but that would require development resources, and as ever, we have none.
This intrigues me. You (and others) have said this multiple times, and I wonder what it means.
Presumably it would only take a few thousand dollars to round up a list of the highest value/cost ratio programming improvements on LW, and then pay someone to implement them. Do I underestimate the cost here?
So the fact that you (generalized you, in your role as LW sponsor) are not doing this implies that improvements to LW have low marginal value compared to other projects (presumably MIRI stuff). LW improvements look high value from out here.
It’s interesting, then, that you take the time to delete things and write up these deletion reports. A few thousand dollars applied to some brave volunteer could save you a lot of time added up over the years. This needs calculation, of course. Also, you’re probably doing this LW janitor stuff on your recharge time between actual work-ability time.
I can’t say I disagree with the revealed preference; most of the value of LW seems to be the archives, meetups, and existence, which is secured for now. I’d rather you spent my money on saving the world (which I tentatively infer is much further along than external communications claim).
If we were bid $5K for the top dozen improvements by a credible source, we’d take it, but no such bid has ever occurred. I think you underestimate the cost.
Could I get a quick list of those top dozen improvements, so I can estimate the hourly rate for a $5k pay, and then forward that on to my extremely talented programmer fiance (who is also a LWer)?
Stop showing user page edits in the LW wiki sidebar.
Also in the sidebar: Don’t show reverted edits to pages. Show the last real pages with non-reverted edits.
When a moderator deletes a comment, if it has no subcomments or if all comments have been deleted, don’t show any leftover traces. If there are subcomments, require a deliberate user click to expand them and only allow logged-in users with >=1 karma to do so. Apply the −5 karma troll toll to comments with a deleted ancestor.
Show parent comments in user comment feeds (the list of a user’s most recent comments). If the user has less than 80% upvotes, enable downvoting in the comment feed for users with over 1000 karma.
Cause new comments on a post to stand out more than they do currently (the small green aura does not enable super-easy scanning).
Show the most recent Rational Quote comment in the main sidebar, the most recent Open Thread and Rationality Diary comment in the Discussion sidebar (i.e., the latest comment from the latest post with the appropriate tag).
Automatically strip crap (the sort of stuff e.g. Word generates, but all text editors seem to do it now) from the post editor.
More ambitious projects:
Easier tracking of ongoing discussions—“subscribe” to a post and see new comments on it forever, possibly in a separate inbox.
EDIT: Also in the Ambitious column: Give the moderators the ability to move a whole comment thread between posts, preferably to another subreddit (so we can create /r/meta and dump a bunch of this old stuff there), preferably with a replacement comment that automatically links to the new location and has space for a moderator comment explaining the reason for moving. This would be better than deletion in a lot of cases.
Here are some of the LW issues sitting in the queue because the previous odesk programmer collaborating with Trike Apps on LW development went MIA a couple weeks ago: 373, 370, 367, 358, 323, 203.
BTW, that’s one of the reasons development is so expensive. You can invest in training people, but they might disappear.
It’s a quick list. If it doesn’t include what some people want, perhaps they should be filing requests instead of leaving their wishes languishing in threads no one will read again.
Agreed that improvements to LW will be more likely if people are incentivized to resolve issues in the tracker and post them in the tracker (and that the second could be accomplished just by advertising and visibility of site improvements).
Have you asked, or put together a list of those improvements? My current expectation is that unsolicited bids for unscoped projects are infrequent, but I don’t have professional experience in that area.
This intrigues me. You (and others) have said this multiple times, and I wonder what it means.
Presumably it would only take a few thousand dollars to round up a list of the highest value/cost ratio programming improvements on LW, and then pay someone to implement them. Do I underestimate the cost here?
So the fact that you (generalized you, in your role as LW sponsor) are not doing this implies that improvements to LW have low marginal value compared to other projects (presumably MIRI stuff). LW improvements look high value from out here.
It’s interesting, then, that you take the time to delete things and write up these deletion reports. A few thousand dollars applied to some brave volunteer could save you a lot of time added up over the years. This needs calculation, of course. Also, you’re probably doing this LW janitor stuff on your recharge time between actual work-ability time.
I can’t say I disagree with the revealed preference; most of the value of LW seems to be the archives, meetups, and existence, which is secured for now. I’d rather you spent my money on saving the world (which I tentatively infer is much further along than external communications claim).
If we were bid $5K for the top dozen improvements by a credible source, we’d take it, but no such bid has ever occurred. I think you underestimate the cost.
Could I get a quick list of those top dozen improvements, so I can estimate the hourly rate for a $5k pay, and then forward that on to my extremely talented programmer fiance (who is also a LWer)?
Off the top of my head:
Stop showing user page edits in the LW wiki sidebar.
Also in the sidebar: Don’t show reverted edits to pages. Show the last real pages with non-reverted edits.
When a moderator deletes a comment, if it has no subcomments or if all comments have been deleted, don’t show any leftover traces. If there are subcomments, require a deliberate user click to expand them and only allow logged-in users with >=1 karma to do so. Apply the −5 karma troll toll to comments with a deleted ancestor.
Show parent comments in user comment feeds (the list of a user’s most recent comments). If the user has less than 80% upvotes, enable downvoting in the comment feed for users with over 1000 karma.
Cause new comments on a post to stand out more than they do currently (the small green aura does not enable super-easy scanning).
Implement Reddit’s “highlight comments since...” feature.
Show the most recent Rational Quote comment in the main sidebar, the most recent Open Thread and Rationality Diary comment in the Discussion sidebar (i.e., the latest comment from the latest post with the appropriate tag).
Automatically strip crap (the sort of stuff e.g. Word generates, but all text editors seem to do it now) from the post editor.
More ambitious projects:
Easier tracking of ongoing discussions—“subscribe” to a post and see new comments on it forever, possibly in a separate inbox.
Subreddits besides Discussion.
You know, I’ve been here for years now, and I never noticed the green aura around new posts at all before.
EDIT: Also in the Ambitious column: Give the moderators the ability to move a whole comment thread between posts, preferably to another subreddit (so we can create /r/meta and dump a bunch of this old stuff there), preferably with a replacement comment that automatically links to the new location and has space for a moderator comment explaining the reason for moving. This would be better than deletion in a lot of cases.
Isn’t that what the RSS feed for each comment is for? (I’ve never used RSS myself, so I dunno.)
Here are some of the LW issues sitting in the queue because the previous odesk programmer collaborating with Trike Apps on LW development went MIA a couple weeks ago: 373, 370, 367, 358, 323, 203.
BTW, that’s one of the reasons development is so expensive. You can invest in training people, but they might disappear.
Look at the bugtracker and sort by priority? https://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/list?can=2&q=priority=High&colspec=ID%20Estimate%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Milestone%20Owner%20Summary%20Contributions
Even sorting by enhancements, I don’t see a lot of things that people have been asking for.
It’s a quick list. If it doesn’t include what some people want, perhaps they should be filing requests instead of leaving their wishes languishing in threads no one will read again.
Agreed that improvements to LW will be more likely if people are incentivized to resolve issues in the tracker and post them in the tracker (and that the second could be accomplished just by advertising and visibility of site improvements).
Have you asked, or put together a list of those improvements? My current expectation is that unsolicited bids for unscoped projects are infrequent, but I don’t have professional experience in that area.
See here.