“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”—Charles Darwin
No one says that the high quality standard is a problem. What many people agree is that the high quality standard might be intimidating to newcomers, even desirable ones. Needless to say, sacrificing that standard to make the site more friendly would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
“High quality standard” is not the problem, then—the problem is being intimidating to new users. That would seem to suggest (a) better introductory materials, better indexed, (b) always being willing to teach Less Wrong 101 whenever people ask, and (c) cutting slack for intelligent, well-meaning newbies.
That said, I suspect “coming off as a load of crackpots” is a bigger problem when it comes to driving away potential contributors.
One of the reasons LW is intimidating to new users is that some of them believe they need to read all the sequences before they post.
If there’s a subset which would be generally considered to be enough, it should be posted.
A glossary would be nice, even if it consists of links to essays from the sequences.
I haven’t seen evidence to support the “load of crackpots” theory, though I suppose tying improving the art of rationality to FAI could have that effect. So might putting effort into highly implausible scenarios, though I personally see that as philosophy geeking rather than crackpottery.
The general intimidation problem is hard because people aren’t reliably good at evaluating their skill level.
Very tentatively offered: if we can define the skills needed to do valuable posts and comments, this might help some potential posters decide whether they want to dive in.
I haven’t seen evidence to support the “load of crackpots” theory
I find it plausible that newcomers think these people are a load of crackpots, since I am not a newcomer and even I think these people are a load of crackpots.
I haven’t seen evidence to support the “load of crackpots” theory, though I suppose tying improving the art of rationality to FAI could have that effect. So might putting effort into highly implausible scenarios, though I personally see that as philosophy geeking rather than crackpottery.
I think it’s the belief in the Singularity and cryonics which come off badly.
One of the reasons LW is intimidating to new users is that some of them believe they need to read all the sequences before they post.
Yes, but this actually does not seem so wrong to me. It would surely be beneficial if there was a no-clutter version of the ideas and arguments from the sequences, but given the volume this is a daunting task.
However, LW discusses on “how to improve rationality”, which as about as much a niche as for instance, meta-programming with templates in C++ (with regard to knowledge one has to aquire). Knowledge in philosophy, computer science, cognitive sciences may help, but ultimately, it is a very small field compared with what is available to study.
And for such specialist topics, quite much of narrow domain knowledge has to be learned. I’m always suprised that LW-regulars discuss the karma system so often, as if it would be the end-all of all discussion issues. No, for LW to be LW one has to consider whether one has something worthwhile to post.
This is true for all specialist areas. You also cannot just jump right into comp.programming.threads, start discussing any lock-free-queue algorithm #32452, and think that you’ll do something even remotely senseful.
This is a property of the knowledge-area, not a property of LW as a software platform.
And, btw, I do not have the feeling that LW is extra-intimidating. Compared to other specialist-forums (c.l.l et cetera) the stream of new ideas and not-really-hardcore-posts seems on a healthy level.
Maybe, I should have phrased all this text in a simple, single, question:
Where do you all get the impression that LW is intimidating?
Where do you all get the impression that LW is intimidating?
I read the replies to the “Attention Lurkers” post.
I was surprised at what a strong theme it was, since I don’t think LW is intimidating.
I should have said earlier that I do think maintaining the high quality of LW is important, and the plus side of “intimidating” is having people focused on improving rationality and actually working on it.
When someone says they’re afraid to post, it’s hard to tell whether they have an accurate understanding that they don’t know enough to contribute or are habitually cautious about speaking up even if they do have something to contribute..
Although I don’t know if many/most of the lurkers have waded all the way through the current version of the FAQ, some of them may believe they need to read all of the sequences before they post because the FAQ says they do. In fact, the FAQ suggests reading the sequences before even reading Less Wrong:
Do I have to read the sequences before reading Less Wrong?
We can’t force you, but it would be by far the best use of your time.
Do I have to read the sequences before posting on Less Wrong?
Again, we can’t force you, but if your post involves topics that were already covered in the sequences, or makes mistakes that were warned against in the sequences, you’ll probably be downvoted and directed to the sequence in question.
