Honestly; I didn’t think some of those tags through very well.
www.omnilibrium.com exists for politics. so I have removed the politics tag.
There already exists many places to talk about non-rational fiction. but few places to talk about rational-targeted fiction.
As for Art—The slack filled a hole in lw’er’s desire to talk about anything with their peers. We needed a place to cover art so that it didn’t clog up other places where it was less relevant. Art isn’t very rational; but videos and music preferences get shared there. I don’t know if lw-com needs a place to talk about art; I don’t think having another master-tag is a problem. if it is of no use we can remove it again.
www.omnilibrium.com exists for politics. so I have removed the politics tag.
There seems to be an implicit assumption there that we shouldn’t discuss anything on LW for which some other venue for reasoned discussion exists. Or perhaps that this is true only for politics, perhaps because politics tends to make people stupid?
I’m not sure I agree either in general or when restricted to politics. I think it would be bad to have much political discussion on LW, but it seems inevitable that there’ll be some, in which case it should probably be tagged appropriately.
I name omnilibrium because it was deliberate created from lesswrong; for lesswrong; for politics.
we shouldn’t discuss anything on LW for which some other venue for reasoned discussion exists.
More specifically; in choosing to change lesswrong; if we make it a venue for everything; we basically declare noise and not signal. Yes expanding LW is good; but also making lesswrong be the place for everything is bad.
The question that I am getting at is; What is lesswrong for?
I would have answered something like:
For sharing and cultivating epistemic and instrumental rationality techniques. For cultivating a community on the topic of rationality for the purposes of growing personally as well as producing more rationality materials together for the good of all people.
Any community spends some of its time and energy on “non-central” discussions. I think trying to prevent that would be a bad idea. (I agree that encouraging political discussions on LW would be a bad idea too.)
When I made my comment above I hadn’t actually looked at the relevant bit of your document. Having done so, I think I’m confused. LW already has lots of tags. In particular, it already has a politicstag that’s been used quite a bit. Your document lists a bunch of tags; what significance exactly is this list intended to have?
“We should make sure LW has these tags.” Doesn’t it already?
“We should make sure LW has these tags, and no others.” That seems like an obviously bad idea.
“We should burn the existing LW to the ground and rebuild a new system; that system should have these tags.” Is anyone proposing anything so radical?
“No, no, this is just a list of tags that should have an associated RSS feed.” Isn’t it much easier just to make that happen for all tags automagically?
Something else. But what?
Surely, whatever we do to LW’s tagging system, it needs to be possible for posters to choose (and if necessary create) their own tags. Unless we are going to ban all discussions that have any connection with politics, sometimes they will quite rightly want a “politics” tag. Despite the existence of Omnilibrium, and despite the fact that politics is far from being the core business of LW.
(Some of those articles tagged “politics” are in fact really good.)
Lesswrong has plenty of tags; they are not organised well or easy to browse.
By creating a list of common tags or master tags (class/type tags); (and showing them on the page where article writing happens) We can help people classify their efforts. It’s great to share a link of something found elsewhere on LW; but someone not interested in seeing linkposts cannot currently filter out link-posts from their view. They can choose not to click on them but I would much prefer a LW where I can opt-out of seeing posts on certain topics (easy example: politics).
Also if we show tags on the sidebar it will be easier to get a feel for what lesswrong is about (or filter what is available on lw) than say; reading the first 3 posts in discussion.
Honestly; I didn’t think some of those tags through very well.
www.omnilibrium.com exists for politics. so I have removed the politics tag.
There already exists many places to talk about non-rational fiction. but few places to talk about rational-targeted fiction.
As for Art—The slack filled a hole in lw’er’s desire to talk about anything with their peers. We needed a place to cover art so that it didn’t clog up other places where it was less relevant. Art isn’t very rational; but videos and music preferences get shared there. I don’t know if lw-com needs a place to talk about art; I don’t think having another master-tag is a problem. if it is of no use we can remove it again.
There seems to be an implicit assumption there that we shouldn’t discuss anything on LW for which some other venue for reasoned discussion exists. Or perhaps that this is true only for politics, perhaps because politics tends to make people stupid?
I’m not sure I agree either in general or when restricted to politics. I think it would be bad to have much political discussion on LW, but it seems inevitable that there’ll be some, in which case it should probably be tagged appropriately.
I name omnilibrium because it was deliberate created from lesswrong; for lesswrong; for politics.
More specifically; in choosing to change lesswrong; if we make it a venue for everything; we basically declare noise and not signal. Yes expanding LW is good; but also making lesswrong be the place for everything is bad.
The question that I am getting at is; What is lesswrong for?
I would have answered something like:
For sharing and cultivating epistemic and instrumental rationality techniques. For cultivating a community on the topic of rationality for the purposes of growing personally as well as producing more rationality materials together for the good of all people.
Any community spends some of its time and energy on “non-central” discussions. I think trying to prevent that would be a bad idea. (I agree that encouraging political discussions on LW would be a bad idea too.)
When I made my comment above I hadn’t actually looked at the relevant bit of your document. Having done so, I think I’m confused. LW already has lots of tags. In particular, it already has a politics tag that’s been used quite a bit. Your document lists a bunch of tags; what significance exactly is this list intended to have?
“We should make sure LW has these tags.” Doesn’t it already?
“We should make sure LW has these tags, and no others.” That seems like an obviously bad idea.
“We should burn the existing LW to the ground and rebuild a new system; that system should have these tags.” Is anyone proposing anything so radical?
“No, no, this is just a list of tags that should have an associated RSS feed.” Isn’t it much easier just to make that happen for all tags automagically?
Something else. But what?
Surely, whatever we do to LW’s tagging system, it needs to be possible for posters to choose (and if necessary create) their own tags. Unless we are going to ban all discussions that have any connection with politics, sometimes they will quite rightly want a “politics” tag. Despite the existence of Omnilibrium, and despite the fact that politics is far from being the core business of LW.
(Some of those articles tagged “politics” are in fact really good.)
Lesswrong has plenty of tags; they are not organised well or easy to browse.
By creating a list of common tags or master tags (class/type tags); (and showing them on the page where article writing happens) We can help people classify their efforts. It’s great to share a link of something found elsewhere on LW; but someone not interested in seeing linkposts cannot currently filter out link-posts from their view. They can choose not to click on them but I would much prefer a LW where I can opt-out of seeing posts on certain topics (easy example: politics).
Also if we show tags on the sidebar it will be easier to get a feel for what lesswrong is about (or filter what is available on lw) than say; reading the first 3 posts in discussion.