Programmers have a saying: “Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.” (It appears that this is properly attributed to David Wheeler.) That’s exactly what this post is proposing, and I approve highly.
However, this post didn’t appear to mention one of the biggest benefits of indirection. This post said that a Less Wrong post “should reference previous work by linking to the Wiki rather than other posts”. I want to point out that this will also reference future work, when the Wiki is updated after the post. (In C++ programmer jargon, the Wiki can be thought of as a vtable.)
I believe that this is one of the strongest reasons to adopt the scheme suggested by this post. When post P links to the Wiki while mentioning dimly understood concept C, and later posts Q, R, and S appear that explore concept C, and the Wiki is updated accordingly, post P automatically becomes more useful. This addresses one of the most significant concerns that I’ve had about blogs (namely, that their posts can easily reference each other backwards but not forwards).
Programmers have a saying: “Any problem in computer science can be solved with another level of indirection.” (It appears that this is properly attributed to David Wheeler.) That’s exactly what this post is proposing, and I approve highly.
However, this post didn’t appear to mention one of the biggest benefits of indirection. This post said that a Less Wrong post “should reference previous work by linking to the Wiki rather than other posts”. I want to point out that this will also reference future work, when the Wiki is updated after the post. (In C++ programmer jargon, the Wiki can be thought of as a vtable.)
I believe that this is one of the strongest reasons to adopt the scheme suggested by this post. When post P links to the Wiki while mentioning dimly understood concept C, and later posts Q, R, and S appear that explore concept C, and the Wiki is updated accordingly, post P automatically becomes more useful. This addresses one of the most significant concerns that I’ve had about blogs (namely, that their posts can easily reference each other backwards but not forwards).