During the last cycle of harrumphing at Hacker News over the possibility that successively larger batches of new users were diluting the quality of the discussion there, I started building a startup around an improved community discussion platform. I had some cool mathematical/algorithmic ideas WhichThisMarginIsTooSmallToContain, and I came to similar conclusions about structure.
But I differ on a big issue. I think the wiki should be outward-looking rather than inward-looking.
It seems to me that the focus in this post is on developing the wiki as a tool so that lesswrong members can read lesswrong posts more easily. That’s great, of course. It’s healthy for the community to articulate its goals, social mores, and world view, and a wiki is a good way to lower the barriers to participation by new members.
But I think we ought to build a section of the wiki as a resource for people who are interested in topics like rationality, “philosophy,” standards of argument, and debate. Giving away useful stuff is the best recruiting we can do—there are no accessible resources out there on these topics. What’s out there now is arid.
TVTropes provides a good example of how to do this: a catalog of relatable examples, a community aesthetic, and a lot of sharp analysis in a Devil’s Dictionary-like format that’s fun to read. People follow a link from an online discussion, pause because the writing is witty and engaging—they got me with unobtanium—and leave a few days later, dazed and much more savvy about narrative entertainment than they were when they showed up.
If you thiink this is an impossibly high standard (a common objection), consider that the originators of most of the ideas to be found on that site, collectively, were the people Alan Sokal was joking about. Mention this to such a person, and he’ll make a clicky, disapproving noise with his tongue and say “That’s not funny.”
Good discussion has a very similar role, in the average netizen’s life, to good storytelling. Both are commonplace, social, and therefore inherently interesting, human experiences where the difference between “done well” and “done badly” is immediately, viscerally obvious. So if we can provide some useful information on decision and discussion—the exact contents of the starter kit are the subject of a top-level post I’ve been marinating -- the world should beat a path to our door.
I’ll judge the project successful when commenters in highbrow fora like LtU and Hacker News start using the lesswrong wiki to decide (or end) arguments the way they currently reference Snopes or invoke Godwin’s Law.
aside—In case it’s relevant to anyone, I’m no longer working actively on this project. I’m about to start on a different startup with more funding and a shorter path to profitability.
Right. Both blog and wiki should be outward-looking, using whatever is the best for their purposes. At the same time, they play different roles: the blog is for publication of new research in the relevant area, and the wiki is authoritative reference of relevant concepts. The wiki may be a useful place to link to from the blog, by virtue of being centered on the same area of investigation as the blog, but other than that it competes with the rest of the info in the world. Likewise, the blog may be a useful place to reference in the wiki articles, but it also competes with info in the rest of the world, with standard scientific publications, with Wikipedia, etc.
During the last cycle of harrumphing at Hacker News over the possibility that successively larger batches of new users were diluting the quality of the discussion there, I started building a startup around an improved community discussion platform. I had some cool mathematical/algorithmic ideas WhichThisMarginIsTooSmallToContain, and I came to similar conclusions about structure.
But I differ on a big issue. I think the wiki should be outward-looking rather than inward-looking.
It seems to me that the focus in this post is on developing the wiki as a tool so that lesswrong members can read lesswrong posts more easily. That’s great, of course. It’s healthy for the community to articulate its goals, social mores, and world view, and a wiki is a good way to lower the barriers to participation by new members.
But I think we ought to build a section of the wiki as a resource for people who are interested in topics like rationality, “philosophy,” standards of argument, and debate. Giving away useful stuff is the best recruiting we can do—there are no accessible resources out there on these topics. What’s out there now is arid.
TVTropes provides a good example of how to do this: a catalog of relatable examples, a community aesthetic, and a lot of sharp analysis in a Devil’s Dictionary-like format that’s fun to read. People follow a link from an online discussion, pause because the writing is witty and engaging—they got me with unobtanium—and leave a few days later, dazed and much more savvy about narrative entertainment than they were when they showed up.
If you thiink this is an impossibly high standard (a common objection), consider that the originators of most of the ideas to be found on that site, collectively, were the people Alan Sokal was joking about. Mention this to such a person, and he’ll make a clicky, disapproving noise with his tongue and say “That’s not funny.”
Good discussion has a very similar role, in the average netizen’s life, to good storytelling. Both are commonplace, social, and therefore inherently interesting, human experiences where the difference between “done well” and “done badly” is immediately, viscerally obvious. So if we can provide some useful information on decision and discussion—the exact contents of the starter kit are the subject of a top-level post I’ve been marinating -- the world should beat a path to our door.
I’ll judge the project successful when commenters in highbrow fora like LtU and Hacker News start using the lesswrong wiki to decide (or end) arguments the way they currently reference Snopes or invoke Godwin’s Law.
e.g. NoItDoesNotFrackingBegTheQuestion.
aside—In case it’s relevant to anyone, I’m no longer working actively on this project. I’m about to start on a different startup with more funding and a shorter path to profitability.
Right. Both blog and wiki should be outward-looking, using whatever is the best for their purposes. At the same time, they play different roles: the blog is for publication of new research in the relevant area, and the wiki is authoritative reference of relevant concepts. The wiki may be a useful place to link to from the blog, by virtue of being centered on the same area of investigation as the blog, but other than that it competes with the rest of the info in the world. Likewise, the blog may be a useful place to reference in the wiki articles, but it also competes with info in the rest of the world, with standard scientific publications, with Wikipedia, etc.