It sounds like you’re trying to reapply a principle from software development to online community building?
LW has scaled. Lots of people read this site. Our last survey got over 1000 respondents. (This may not sound like much compared to e.g. reddit, but there are lots of dead little online communities that no one sees because they’re dead; being dead is the default state for an online community. The relevant norm is /r/LessWrongLounge, not reddit as a whole.)
Well, the scaling problem in software development was specifically about getting a lot of users, so it seems relevant.
Anyway, if we have scaled, and we’re not having Eternal September, that suggests we’re doing something right.
Is that thing we’re doing ‘right’… keeping out the normal people? If so, that’s not so great. It’s important to get through to normal people.
My (inadequately stated) point was, we’re much more likely to have problems attracting enough normal people than having trouble dealing with a flood of them. A little change to the header isn’t going to make that big a difference.
Is that a bug or a feature?
Bug, definitely. Why would you even ask that? Even if normal people can’t contribute, we would definitely like everyone to think more clearly.
Eternal September is a thing...
Sure, but what was the saying? “The most likely scaling problem is that you aren’t going to have any scaling problems.”
So why would you ask any questions about scaling, right? X-/
It sounds like you’re trying to reapply a principle from software development to online community building?
LW has scaled. Lots of people read this site. Our last survey got over 1000 respondents. (This may not sound like much compared to e.g. reddit, but there are lots of dead little online communities that no one sees because they’re dead; being dead is the default state for an online community. The relevant norm is /r/LessWrongLounge, not reddit as a whole.)
Well, the scaling problem in software development was specifically about getting a lot of users, so it seems relevant.
Anyway, if we have scaled, and we’re not having Eternal September, that suggests we’re doing something right.
Is that thing we’re doing ‘right’… keeping out the normal people? If so, that’s not so great. It’s important to get through to normal people.
My (inadequately stated) point was, we’re much more likely to have problems attracting enough normal people than having trouble dealing with a flood of them. A little change to the header isn’t going to make that big a difference.
Eternal September is normal people.
(It’s a bit more selective than Soylent Green).
No, Eternal September is being overwhelmed by clueless noobs.
If the pace of growth is moderate enough that newbies acculturate before their population dominates, then you don’t enter that condition.
I think we’re in broad agreement :-D but let me stress the Eternal part...