My todo list is now mostly clear of time-critical projects, and I can now officially volunteer to import all relevant Overcoming Bias posts to Less Wrong.
I also volunteer to:
*create Less Wrong wiki pages for all of the LW and OB posts, including all relevant information. However, writing the short summaries of the articles is a job that I would gladly delegate to someone else. What I should probably do is to just leave a placeholder for the article summaries, with tags to mark which articles still need summaries, and let all the other users fill in the summaries after the wikipages are posted to the wiki.
*update the links in the LW articles, changing them to link to the article’s wiki page, rather than the article itself
*set up the new Less Wrong wiki, hosted at LessWrong.com, importing all of the content from the current wiki
*create the dependency graphs for all of the Less Wrong articles
*set up a system to automatically generate dependency graphs for new posts to Less Wrong, by reading tags placed on the articles’ wiki pages.
*set up a system to automatically generate dependency graphs for the concepts themselves, rather than the articles, by reading tags placed on the articles’ wiki pages.
*update the Less Wrong forum code so that you can create links to the wiki by using the [[WikiPage]]-style links.
*set up a system to automatically monitor which pages on the Less Wrong wiki have corresponding articles on Wikipedia or on the Accelerating Future wiki, or possibly some other relevant wikis, and create the appropriate links to these other wikis.
I could be wrong, but I don’t remember Eliezer ever suggesting we avoid making a separate wiki page for each article.
In fact, his idea for “short summaries on the wiki, linking to full posts on the forum” seems to me like a recommendation to do exactly that.
What I was planning to do was:
have a script to automatically generate wiki page stubs for every new LW post
have the wiki users fill in the summary for the article
*have the wiki users add any appropriate category tags to the article’s wiki page—if there are other articles on the same topic, then this will link to them. maybe have some way to graphically show the connections.
There was some discussion about requiring the LW forum posts to link to the wiki pages for the concepts, rather than the articles, but it looks like the best option is to go ahead and make pages for everything. Make a wiki page for each concept, and a wiki page for each article that discusses that concept. Make the concept pages link to the article pages, and vice versa. Allow the LW posts to link either to the article wikipage, or the concept’s wikipage.
Also, I would recommend updating all of the pages currently on the LW forum to link to the article’s wikipage, rather than the article itself.
I would also recommend considering methods to integrate the wiki content into the main LW forum. RSS feeds of recent changes is one obvious example of this sort of integration.
The script for automatically generating the wiki pages would include:
Article name
Author
Original site
Date posted
Permanent link
a list of the article’s tags, which will become categories in the wiki
a list of articles that the article refers to, used for automatically generating the dependency graph
a tag indicating that the page has been automatically created, and needs someone to fill in the article’s summary
I think it would be a good idea to have different kinds of tags marking the different kinds of dependencies. For example:
“Required Reading”—an article that requires on a concept defined in a previous post
“Side-topic”—an article that links to another article as a side-topic
*”Supplementary Reading”—an article that links to another article for more details about a topic, but isn’t required to understand the article
Another thing I just realized: a dependency graph could also help avoid, or at least reveal, circular dependencies. Though, on second thought, the fact that LW posts can currently only link to older posts already prevents circular dependencies.
I agree whole heartedly with Eliezer. Wiki articles really should be for concepts. I think there is value to summaries, but they should either be directly added to blog posts as abstracts or collected together like here.
Please don’t auto-generate stubs for each article. We want Wiki pages for each concept, not each blog post.
The Wiki should prefer to link to blog posts directly—unless the short summary of a concept itself links to other concepts that are best summarized the same way. The actual meat is in the blog posts, and references to the actual meat should go directly to the blog post. Linking to a Wiki page that then links to the blog post would add an extra layer of indirection and completely change the user experience, leading them to spend more time on the Wiki and less time on the blog. This is not what we want. We want the resonance.
There is an advantage in the extra layer since articles about LW or OB posts in that they can be categorized by the Wiki software without worrying about where they are hosted. I have noticed a few of your posts are hosted on yudkowsky.net, but the wiki won’t care. It would treat those the same and makes interlinking easier.
Either way works for me, but I need to know how to proceed with regards to Posts at LW. The simple question:
In the meantime, there are plenty of other things to work on, so I will just backburner that project.
(Edit) I touched up the first paragraph a bit. Also, since there seems to be an obvious push away from wiki articles for posts I will just can the whole idea until someone specifically asks for it.
