I wish there were more discussion posts on LessWrong.
Right now it feels like it weakly if not moderately violates some sort of cultural norm to publish a discussion post (similar but to a lesser extent on the Shortform). Something low effort of the form “X is a topic I’d like to discuss. A, B and C are a few initial thoughts I have about it. What do you guys think?”
It seems to me like something we should encourage though. Here’s how I’m thinking about it. Such “discussion posts” currently happen informally in social circles. Maybe you’ll text a friend. Maybe you’ll bring it up at a meetup. Maybe you’ll post about it in a private Slack group.
But if it’s appropriate in those contexts, why shouldn’t it be appropriate on LessWrong? Why not benefit from having it be visible to more people? The more eyes you get on it, the better the chance someone has something helpful, insightful, or just generally useful to contribute.
The big downside I see is that it would screw up the post feed. Like when you go to lesswrong.com and see the list of posts, you don’t want that list to have a bunch of low quality discussion posts you’re not interested in. You don’t want to spend time and energy sifting through the noise to find the signal.
But this is easily solved with filters. Authors could mark/categorize/tag their posts as being a low-effort discussion post, and people who don’t want to see such posts in their feed can apply a filter to filter these discussion posts out.
Context: I was listening to the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast’s episode on LessOnline. Hearing them talk about the sorts of discussions they envision happening there made me think about why that sort of thing doesn’t happen more on LessWrong. Like, whatever you’d say to the group of people you’re hanging out with at LessOnline, why not publish a quick discussion post about it on LessWrong?
I wish there were more discussion posts on LessWrong.
Right now it feels like it weakly if not moderately violates some sort of cultural norm to publish a discussion post (similar but to a lesser extent on the Shortform). Something low effort of the form “X is a topic I’d like to discuss. A, B and C are a few initial thoughts I have about it. What do you guys think?”
It seems to me like something we should encourage though. Here’s how I’m thinking about it. Such “discussion posts” currently happen informally in social circles. Maybe you’ll text a friend. Maybe you’ll bring it up at a meetup. Maybe you’ll post about it in a private Slack group.
But if it’s appropriate in those contexts, why shouldn’t it be appropriate on LessWrong? Why not benefit from having it be visible to more people? The more eyes you get on it, the better the chance someone has something helpful, insightful, or just generally useful to contribute.
The big downside I see is that it would screw up the post feed. Like when you go to lesswrong.com and see the list of posts, you don’t want that list to have a bunch of low quality discussion posts you’re not interested in. You don’t want to spend time and energy sifting through the noise to find the signal.
But this is easily solved with filters. Authors could mark/categorize/tag their posts as being a low-effort discussion post, and people who don’t want to see such posts in their feed can apply a filter to filter these discussion posts out.
Context: I was listening to the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast’s episode on LessOnline. Hearing them talk about the sorts of discussions they envision happening there made me think about why that sort of thing doesn’t happen more on LessWrong. Like, whatever you’d say to the group of people you’re hanging out with at LessOnline, why not publish a quick discussion post about it on LessWrong?