This is a pretty high barrier to entry. I agree that we should encourage reading the sequences, but should we phrase it in another way so that we still welcome participation?
Maybe there is a way for new readers to ask for advice on what particular portions of the sequences would be most helpful for them to read in order to be able to contribute good comments/posts in their particular areas of interest.
edit: the FAQ is undergoing revisions as I write, and the language in the current version is somewhat more welcoming. But it’s still worth discussing how high we should set the barrier to entry.
This is a pretty high barrier to entry. I agree that we should encourage reading the sequences, but should we phrase it in another way so that we still welcome participation?
I think that barrier is about right. We do welcome participation, but only from people who have taken the trouble to find out, from the material we direct them to, what we’re about.
I’ve seen similar language on several technical discussion forums: people are asked to read the FAQs and not to retread old ground.
I have also seen similar language on other sites, but the the sequences are a lot longer than what I have seen other sites asking new visitors to read.
I had read OB when EY still used to blog there, so I read a lot of the sequences at that time. Stretched out over time like that, they don’t seem as long. But for a brand new visitor, the sheer volume is somewhat daunting. That’s why I think more nuanced suggestions, perhaps like Jack suggests here, might make sense.
“High quality standard” is not the problem, then—the problem is being intimidating to new users.
I keep getting riled up and wanting to post insults that you’re all a bunch of elitist pricks, but then I remember I’m the one who put on the dojo uniform and stepped onto the sparring mat, so I guess I should have expected that kick to the face.
I think it’s part of the culture, and not something that’s easily changed. You guys can be ruthless.
Please note that the above are my opinions and I do not wish to argue about them. The last time I did that, it ended badly. It’s like getting kicked for saying someone kicked you… or maybe I’m more fragile than most.
I think it’s part of the culture, and not something that’s easily changed. You guys can be ruthless.
I think that the problem with the Less Wrong communal lack of ruth is that ruth serves a purpose—it protects a community from hurling abuse that is unwarranted.
One idea: have a setting in the preferences where you can declare yourself to be operating under Crocker’s Rules (or some modified version if we decide it needs any updating for this context). If you enable this, a small badge would appear on your posts (maybe next to your name, or somewhere up there) to indicate this to potential repliers. It would be off by default, so the default would be politeness (exception: people who are really dumb/unintentionally disruptive, won’t take a hint, and need to be corrected more ruthlessly or asked to leave), but new people would be made aware of it and encouraged to develop the mental discipline to take part in such communications. (How? I’m not quite sure yet.)
I don’t think the problem is something that can be patched with Crocker’s Rules—I think the problem is lazy reading. That many dedicated contributors are lazy was shown off by the responses to MBlume’s “The Fundamental Question”: a substantial fraction of top-level responses interpreted the post as community-building instead of philosophy, a misinterpretation which only makes sense if they completely missed the entire first paragraph. Given that regular comments are read with even less care as a rule, anyone who doesn’t make what they say sound obviously true to this community will get slammed, correct or not.
LessWrong is not an elitist community. It simply aims to provide a certain kind of material to the only people who can benefit from it: those with a certain aptitude for analytic thought. Without at least one such community, the “art of human rationality” would go on relatively unrefined.
To anyone who says that makes it elitist, I would ask: should a helpful therapy that involves temporarily tricking people be considered elitist because it excludes people who are too analytical to be tricked?
I’m not sure what you or Rain mean by elitist. I’m inclined to think Rain is overreacting, but “elitist” in the bad sense is a matter of emotional tone. The major tool we have for judging emotional tone is our own emotions, and they’re quite a bunch of rubber rulers.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a little unhealthy smugness here that I can’t see because I share it. It also wouldn’t surprise me if people who have a bad reaction to LW are mostly playing out ideas about their own intelligence that they’d picked up long before they’d encountered LW.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if people who have a bad reaction to LW are mostly playing out ideas about their own intelligence that they’d picked up long before they’d encountered LW.
Hmm, I’m curious, what do you mean by “playing out ideas”, and what sorts?
