
EY has stated in the past that the reason most suggestions do not result in a change in the web site is that no programmer (or no programmer that EY and EY’s agents trust) is available to make the change.
Also, I think he reads only a fraction of LW these months.
Meanwhile, it would be probably be worthwhile if people would write about any improvement they’ve made in their ability to think and to convey their ideas, whether it’s deliberate or the result of being in useful communities.
I’m not sure that I’ve made improvements myself—I think my strategy (which it took a while to make conscious) of writing for the my past self who didn’t have the current insight has served me pretty well—that and General Semantics (a basic understanding that the map isn’t the territory).
If I were writing for a general audience, I think I’d need to learn about appropriate levels of redundancy.
Does the lack of a response from EY imply that he’s not interested in that sort of change and, if so, is it EY who would be the one to make the decision?
I wouldn’t read anything into the lack of response, EY often doesn’t comment on meta-discussion. In fact I’d guess there’s a good chance he hasn’t even seen this thread!
I guess it might be worth raising this in the Spring 2010 meta-thread? Come to think of it, it’s been 4+ months since that meta thread was started—it may even be worth someone posting a Summer 2010 meta-thread with this as a topic starter.
Okay then. Well I don’t have the karma to start a thread so I’ll leave it to someone who has if they think it’s worth while.
If nothing else, I wondered about the possibility of doing a top level post expressly for this purpose. So people could post an article with the idea being that comments in response would be aimed at improving it, rather than just general comments. And the further understanding that the original article would then be edited and people could comment on this new one. If the post got a good enough response after a few drafts, it could then be posted at the top level. Otherwise, it would be a good lesson anyway. It would also be less cluttered because it would all be within that purpose made, top level post.
Sounds like a good idea. The Open Thread could be (and has been) used for this, but it may be worthwhile to set up a thread specifically for constructive criticism on draft articles.
Kuro5hin had an editorial system, where all posts started out in a special section where they were separate and only visible to logged in users. Commenters would label their comments as either “topical” or “editorial”, and all editorial comments would be deleted when the post left editing; and votes cast during editing would determine where the post went (front page, less prominent section, or deleted).
Unfortunately, most of the busy smart people only looked at the posts after editing, while the trolls and people with too much free time managed the edit queue, eventually destroying the quality of the site and driving the good users away. It might be possible to salvage that model somehow, though.
We upvote much more than we downvote—just look at the mean comment and post scores. Also, the number of downvotes a user can make is capped at their karma.
Enthusiastically seconded.
The only change I’d make is to hide editorial comments when the post leaves editing (instead of deleting them), with a toggle option for logged-in users to carry on viewing them.
I think it is. There are several tricks we could use to give busy-smart people more of a chance to edit posts.
On Kuro5hin, if I remember right, posts left the editing queue automatically after 24 hours, either getting posted or kicked into the bit bucket. Also, users could vote to push the story out of the queue early. If Less Wrong reimplemented this system, we could raise the threshold for voting a story out of editing early, or remove the option entirely. We could even lengthen the period it spends in the editing stage. (This would also have the advantage of filtering out impatient people who couldn’t wait 3 days or whatever for their story to post.)
LW’s also just got a much smaller troll ratio than Kuro5hin did, which would help a lot.
It seems like there’s at least some interesting in doing something to deal with helping people to develop posting skills through a means other than simply writing lots of articles and bombarding the community with them. The editorial system seems like it has a lot of promising aspects.
The main thing is, it seems more valuable to implement a weak system than to simply talk about implementing a stronger system so whether the editorial system is the best that can be done depends on whether the people in charge of the community are interested in implementing it.
If they turn out to not be, I still wonder whether there’s a few people out there that can volunteer to help make posts better and a few people who can volunteer to not bombard LW but instead to develop their skills in a quieter way (nb: that doesn’t refer to anyone in particular except, potentially, myself). Personally, I still think that would be useful, even if suboptimal.
Does the lack of a response from EY imply that he’s not interested in that sort of change and, if so, is it EY who would be the one to make the decision?
EY has stated in the past that the reason most suggestions do not result in a change in the web site is that no programmer (or no programmer that EY and EY’s agents trust) is available to make the change.
Also, I think he reads only a fraction of LW these months.
Meanwhile, it would be probably be worthwhile if people would write about any improvement they’ve made in their ability to think and to convey their ideas, whether it’s deliberate or the result of being in useful communities.
I’m not sure that I’ve made improvements myself—I think my strategy (which it took a while to make conscious) of writing for the my past self who didn’t have the current insight has served me pretty well—that and General Semantics (a basic understanding that the map isn’t the territory).
If I were writing for a general audience, I think I’d need to learn about appropriate levels of redundancy.
I wouldn’t read anything into the lack of response, EY often doesn’t comment on meta-discussion. In fact I’d guess there’s a good chance he hasn’t even seen this thread!
I guess it might be worth raising this in the Spring 2010 meta-thread? Come to think of it, it’s been 4+ months since that meta thread was started—it may even be worth someone posting a Summer 2010 meta-thread with this as a topic starter.
Okay then. Well I don’t have the karma to start a thread so I’ll leave it to someone who has if they think it’s worth while.
If nothing else, I wondered about the possibility of doing a top level post expressly for this purpose. So people could post an article with the idea being that comments in response would be aimed at improving it, rather than just general comments. And the further understanding that the original article would then be edited and people could comment on this new one. If the post got a good enough response after a few drafts, it could then be posted at the top level. Otherwise, it would be a good lesson anyway. It would also be less cluttered because it would all be within that purpose made, top level post.
Sounds like a good idea. The Open Thread could be (and has been) used for this, but it may be worthwhile to set up a thread specifically for constructive criticism on draft articles.