I like the site. Although I suspect that the goal of the site (saving precious time by not consuming anything but the best) is contradictory to building a community around it.
Look at all the “social networks”, they are procrastination maximizers. Rationally people want to save time, but emotionally your heart is where you spend a lot of time. So if someone is saving your time, you will thank them, and then you’ll forget them. If someone takes all your free time in a way that is not completely repulsive, they will become your tribe.
Something similar is visible on LW. On one hand, we are complaining that LW is just another shiny toy for procrastination. On the other hand, if there is a week without too many articles (the best time to stop procrastinating and actually do something), we complain that LW is dying because of too much censorship or negativity or whatever. Maybe the best thing for most LWers would be if Eliezer would simply turn off the whole website for a month, and only display a text “stop procrastinating, go out and win; the website will be back on September 1st when all of you are expected to report your progress in a special Thread”. But would they hate it? Absolutely. Also, they would simply spend the whole August watching kitten videos on YouTube and refreshing HP:MoR homepage.
The only way to build an online community is to create a site where people can procrastinate.
Maybe the best thing for most LWers would be if Eliezer would simply turn off the whole website for a month, and only display a text “stop procrastinating, go out and win; the website will be back on September 1st when all of you are expected to report your progress in a special Thread”. But would they hate it?
I would love that. Eliezer, please do this.
But yeah, I would spend the whole August reading old Unqualified Reservations comment threads or something like that (I don’t fancy kitten videos).
I understand what you’re saying, but there are several reasons why I still think a community would be a good thing. The first is that it will help with my job of selecting content. Currently the process involve myself spending way too much time on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, and having a discussion board where people can post content specifically for the inclusion on the main site would help immensely.
Secondly, one of the defining features of the community (hopefully) will be a high signal/noise ratio. The tentative name for it is “Silence” to emphasize that. The main site already features several essays that should help with having the right mentality when participating to keep S/N high.
The plan is to have the link to the community portion of the site buried in the Communication section, so that people will already have read a good amount of stuff before finding it, and also explicitly telling them to read that whole page before participating.
You said yourself that if LessWrong went offline you would end up procrastinating somewhere else. I think this is true to the extent that there are other things you can do, that you would also be able to justify to yourself the time spent doing. You would never spend as much time watching cat videos as you do reading LessWrong. The problem with sites like LW is that they often give you the illusion that you’re getting your time’s worth even when you’re not. There are many of them, so you’d have to black out all websites like that at the same time, but it would probably be fine to keep the cat sites up.
What I’m trying to say is that, given that there are already several websites with the set of characteristics that are needed to make you procrastinate, having one more or one less won’t make a difference. So no, I’m not too worried about that. Furthermore, my site features a lot of content that contain that same sentiment of yours. For example the Noise section under Journalism or Confessions of a recovering lifehacker.
Anyway, I haven’t elaborated on what I mean by building a community because I have a lot in mind and I’m not sure what I’m going to tackle first. I despise actual social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I have ideas to make better alternatives. I also want to make something for children, because children have a lot of time and it would be well spent reading my collection of essays. A social media site that covers a broader range of subjects while keeping a high S/N and a Rationality flavor is something that I would love to have so I don’t have to suffer with Reddit and Metafilter, etc, etc. The one thing I want ASAP is the discussion board mentioned in the first paragraph.
given that there are already several websites with the set of characteristics that are needed to make you procrastinate, having one more or one less won’t make a difference.
I completely agree with this. For example, before I was spending my time reading LW, I was spending my time reading something else. So while it is true that I use LW mostly to procrastinate, it does not mean that LW made my time use somehow less efficient. (Depending on whether my translation of Sequences can be considered a useful work, LW probably made me a bit more efficient. However, I would prefer to see some increased efficiency also in LW-unrelated stuff.) If I’m going to spend my time reading the web instead of doing something else, I can at least read higher-quality stuff.
As a discussion board, I would probably recommend using PHPBB. It is easy to install, and it has a lot of configuration options: using an admin menu you can create new subforums in seconds, make them read-only, or only for members, etc. (It does not have the voting mechanism like Reddit / LessWrong. However, with Reddit / LessWrong software even trivial changes are extremely costly.) Just try PHPBB, and in worst case, you will later delete it and try something else.
For flat discussion I’ve been looking at Discourse.
