I don’t think “Not sending in your $200 rebate” and “not writing in an article to Overcomingbias” are the same phenomena at all.
It’s not that people who are now writing all these LW posts felt like it was too much of a hassle to send an email to Overcomingbias; it’s that deliberately and unusually sticking your neck out to contribute has a different social connotation than simply participating in the expected community behavior.
Contributing to Overcomingbias is like getting on stage: walking up to the stage is a socially loaded act in and of itself. “Hey, everyone, I’m going to stand out here and say something.” Lesswrong, since the entire site is built around community posting, practically invites you to post as you please. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. How could there be? The tools to do so are right there, embedded into the infrastructure of the site. It must be expected for me to do that!
I think LessWrong actually has a higher barrier for contribution—at least for articles—because you’re expected to have 20 comment karma before you can submit. This means that, if you’re honest anyway, you’ll have to spend your time in the pit interacting with people who could potentially shout you down, or call you a threat to their well-kept garden, or whatever.
I have at least 3 articles in draft format that I want to submit once I reach that total, but I don’t comment on discussions as much because most of what I would say is usually said in one comment or another. For people like me, the barrier of “must email someone” is actually easier, since discussion contribution requires a sense of knowing how the community works, intuiting a sense of what the community deems a good comment, and posting along those lines.
It may be worthwhile to publish one of them, or at least a draft for it, in Discussion; if it’s good enough, that should give you enough karma to post the following articles in Main, and if it isn’t, it’ll give you valuable feedback on how to improve them.
I don’t think “Not sending in your $200 rebate” and “not writing in an article to Overcomingbias” are the same phenomena at all.
It’s not that people who are now writing all these LW posts felt like it was too much of a hassle to send an email to Overcomingbias; it’s that deliberately and unusually sticking your neck out to contribute has a different social connotation than simply participating in the expected community behavior.
Contributing to Overcomingbias is like getting on stage: walking up to the stage is a socially loaded act in and of itself. “Hey, everyone, I’m going to stand out here and say something.” Lesswrong, since the entire site is built around community posting, practically invites you to post as you please. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. How could there be? The tools to do so are right there, embedded into the infrastructure of the site. It must be expected for me to do that!
I think LessWrong actually has a higher barrier for contribution—at least for articles—because you’re expected to have 20 comment karma before you can submit. This means that, if you’re honest anyway, you’ll have to spend your time in the pit interacting with people who could potentially shout you down, or call you a threat to their well-kept garden, or whatever.
I have at least 3 articles in draft format that I want to submit once I reach that total, but I don’t comment on discussions as much because most of what I would say is usually said in one comment or another. For people like me, the barrier of “must email someone” is actually easier, since discussion contribution requires a sense of knowing how the community works, intuiting a sense of what the community deems a good comment, and posting along those lines.
It may be worthwhile to publish one of them, or at least a draft for it, in Discussion; if it’s good enough, that should give you enough karma to post the following articles in Main, and if it isn’t, it’ll give you valuable feedback on how to improve them.