Would it make sense to have a “Newbie Garden” section of the site? The idea would be to give new users a place to feel like they’re contributing to the community, along with the understanding that the ideas shared there are not necessarily endorsed by the LessWrong community as a whole. A few thoughts on how it could work:
New users may be directed toward the Newbie Garden (needs a better name) if they try to make a post or comment, especially if a moderator deems their intended contribution to be low-quality. This could also happen by default for all users with karma below a certain threshold.
New users are able to create posts, ask questions, and write comments with minimal moderation. Posts here won’t show up on the main site front page, but navigation to this area should be made easy on the sidebar.
Voting should be as restricted here as on the rest of the site to ensure that higher-quality posts and comments continue trickling to the top.
Teaching the art of rationality to new users should be encouraged. Moderated posts that point out trends and examples of cognitive biases and failures of rationality exhibited in recent newbie contributions, and that advise on how to correct for them in the future, could be pinned to the top of the Newbie Garden (still needs a better name). Moderated comments that serve a similar purpose could also be pinned to the top of comment sections of individual posts. This way, even heavily downvoted content could lead (indirectly) to higher quality contributions in the future.
Newbie posts and questions with sufficient karma can be queued up for moderator approval to be posted to the main site.
I appreciate the high quality standards that have generally been maintained on LessWrong over the years, and I would like to see this site continue to act as both a beacon and an oasis of rationality.
But I also want people not to feel like they’re being excluded from some sort of elitist rationality club. Anyone should feel like they can join in the conversation as long as they’re willing to question their assumptions, receive critical feedback, and improve their ability to reason, about both what is true and what is good.
I think this works at universities because teachers are paid to grade things (they wouldn’t do it otherwise) and students get some legible-to-the-world certificate once they graduate.
Like, we already have a wealth of curriculum / as much content for newbies as they can stand; the thing that’s missing is the peer reading group and mentors. We could probably construct peer reading groups (my simple idea is that you basically put people into groups based on what <month> they join, varying the duration until you get groups of the right size, and then you have some private-to-that-group forum / comment system / whatever), but I don’t think we have the supply of mentors. [This is a crux—if someone thinks they have supply here or funding for it, I want to hear about it.]
You are implying that blind-leading-the-blind is good, not bad, here, correct? I’m interested to hear more of your thoughts on why that will result in collective intelligence and not collective decoherence; it seems plausible to me, but some swarm algorithms work and some don’t.
I’m claiming that blind-leading-the-blind can work at all, and is preferable to a low-karma section containing both newbies and long time members whose low karma reflects quality issues. Skilled mentorship is almost certainly better, but I don’t think that’s available at the necessary scale.
Would it make sense to have a “Newbie Garden” section of the site? The idea would be to give new users a place to feel like they’re contributing to the community, along with the understanding that the ideas shared there are not necessarily endorsed by the LessWrong community as a whole. A few thoughts on how it could work:
New users may be directed toward the Newbie Garden (needs a better name) if they try to make a post or comment, especially if a moderator deems their intended contribution to be low-quality. This could also happen by default for all users with karma below a certain threshold.
New users are able to create posts, ask questions, and write comments with minimal moderation. Posts here won’t show up on the main site front page, but navigation to this area should be made easy on the sidebar.
Voting should be as restricted here as on the rest of the site to ensure that higher-quality posts and comments continue trickling to the top.
Teaching the art of rationality to new users should be encouraged. Moderated posts that point out trends and examples of cognitive biases and failures of rationality exhibited in recent newbie contributions, and that advise on how to correct for them in the future, could be pinned to the top of the Newbie Garden (still needs a better name). Moderated comments that serve a similar purpose could also be pinned to the top of comment sections of individual posts. This way, even heavily downvoted content could lead (indirectly) to higher quality contributions in the future.
Newbie posts and questions with sufficient karma can be queued up for moderator approval to be posted to the main site.
I appreciate the high quality standards that have generally been maintained on LessWrong over the years, and I would like to see this site continue to act as both a beacon and an oasis of rationality.
But I also want people not to feel like they’re being excluded from some sort of elitist rationality club. Anyone should feel like they can join in the conversation as long as they’re willing to question their assumptions, receive critical feedback, and improve their ability to reason, about both what is true and what is good.
I think this works at universities because teachers are paid to grade things (they wouldn’t do it otherwise) and students get some legible-to-the-world certificate once they graduate.
Like, we already have a wealth of curriculum / as much content for newbies as they can stand; the thing that’s missing is the peer reading group and mentors. We could probably construct peer reading groups (my simple idea is that you basically put people into groups based on what <month> they join, varying the duration until you get groups of the right size, and then you have some private-to-that-group forum / comment system / whatever), but I don’t think we have the supply of mentors. [This is a crux—if someone thinks they have supply here or funding for it, I want to hear about it.]
I think the peer thing is pretty good, and recreates the blind-leading-the-blind aspect of early lesswrong.
You are implying that blind-leading-the-blind is good, not bad, here, correct? I’m interested to hear more of your thoughts on why that will result in collective intelligence and not collective decoherence; it seems plausible to me, but some swarm algorithms work and some don’t.
I’m claiming that blind-leading-the-blind can work at all, and is preferable to a low-karma section containing both newbies and long time members whose low karma reflects quality issues. Skilled mentorship is almost certainly better, but I don’t think that’s available at the necessary scale.