Debates didn’t work because… well, it’s a very complicated problem.
I’d love to hear about this in more detail. What have you learned about the problem? Do you know what good solutions would look like, but they’re too hard or expensive to implement? Or have you learned that it isn’t feasible?
When you ask someone if they would like a debate platform and describe all the features and content it’ll have, they go: “Hell yeah I’d love that!” And it took me a while to realize that what they are imagining is someone else writing all the content and doing all the heavy lifting. Then they would come along, read some of it, and may be leave a comment or two. And basically everyone is like that: they want it, but they are not willing to put in the work. And I don’t blame them, because I’m not willing to put in the work (of writing) either. There are just a handful of people who are.
So the problem is definitely not on the technical side. It’s a problem with the community / society in general. Except I’m hesitant to even call it a “problem,” because that feels like calling gravity a “problem.” This is just the way humans are. They want to do things they want to do.
It seems to me like you never really tried to seriously invite people to participate and write content. The fact that people had to follow Arbitals process through “whispers, rumors, and clairvoyant divination” gave the impression that it was more in a closed state than that it was inviting people to participate.
That’s a very good point. When we were doing math explanations, we did reach out to a lot of people (just not via LW). When we were doing debates, we reached out to a few people, because we didn’t quite know what shape we wanted to the debate to take. So we didn’t need that many people. (It would be a bit silly to move a community from one platform to another that’s basically the same.)
So, yes, there were multiple times where we thought that we should invite more people / throw open the doors. Some of those times we postponed it because we weren’t ready; one of the other times we probably should have done it.
You can think of this post as an invitation to use the platform.
How about writing a “top 10 posts on Arbital” post for LW discussion? That way it’s easier for people to see discussions to which they might want to contribute.
When we were doing debates, we reached out to a few people, because we didn’t quite know what shape we wanted to the debate to take. So we didn’t need that many people.
That’s a valid strategy but if that’s what you did, why do you think your experience proves that it’s hard to get people to contribute to the discussion?
How about writing a “top 10 posts on Arbital” post for LW discussion? That way it’s easier for people to see discussions to which they might want to contribute.
I think that’s better done by people who are actively writing and want to invite commenters.
That’s a valid strategy but if that’s what you did, why do you think your experience proves that it’s hard to get people to contribute to the discussion?
Because we reached out to people who were pretty excited about the platform and who were already spending a lot of their time blogging / doing discussions. I imagine if we reached out to people who are less excited / who write less, we would have gotten even less of a response.
I think that’s better done by people who are actively writing and want to invite commenters.
Given that you’ve been so involved, I don’t think anyone would think it out of place for you to make a post. I, for one, would be happy to have a general “Introduction to the top 10 Arbital posts”.
Aside from the haziness and uncertainty, I also often felt off-put because of a lack of a prominent wiki / introduction to the vast space of things Arbital offers.
I rather forgot about this due to being accidentally logged out of this account and not realizing so until later. If I were to try my hand at this, what would be the best place to see what’s already been done (without having to click through arbital) and submit my contributions?
I agree with Christian. Did Arbital ever even come out of closed beta? My impression was that it did not, and you still needed to be whitelisted to have the chance to contribute.
Yeah, I can imagine myself doing a similar mistake. For websites, both the engine and the content are important. A bad engine can ruin otherwise good content (just look at the damage done to LW but not being able to effectively moderate sockpuppets and karma assasinations), but if you don’t have enough content, it does not matter what engine you have, people will not come there.
And the more options you want to provide for the reader, the more text needs to be written.
The start page also direct me to the latest discussions the way the reddit start page does. It’s hard to actually find the discussions.
If I go to a discussion like https://arbital.com/p/requisites_for_personal_growth/, there’s no text field in which I can leave my comment, like there’s on reddit (and here) or blogs that have a comment sections. I can click the button “Propose comment” but that design suggests to me that commenting isn’t supposed to be my default reaction.
Correct. We (somewhat prematurely) worried about trolls, so by default people can only propose comments. And it would be up to Toon to approve them. (If there is sufficient demand, I can add a feature to let users have open commenting. But in general adding features to old Arbital is not high on my priority list.)
I think we likely made a mistake with respect to openness, but it’s not obvious when/how. Probably the biggest problem is that we couldn’t settle on what we wanted the users to do once they were on the platform.
I notice that you tell people to come to Arbital, but it is still invite-only.
we couldn’t settle on what we wanted the users to do once they were on the platform
″...the street finds its own uses for things”—William Gibson
Have you considered letting users play freely and then learning from them instead of trying to construct an optimal-by-some-criteria maze that mice surely will joyfully choose to run through?
