I have my own website and I can set up a wiki/social network dedicated to self improvement/instrumental rationality. Is there significant community interest?
If there is significant interest, would a wiki with social networking features such as forums and chat be more useful, or should I just stick to a wiki?
Wiki options: DocuWiki, MediaWiki, PmWiki, and WikkaWiki
Social networking options (with wiki): BuddyPress on WordPress
I am open to other suggestions, but they may be harder or more expensive for me to set up. If anyone has experience setting up websites, their help would be greatly appreciated (if the website concept is deemed useful).
It seems like there is significant interest, so I will work on launching the website immediately. A “first draft” should be ready today or tomorrow unless technical difficulties come up.
A question to everyone: What would work better, a wiki, or a wiki with social networking features? Or does it not matter?
Should I create a separate discussion on this topic?
I think the most difficult part is sorting and collecting the texts. Even if you choose a wrong software—if you make a good choice of the material, you can switch to another software later.
Generally, I would recommend using MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia. You don’t get other software tested by so many users. I have repeated experience with people suggesting using other kinds of wiki, because they have this or that additional feature, only to find out that the main feature—editing pages—is full of bugs. I prefer if the software does one thing and does it well. -- I don’t know what those “social networking features” are specifically, but I would guess they don’t really add much value to the project. The wiki has talk pages, and you can always install a forum or chat as a separate software.
As a first iteration I would probably do a main page with a list of topics, a page per topic (such as “programming”), and a separate page for each significant material where the main ideas could be summarized.
The difficult part will be collecting the material, describing the material, and protecting the site against vandals or mindkilled people (as self-improvement is often dangerously close to self-delusion).
I have my own website and I can set up a wiki/social network dedicated to self improvement/instrumental rationality. Is there significant community interest?
If there is significant interest, would a wiki with social networking features such as forums and chat be more useful, or should I just stick to a wiki?
Wiki options: DocuWiki, MediaWiki, PmWiki, and WikkaWiki
Social networking options (with wiki): BuddyPress on WordPress
I am open to other suggestions, but they may be harder or more expensive for me to set up. If anyone has experience setting up websites, their help would be greatly appreciated (if the website concept is deemed useful).
It seems like there is significant interest, so I will work on launching the website immediately. A “first draft” should be ready today or tomorrow unless technical difficulties come up.
A question to everyone: What would work better, a wiki, or a wiki with social networking features? Or does it not matter?
Should I create a separate discussion on this topic?
Will you be announcing and posting a link in LW discussion?
I will be soon, sorry for the delay in reply
Edit: Discussion here
Yes, I think that would be a good idea.
I think the most difficult part is sorting and collecting the texts. Even if you choose a wrong software—if you make a good choice of the material, you can switch to another software later.
Generally, I would recommend using MediaWiki, the software used by Wikipedia. You don’t get other software tested by so many users. I have repeated experience with people suggesting using other kinds of wiki, because they have this or that additional feature, only to find out that the main feature—editing pages—is full of bugs. I prefer if the software does one thing and does it well. -- I don’t know what those “social networking features” are specifically, but I would guess they don’t really add much value to the project. The wiki has talk pages, and you can always install a forum or chat as a separate software.
As a first iteration I would probably do a main page with a list of topics, a page per topic (such as “programming”), and a separate page for each significant material where the main ideas could be summarized.
The difficult part will be collecting the material, describing the material, and protecting the site against vandals or mindkilled people (as self-improvement is often dangerously close to self-delusion).