The problem is that most of these software are a pain to get running. Originally I wanted to do everything myself and learn everything in the process, but it has been terribly unproductive and it took way too long to get where I am. That’s why I’m asking for some technical assistance.
I like the site. Although I suspect that the goal of the site (saving precious time by not consuming anything but the best) is contradictory to building a community around it.
Look at all the “social networks”, they are procrastination maximizers. Rationally people want to save time, but emotionally your heart is where you spend a lot of time. So if someone is saving your time, you will thank them, and then you’ll forget them. If someone takes all your free time in a way that is not completely repulsive, they will become your tribe.
Something similar is visible on LW. On one hand, we are complaining that LW is just another shiny toy for procrastination. On the other hand, if there is a week without too many articles (the best time to stop procrastinating and actually do something), we complain that LW is dying because of too much censorship or negativity or whatever. Maybe the best thing for most LWers would be if Eliezer would simply turn off the whole website for a month, and only display a text “stop procrastinating, go out and win; the website will be back on September 1st when all of you are expected to report your progress in a special Thread”. But would they hate it? Absolutely. Also, they would simply spend the whole August watching kitten videos on YouTube and refreshing HP:MoR homepage.
The only way to build an online community is to create a site where people can procrastinate.
I would love that. Eliezer, please do this.
But yeah, I would spend the whole August reading old Unqualified Reservations comment threads or something like that (I don’t fancy kitten videos).
I understand what you’re saying, but there are several reasons why I still think a community would be a good thing. The first is that it will help with my job of selecting content. Currently the process involve myself spending way too much time on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, and having a discussion board where people can post content specifically for the inclusion on the main site would help immensely.
Secondly, one of the defining features of the community (hopefully) will be a high signal/noise ratio. The tentative name for it is “Silence” to emphasize that. The main site already features several essays that should help with having the right mentality when participating to keep S/N high.
The plan is to have the link to the community portion of the site buried in the Communication section, so that people will already have read a good amount of stuff before finding it, and also explicitly telling them to read that whole page before participating.
You said yourself that if LessWrong went offline you would end up procrastinating somewhere else. I think this is true to the extent that there are other things you can do, that you would also be able to justify to yourself the time spent doing. You would never spend as much time watching cat videos as you do reading LessWrong. The problem with sites like LW is that they often give you the illusion that you’re getting your time’s worth even when you’re not. There are many of them, so you’d have to black out all websites like that at the same time, but it would probably be fine to keep the cat sites up.
What I’m trying to say is that, given that there are already several websites with the set of characteristics that are needed to make you procrastinate, having one more or one less won’t make a difference. So no, I’m not too worried about that. Furthermore, my site features a lot of content that contain that same sentiment of yours. For example the Noise section under Journalism or Confessions of a recovering lifehacker.
Anyway, I haven’t elaborated on what I mean by building a community because I have a lot in mind and I’m not sure what I’m going to tackle first. I despise actual social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and I have ideas to make better alternatives. I also want to make something for children, because children have a lot of time and it would be well spent reading my collection of essays. A social media site that covers a broader range of subjects while keeping a high S/N and a Rationality flavor is something that I would love to have so I don’t have to suffer with Reddit and Metafilter, etc, etc. The one thing I want ASAP is the discussion board mentioned in the first paragraph.
I completely agree with this. For example, before I was spending my time reading LW, I was spending my time reading something else. So while it is true that I use LW mostly to procrastinate, it does not mean that LW made my time use somehow less efficient. (Depending on whether my translation of Sequences can be considered a useful work, LW probably made me a bit more efficient. However, I would prefer to see some increased efficiency also in LW-unrelated stuff.) If I’m going to spend my time reading the web instead of doing something else, I can at least read higher-quality stuff.
As a discussion board, I would probably recommend using PHPBB. It is easy to install, and it has a lot of configuration options: using an admin menu you can create new subforums in seconds, make them read-only, or only for members, etc. (It does not have the voting mechanism like Reddit / LessWrong. However, with Reddit / LessWrong software even trivial changes are extremely costly.) Just try PHPBB, and in worst case, you will later delete it and try something else.
For flat discussion I’ve been looking at Discourse.
The problem is that most of these software are a pain to get running. Originally I wanted to do everything myself and learn everything in the process, but it has been terribly unproductive and it took way too long to get where I am. That’s why I’m asking for some technical assistance.