Concurring with Vladimir, no. As an alternative to the page you point to, articles like this one should be developed instead. This is not a model article, but it gets to the concept of interest without being unduly inward looking.
If you are reading through the OB/LW archives, here are some ways to contribute:
From the above I’m sure that the answer to your question is a simple “No”.
On creating the pages for articles: we don’t study articles for their own sake, and so wiki shouldn’t be about the articles. The wiki can refer to the articles to allow the reader to learn about what’s relevant.
Works for me. Does this sound like a better alternate plan?
Read a post to gather all concepts
Make sure a wiki article exists for each concept
Add a link to the post within those articles
Possibly add a small sentence describing why the post is related
I feel that there should be some sort of limit to which articles get added. Not every article posted to LW belongs because some posts have more informational value. Right now I am planning on reading through your posts specifically, so this is somewhat moot, but it would be nice to have a rough guideline. The few I can think of immediately:
Posts promoted to the front page
Posts with “high” karma
Posts by certain, approved authors
I think the first makes the most sense.
Thanks for the input, by the way. I want the work to be helpful and not something that needs to be reworked because I went off and did what I thought was correct.
I think we’ll just have to play it by ear as to when LW posts should be referenced. Promotion is the easiest heuristic, although even a poor post can generate good discussion. Depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate to cite a post for the discussion or to cite a specific comment.
Right now, I say err on the side of inclusion. At worst, it can be deleted easily later. Even if it isn’t perfectly relevant to the article it is in, a reference might inspire someone to move it to a better home.
My apologies for my late reply.
My todo list is now mostly clear of time-critical projects, and I can now officially volunteer to import all relevant Overcoming Bias posts to Less Wrong.
I also volunteer to:
*create Less Wrong wiki pages for all of the LW and OB posts, including all relevant information. However, writing the short summaries of the articles is a job that I would gladly delegate to someone else. What I should probably do is to just leave a placeholder for the article summaries, with tags to mark which articles still need summaries, and let all the other users fill in the summaries after the wikipages are posted to the wiki.
*update the links in the LW articles, changing them to link to the article’s wiki page, rather than the article itself
*set up the new Less Wrong wiki, hosted at LessWrong.com, importing all of the content from the current wiki
*create the dependency graphs for all of the Less Wrong articles
*set up a system to automatically generate dependency graphs for new posts to Less Wrong, by reading tags placed on the articles’ wiki pages.
*set up a system to automatically generate dependency graphs for the concepts themselves, rather than the articles, by reading tags placed on the articles’ wiki pages.
*update the Less Wrong forum code so that you can create links to the wiki by using the [[WikiPage]]-style links.
*set up a system to automatically monitor which pages on the Less Wrong wiki have corresponding articles on Wikipedia or on the Accelerating Future wiki, or possibly some other relevant wikis, and create the appropriate links to these other wikis.
For more ideas for future projects, see http://lesswrong.wikia.com/wiki/How_We_Can_Use_This_Wiki
I would also like to get the contact info for whoever is currently in charge of the Less Wrong website.
Some other things I have already done recently:
*setting up the Accelerating Future wiki: http://acceleratingfuture.com/wiki
*setting up the Accelerating Future forums: http://acceleratingfuture.com/forum
*upgrading the SL4 wiki to MediaWiki format, importing all relevant content from the SL4 wiki to the Accelerating future wiki
*fixing all of the broken links in the Categorized SL4 mailing list archive: http://acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/Categorized_SL4_Archive
*creating a first draft of the Scenarios Project: http://acceleratingfuture.com/wiki/The_Scenarios_Project
*creating a java applet for browsing through the dependency graphs of the Overcoming Bias posts: http://acceleratingfuture.com/lesswrong/dependencygraph/ WARNING: This is a resource-intensive java applet, and it may crash your web browser.
I thought making separate wiki pages for each article is exactly what EY is suggesting we avoid.
I could be wrong, but I don’t remember Eliezer ever suggesting we avoid making a separate wiki page for each article.
In fact, his idea for “short summaries on the wiki, linking to full posts on the forum” seems to me like a recommendation to do exactly that.
What I was planning to do was:
have a script to automatically generate wiki page stubs for every new LW post have the wiki users fill in the summary for the article *have the wiki users add any appropriate category tags to the article’s wiki page—if there are other articles on the same topic, then this will link to them. maybe have some way to graphically show the connections.