I mean that they’d been told they were stupid—too stupid to get respect from smart people and/or could only expect to be harassed for being stupid. And when I say “told”, I mean active efforts to lower their status, not an abstract proposition.
If a person whose been treated that way accepts that they can’t function well and/or will be treated badly, they’re going to have a lot of background anger which can get foregrounded if they think about taking part in an intelligent community, even if it isn’t actually hostile to them.
“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”—Charles Darwin
No one says that the high quality standard is a problem. What many people agree is that the high quality standard might be intimidating to newcomers, even desirable ones. Needless to say, sacrificing that standard to make the site more friendly would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
“High quality standard” is not the problem, then—the problem is being intimidating to new users. That would seem to suggest (a) better introductory materials, better indexed, (b) always being willing to teach Less Wrong 101 whenever people ask, and (c) cutting slack for intelligent, well-meaning newbies.
That said, I suspect “coming off as a load of crackpots” is a bigger problem when it comes to driving away potential contributors.
One of the reasons LW is intimidating to new users is that some of them believe they need to read all the sequences before they post.
If there’s a subset which would be generally considered to be enough, it should be posted.
A glossary would be nice, even if it consists of links to essays from the sequences.
I haven’t seen evidence to support the “load of crackpots” theory, though I suppose tying improving the art of rationality to FAI could have that effect. So might putting effort into highly implausible scenarios, though I personally see that as philosophy geeking rather than crackpottery.
The general intimidation problem is hard because people aren’t reliably good at evaluating their skill level.
Very tentatively offered: if we can define the skills needed to do valuable posts and comments, this might help some potential posters decide whether they want to dive in.
I find it plausible that newcomers think these people are a load of crackpots, since I am not a newcomer and even I think these people are a load of crackpots.
I think it’s the belief in the Singularity and cryonics which come off badly.
You’re probably right. I’m so used to science fiction fandom that I didn’t even notice.
Yes, but this actually does not seem so wrong to me. It would surely be beneficial if there was a no-clutter version of the ideas and arguments from the sequences, but given the volume this is a daunting task.
However, LW discusses on “how to improve rationality”, which as about as much a niche as for instance, meta-programming with templates in C++ (with regard to knowledge one has to aquire). Knowledge in philosophy, computer science, cognitive sciences may help, but ultimately, it is a very small field compared with what is available to study.
And for such specialist topics, quite much of narrow domain knowledge has to be learned. I’m always suprised that LW-regulars discuss the karma system so often, as if it would be the end-all of all discussion issues. No, for LW to be LW one has to consider whether one has something worthwhile to post.
This is true for all specialist areas. You also cannot just jump right into comp.programming.threads, start discussing any lock-free-queue algorithm #32452, and think that you’ll do something even remotely senseful.
This is a property of the knowledge-area, not a property of LW as a software platform.
And, btw, I do not have the feeling that LW is extra-intimidating. Compared to other specialist-forums (c.l.l et cetera) the stream of new ideas and not-really-hardcore-posts seems on a healthy level.
Maybe, I should have phrased all this text in a simple, single, question: Where do you all get the impression that LW is intimidating?
What’s the evidence for that?
I read the replies to the “Attention Lurkers” post.
I was surprised at what a strong theme it was, since I don’t think LW is intimidating.
I should have said earlier that I do think maintaining the high quality of LW is important, and the plus side of “intimidating” is having people focused on improving rationality and actually working on it.
When someone says they’re afraid to post, it’s hard to tell whether they have an accurate understanding that they don’t know enough to contribute or are habitually cautious about speaking up even if they do have something to contribute..
Although I don’t know if many/most of the lurkers have waded all the way through the current version of the FAQ, some of them may believe they need to read all of the sequences before they post because the FAQ says they do. In fact, the FAQ suggests reading the sequences before even reading Less Wrong:
This is a pretty high barrier to entry. I agree that we should encourage reading the sequences, but should we phrase it in another way so that we still welcome participation?