How is it invite only? Are you talking about the comment section?
Originally the plan was to do exactly that if we couldn’t figure how to build a “joyful maze”: just throw open the doors and see what people do with it. Unfortunately there is still a significant amount of work left to do that well, and right now I’m more optimistic about the new platform than I am about scavenging the current version.
The last time I tried making an Arbital account, it failed. Does it require human approval? Then it’s still invite-only. Is it broken? Then that’s why no-one signed up.
Not someone with sufficient authority, just the blog owner. That seems fair though. You can create you own blog and then you would be in charge of which comments to approve.
I am sure you are well aware of how default-approve (=blacklisting) and default-deny (=whitelisting) policies affect the popularity and usage of publishing platforms.
Why do you think it’s a better decision to switch strategy to a microblogging platform instead of switching strategy to being as open and as inviting of contribution as possible?
Currently it’s not clear to anyone what Arbital is, what it can do, who it’s for, etc.. It needs to solve a real problem and present itself as solving that clear problem.
The tech we used is now somewhat obsolete. The codebase has accumulated a lot of unnecessary features. Also Google Material UI turned out to be too heavyweight and not as pleasant to design with as I thought initially. (These are all arguments for remaking the platform.)
The blogging platform will be “as open and as inviting of contribution as possible.”
Ok, but when you do create “Arbital 2.0”, the best thing you can do to help it succeed is to have a pre-existing base of users who are interested in using it, especially the smaller number but extremly important “power users” who will be the ones who generate most of your content, and a lot of good content you can move over from your old site.
Anything you can do to encourage people to be more active now at creating content (including comments) and interacting with the site in general probably included your odds of success long-term.
When you ask someone if they would like a debate platform and describe all the features and content it’ll have, they go: “Hell yeah I’d love that!” And it took me a while to realize that what they are imagining is someone else writing all the content and doing all the heavy lifting. Then they would come along, read some of it, and may be leave a comment or two. And basically everyone is like that: they want it, but they are not willing to put in the work. And I don’t blame them, because I’m not willing to put in the work (of writing) either. There are just a handful of people who are.
This is what incentive structures are for. There are quite a few people who have strong incentives to publish high-quality writing, you know...
An open-access journal for debates seems like it ought to be possible, although it’d have to actively solicit contributions (an encyclopedia for debates?) and reward them with academic status, which means you’d need solid academic backing.
I’d love to hear about this in more detail. What have you learned about the problem? Do you know what good solutions would look like, but they’re too hard or expensive to implement? Or have you learned that it isn’t feasible?
Here is my person take on why it’s complicated:
When you ask someone if they would like a debate platform and describe all the features and content it’ll have, they go: “Hell yeah I’d love that!” And it took me a while to realize that what they are imagining is someone else writing all the content and doing all the heavy lifting. Then they would come along, read some of it, and may be leave a comment or two. And basically everyone is like that: they want it, but they are not willing to put in the work. And I don’t blame them, because I’m not willing to put in the work (of writing) either. There are just a handful of people who are.
So the problem is definitely not on the technical side. It’s a problem with the community / society in general. Except I’m hesitant to even call it a “problem,” because that feels like calling gravity a “problem.” This is just the way humans are. They want to do things they want to do.
It seems to me like you never really tried to seriously invite people to participate and write content. The fact that people had to follow Arbitals process through “whispers, rumors, and clairvoyant divination” gave the impression that it was more in a closed state than that it was inviting people to participate.
That’s a very good point. When we were doing math explanations, we did reach out to a lot of people (just not via LW). When we were doing debates, we reached out to a few people, because we didn’t quite know what shape we wanted to the debate to take. So we didn’t need that many people. (It would be a bit silly to move a community from one platform to another that’s basically the same.)
So, yes, there were multiple times where we thought that we should invite more people / throw open the doors. Some of those times we postponed it because we weren’t ready; one of the other times we probably should have done it.
You can think of this post as an invitation to use the platform.
How about writing a “top 10 posts on Arbital” post for LW discussion? That way it’s easier for people to see discussions to which they might want to contribute.
That’s a valid strategy but if that’s what you did, why do you think your experience proves that it’s hard to get people to contribute to the discussion?
I think that’s better done by people who are actively writing and want to invite commenters.
Because we reached out to people who were pretty excited about the platform and who were already spending a lot of their time blogging / doing discussions. I imagine if we reached out to people who are less excited / who write less, we would have gotten even less of a response.
Given that you’ve been so involved, I don’t think anyone would think it out of place for you to make a post. I, for one, would be happy to have a general “Introduction to the top 10 Arbital posts”.
Aside from the haziness and uncertainty, I also often felt off-put because of a lack of a prominent wiki / introduction to the vast space of things Arbital offers.