There was some discussion about requiring the LW forum posts to link to the wiki pages for the concepts, rather than the articles, but it looks like the best option is to go ahead and make pages for everything. Make a wiki page for each concept, and a wiki page for each article that discusses that concept. Make the concept pages link to the article pages, and vice versa. Allow the LW posts to link either to the article wikipage, or the concept’s wikipage.
Also, I would recommend updating all of the pages currently on the LW forum to link to the article’s wikipage, rather than the article itself.
I would also recommend considering methods to integrate the wiki content into the main LW forum. RSS feeds of recent changes is one obvious example of this sort of integration.
The script for automatically generating the wiki pages would include: Article name Author Original site Date posted Permanent link a list of the article’s tags, which will become categories in the wiki a list of articles that the article refers to, used for automatically generating the dependency graph a tag indicating that the page has been automatically created, and needs someone to fill in the article’s summary
I think it would be a good idea to have different kinds of tags marking the different kinds of dependencies. For example: “Required Reading”—an article that requires on a concept defined in a previous post “Side-topic”—an article that links to another article as a side-topic *”Supplementary Reading”—an article that links to another article for more details about a topic, but isn’t required to understand the article
Another thing I just realized: a dependency graph could also help avoid, or at least reveal, circular dependencies. Though, on second thought, the fact that LW posts can currently only link to older posts already prevents circular dependencies.
For more discussion about the dependency graphs, and other ideas for the wiki, see: http://lesswrong.wikia.com/wiki/How_We_Can_Use_This_Wiki
I agree whole heartedly with Eliezer. Wiki articles really should be for concepts. I think there is value to summaries, but they should either be directly added to blog posts as abstracts or collected together like here.
Please don’t auto-generate stubs for each article. We want Wiki pages for each concept, not each blog post.
The Wiki should prefer to link to blog posts directly—unless the short summary of a concept itself links to other concepts that are best summarized the same way. The actual meat is in the blog posts, and references to the actual meat should go directly to the blog post. Linking to a Wiki page that then links to the blog post would add an extra layer of indirection and completely change the user experience, leading them to spend more time on the Wiki and less time on the blog. This is not what we want. We want the resonance.
There is an advantage in the extra layer since articles about LW or OB posts in that they can be categorized by the Wiki software without worrying about where they are hosted. I have noticed a few of your posts are hosted on yudkowsky.net, but the wiki won’t care. It would treat those the same and makes interlinking easier.
Either way works for me, but I need to know how to proceed with regards to Posts at LW. The simple question:
Do I create articles like The Martial Art of Rationality?
In the meantime, there are plenty of other things to work on, so I will just backburner that project.
(Edit) I touched up the first paragraph a bit. Also, since there seems to be an obvious push away from wiki articles for posts I will just can the whole idea until someone specifically asks for it.
Concurring with Vladimir, no. As an alternative to the page you point to, articles like this one should be developed instead. This is not a model article, but it gets to the concept of interest without being unduly inward looking.
If you are reading through the OB/LW archives, here are some ways to contribute:
Create concept pages if they don’t exist
Add posts as references to wiki articles
Add post information and summaries to the list of articles
From the above I’m sure that the answer to your question is a simple “No”.
On creating the pages for articles: we don’t study articles for their own sake, and so wiki shouldn’t be about the articles. The wiki can refer to the articles to allow the reader to learn about what’s relevant.
Concurring with badger, no.
Works for me. Does this sound like a better alternate plan?
Read a post to gather all concepts
Make sure a wiki article exists for each concept
Add a link to the post within those articles
Possibly add a small sentence describing why the post is related
I feel that there should be some sort of limit to which articles get added. Not every article posted to LW belongs because some posts have more informational value. Right now I am planning on reading through your posts specifically, so this is somewhat moot, but it would be nice to have a rough guideline. The few I can think of immediately:
Posts promoted to the front page
Posts with “high” karma
Posts by certain, approved authors
I think the first makes the most sense.
Thanks for the input, by the way. I want the work to be helpful and not something that needs to be reworked because I went off and did what I thought was correct.
Yes, that is a good course of action.
I think we’ll just have to play it by ear as to when LW posts should be referenced. Promotion is the easiest heuristic, although even a poor post can generate good discussion. Depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate to cite a post for the discussion or to cite a specific comment.
Right now, I say err on the side of inclusion. At worst, it can be deleted easily later. Even if it isn’t perfectly relevant to the article it is in, a reference might inspire someone to move it to a better home.