Maybe there is a way for new readers to ask for advice on what particular portions of the sequences would be most helpful for them to read in order to be able to contribute good comments/posts in their particular areas of interest.
edit: the FAQ is undergoing revisions as I write, and the language in the current version is somewhat more welcoming. But it’s still worth discussing how high we should set the barrier to entry.
I think that barrier is about right. We do welcome participation, but only from people who have taken the trouble to find out, from the material we direct them to, what we’re about.
I’ve seen similar language on several technical discussion forums: people are asked to read the FAQs and not to retread old ground.
I have also seen similar language on other sites, but the the sequences are a lot longer than what I have seen other sites asking new visitors to read.
I had read OB when EY still used to blog there, so I read a lot of the sequences at that time. Stretched out over time like that, they don’t seem as long. But for a brand new visitor, the sheer volume is somewhat daunting. That’s why I think more nuanced suggestions, perhaps like Jack suggests here, might make sense.
I keep getting riled up and wanting to post insults that you’re all a bunch of elitist pricks, but then I remember I’m the one who put on the dojo uniform and stepped onto the sparring mat, so I guess I should have expected that kick to the face.
I think it’s part of the culture, and not something that’s easily changed. You guys can be ruthless.
Please note that the above are my opinions and I do not wish to argue about them. The last time I did that, it ended badly. It’s like getting kicked for saying someone kicked you… or maybe I’m more fragile than most.
I think that the problem with the Less Wrong communal lack of ruth is that ruth serves a purpose—it protects a community from hurling abuse that is unwarranted.
Heh, “ruth” as a unit. I like it.
One idea: have a setting in the preferences where you can declare yourself to be operating under Crocker’s Rules (or some modified version if we decide it needs any updating for this context). If you enable this, a small badge would appear on your posts (maybe next to your name, or somewhere up there) to indicate this to potential repliers. It would be off by default, so the default would be politeness (exception: people who are really dumb/unintentionally disruptive, won’t take a hint, and need to be corrected more ruthlessly or asked to leave), but new people would be made aware of it and encouraged to develop the mental discipline to take part in such communications. (How? I’m not quite sure yet.)
I don’t think the problem is something that can be patched with Crocker’s Rules—I think the problem is lazy reading. That many dedicated contributors are lazy was shown off by the responses to MBlume’s “The Fundamental Question”: a substantial fraction of top-level responses interpreted the post as community-building instead of philosophy, a misinterpretation which only makes sense if they completely missed the entire first paragraph. Given that regular comments are read with even less care as a rule, anyone who doesn’t make what they say sound obviously true to this community will get slammed, correct or not.
I do think you’re more fragile than some. As for most, who knows?
I give you credit for saying what’s going on with you.
I’m not sure how much of the intimidation at LW is the intelligence level and how much is the degree of criticism.
LessWrong is not an elitist community. It simply aims to provide a certain kind of material to the only people who can benefit from it: those with a certain aptitude for analytic thought. Without at least one such community, the “art of human rationality” would go on relatively unrefined.
To anyone who says that makes it elitist, I would ask: should a helpful therapy that involves temporarily tricking people be considered elitist because it excludes people who are too analytical to be tricked?
I’m not sure what you or Rain mean by elitist. I’m inclined to think Rain is overreacting, but “elitist” in the bad sense is a matter of emotional tone. The major tool we have for judging emotional tone is our own emotions, and they’re quite a bunch of rubber rulers.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a little unhealthy smugness here that I can’t see because I share it. It also wouldn’t surprise me if people who have a bad reaction to LW are mostly playing out ideas about their own intelligence that they’d picked up long before they’d encountered LW.
Hmm, I’m curious, what do you mean by “playing out ideas”, and what sorts?
I mean that they’d been told they were stupid—too stupid to get respect from smart people and/or could only expect to be harassed for being stupid. And when I say “told”, I mean active efforts to lower their status, not an abstract proposition.
If a person whose been treated that way accepts that they can’t function well and/or will be treated badly, they’re going to have a lot of background anger which can get foregrounded if they think about taking part in an intelligent community, even if it isn’t actually hostile to them.
Agreed that the elitism here is not good
Agreed. Proposals #1 and #2 are both attempts to implement (c).