If you’re still looking for content, I could be persuaded to start (slowly) working on some set theory/analysis concepts.
I’m not into persuading people. :) If you want to write, go for it. I still think Arbital is a really good platform for writing up math explanations.
I rather forgot about this due to being accidentally logged out of this account and not realizing so until later. If I were to try my hand at this, what would be the best place to see what’s already been done (without having to click through arbital) and submit my contributions?
This will take a long time to load, but it’s comprehensive: https://arbital.com/explore/math/
I’ll take a look, thanks!
I agree with Christian. Did Arbital ever even come out of closed beta? My impression was that it did not, and you still needed to be whitelisted to have the chance to contribute.
Yeah, I can imagine myself doing a similar mistake. For websites, both the engine and the content are important. A bad engine can ruin otherwise good content (just look at the damage done to LW but not being able to effectively moderate sockpuppets and karma assasinations), but if you don’t have enough content, it does not matter what engine you have, people will not come there.
And the more options you want to provide for the reader, the more text needs to be written.
The start page also direct me to the latest discussions the way the reddit start page does. It’s hard to actually find the discussions.
If I go to a discussion like https://arbital.com/p/requisites_for_personal_growth/, there’s no text field in which I can leave my comment, like there’s on reddit (and here) or blogs that have a comment sections. I can click the button “Propose comment” but that design suggests to me that commenting isn’t supposed to be my default reaction.
Correct. We (somewhat prematurely) worried about trolls, so by default people can only propose comments. And it would be up to Toon to approve them. (If there is sufficient demand, I can add a feature to let users have open commenting. But in general adding features to old Arbital is not high on my priority list.)
So, if I understand this correctly, you had a non-promoted invite-only platform which you think failed because not enough people contributed content?
I am confused. Surely it crossed someone’s mind at some point...
See this comment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/otq/whats_up_with_arbital/dq9h
I think we likely made a mistake with respect to openness, but it’s not obvious when/how. Probably the biggest problem is that we couldn’t settle on what we wanted the users to do once they were on the platform.
Any. Fucking. Time.
I notice that you tell people to come to Arbital, but it is still invite-only.
″...the street finds its own uses for things”—William Gibson
Have you considered letting users play freely and then learning from them instead of trying to construct an optimal-by-some-criteria maze that mice surely will joyfully choose to run through?
How is it invite only? Are you talking about the comment section?
Originally the plan was to do exactly that if we couldn’t figure how to build a “joyful maze”: just throw open the doors and see what people do with it. Unfortunately there is still a significant amount of work left to do that well, and right now I’m more optimistic about the new platform than I am about scavenging the current version.
The last time I tried making an Arbital account, it failed. Does it require human approval? Then it’s still invite-only. Is it broken? Then that’s why no-one signed up.
I’m not sure when you tried. It works right now.
Didn’t you say
which is an explicit whitelisting system?
Yes, but that’s not “invite-only”.
You can knock on the door. But you have to be invited (=whitelisted) by someone with sufficient authority in order to enter.
Not someone with sufficient authority, just the blog owner. That seems fair though. You can create you own blog and then you would be in charge of which comments to approve.
I am sure you are well aware of how default-approve (=blacklisting) and default-deny (=whitelisting) policies affect the popularity and usage of publishing platforms.
That doesn’t seem the default way most blogs work. Most blogs simply allow you to leave a comment (or they don’t have comment sections at all).
Why do you think it’s a better decision to switch strategy to a microblogging platform instead of switching strategy to being as open and as inviting of contribution as possible?
Currently it’s not clear to anyone what Arbital is, what it can do, who it’s for, etc.. It needs to solve a real problem and present itself as solving that clear problem.
The tech we used is now somewhat obsolete. The codebase has accumulated a lot of unnecessary features. Also Google Material UI turned out to be too heavyweight and not as pleasant to design with as I thought initially. (These are all arguments for remaking the platform.)
The blogging platform will be “as open and as inviting of contribution as possible.”
Ok, but when you do create “Arbital 2.0”, the best thing you can do to help it succeed is to have a pre-existing base of users who are interested in using it, especially the smaller number but extremly important “power users” who will be the ones who generate most of your content, and a lot of good content you can move over from your old site.
Anything you can do to encourage people to be more active now at creating content (including comments) and interacting with the site in general probably included your odds of success long-term.
This is what incentive structures are for. There are quite a few people who have strong incentives to publish high-quality writing, you know...
An open-access journal for debates seems like it ought to be possible, although it’d have to actively solicit contributions (an encyclopedia for debates?) and reward them with academic status, which means you’d need solid academic backing.