Being aware that this is probably the most bikesheddy thing in this whole discussion, I’ve actually thought about this a bit.
From skimming a lot of early Eliezer posts, I’ve seen all three uses “LessWrong”, “Lesswrong” and “Less Wrong” and so there isn’t a super clear precedent here, though I do agree that “Less Wrong” was used a bit more often.
I personally really like “Less Wrong”, because it has two weirdly capitalized words, and I don’t like brand names that are two words. It makes it sound too much like it wants to refer to the original meaning of the words, instead of being a pointer towards the brand/organization/online-community, and while one might think that is actually useful, it usually just results in a short state of confusion when I read a sentence that has “Less Wrong” in it, because I just didn’t parse it as the correct reference.
I am currently going with “LessWrong” and “LESSWRONG”, which is what I am planning to use in the site navigation, logos and other areas of the page. If enough people object I would probably change my mind.
I just used Wei Dai’s
lesswrong_user script to
download Eliezer’s posts and comments (excluding, last I knew, those that don’t
show up on his “OVERVIEW”
page e.g. for karma
reasons).
This went back to late December 2009 before the network connection got dropped.
I counted his uses of “LessWrong” versus “Less Wrong”. (Of course I didn’t
count things such as the domain name “lesswrong.com″, the English
phrase “less wrong”, or derived words like “LessWrongers”.)
I think “Less Wrong” was an appropriate name at the beginning, when the community around the website was very small. Now that we have grown, both in user count and in content size, we could simply start calling ourselves “Wrong”. One word, no problems with capitalization or spacing.
I personally really [dis]like “Less Wrong”, because it has two weirdly capitalized words, and I don’t like brand names that are two words.
“LessWrong” also has two weirdly capitalized words, but it’s one notch weirder because they’ve been stuck together.
I agree that this is a super-bikesheddy topic and will try to avoid getting into an argument about this, but I would like to register a strong preference for “Less Wrong” as the default version of the name.
Being aware that this is probably the most bikesheddy thing in this whole discussion, I’ve actually thought about this a bit.
From skimming a lot of early Eliezer posts, I’ve seen all three uses “LessWrong”, “Lesswrong” and “Less Wrong” and so there isn’t a super clear precedent here, though I do agree that “Less Wrong” was used a bit more often.
I personally really like “Less Wrong”, because it has two weirdly capitalized words, and I don’t like brand names that are two words. It makes it sound too much like it wants to refer to the original meaning of the words, instead of being a pointer towards the brand/organization/online-community, and while one might think that is actually useful, it usually just results in a short state of confusion when I read a sentence that has “Less Wrong” in it, because I just didn’t parse it as the correct reference.
I am currently going with “LessWrong” and “LESSWRONG”, which is what I am planning to use in the site navigation, logos and other areas of the page. If enough people object I would probably change my mind.
I just used Wei Dai’s lesswrong_user script to download Eliezer’s posts and comments (excluding, last I knew, those that don’t show up on his “OVERVIEW” page e.g. for karma reasons). This went back to late December 2009 before the network connection got dropped.
I counted his uses of “LessWrong” versus “Less Wrong”. (Of course I didn’t count things such as the domain name “lesswrong.com″, the English phrase “less wrong”, or derived words like “LessWrongers”.)
“LessWrong”: 1 2 3* 4*
“Less Wrong”: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20* 21 22* 23 24 25 26
Entries with asterisks appear in both lists. Of his four uses of “LessWrong”, three are modifying another word (e.g., “LessWrong hivemind”).
(For what it’s worth, “LessWrongers”: 1 2; “Less Wrongians”: 1.)
I think “Less Wrong” was an appropriate name at the beginning, when the community around the website was very small. Now that we have grown, both in user count and in content size, we could simply start calling ourselves “Wrong”. One word, no problems with capitalization or spacing.
Calling ourselves “Wrong” or “Wrongers” would also fix the problem of “rationalist” sounding like we’d claim to be totally rational!
On the other hand, I think this might come across as too “cute” and be felt insincere.
“LessWrong” also has two weirdly capitalized words, but it’s one notch weirder because they’ve been stuck together.
I agree that this is a super-bikesheddy topic and will try to avoid getting into an argument about this, but I would like to register a strong preference for “Less Wrong” as the default version of the name.
Did you mean to write, ‘dislike’ “Less Wrong”’?
Wow… yes. This is the second time in this comment thread that I forgot to add a “dis” in front of a word.
Irrelevant as to which. Just pick one and stick to. It.