This is something like the third time I’ve joined a community that seemed to think it was in decline. I have a theory: they were, and it is, and this is something I should expect.
Reasoning: A high-quality community will probably grow over time as new users discover it. As it grows, the quality of its user base will inevitably regress to the mean (i.e. decline). More people will experience the community during and after growth than before growth. Therefore, assuming I am a random community member, I should expect the community to be in decline during my tenure.
One could probably do some amusing math by taking growth rate at time T as a function of quality and population at T-1, and quality at time T as a function of quality at T-1 and population change between T and T-1. There is probably a word for that sort of setup but I don’t know it.
Reasoning: A high-quality community will probably grow over time as new users discover it. As it grows, the quality of its user base will inevitably regress to the mean (i.e. decline).
It’s more like the quality of posts will regress when the high quality community has largely shot it’s wad, and is satisfied with their answers. When newbies come, they’ll get pooh poohed by their elders, and often be intimidated. A newbie discussion starts, but an old timer will chime in with the “solution” and talk will peter out.
The culture of peers figuring it out dies, to be replaced by cranky old smarty pants who squash the kind of flailing about they used to do as “useless noise”.
Having “Joined in Year XXXX” classes, each with their own forum, would be a way to segregate freshly minted eager beavers from cranky old codgers who have heard it all a thousand times before. Everybody wins. A class of Johnny Come Latelies might even come up with new ideas to challenge the geezer consensus.
It’s more like the quality of posts will regress when the high quality community has largely shot it’s wad, and is satisfied with their answers. When newbies come, they’ll get pooh poohed by their elders, and often be intimidated. A newbie discussion starts, but an old timer will chime in with the “solution” and talk will peter out.
(speaking as someone who has read through literally every post in Main since the start of LW a couple of times; I haven’t attempted all of Discussion, probably should)
The interesting thing is that LW started with all the answers: it was seeded with almost the entirety of The Sequences. It went along for a few years as (approximately) a Sequences fan site, discussing and extrapolating from them.
That led to some unpleasant weirdness, and after that the site regulars noticeably (well, I noticed it, looking through the history) backed away from extrapolation from the sequences.
Then HPMOR lured in more newbies, who stuck around a bit but there have been no new chapters in a while.
So basically there looks like there’s nothing happening because there’s nothing happening. I still read the Open Threads, but I thought it was just me finding them the last vestige of liveliness; it’s evident from this thread that there are lots of others.
Really? It started with the sequences? A different kind of site than I assumed. No wonder people have their panties in a bunch over being called a phyg.
I’m not an old timer here. 3 or 4 years now. Sucked in by HPMOR.
I am an old timer to the web, though. I had my first web site back around 93 or 94. Fringe philosophy site. I scanned in obscure essays and books to make them available to others.Sure made a great commercial decision there, didn’t I?
Back in my day, it was all mailing lists, listservs, and Usenet. A few people connected on a topic, or splintered from some existing group, and started their own list. It was a discussion, usually of a lot of grad students, hashing out ideas. A list focused on some bozo posting his weekly pontifications would have seemed rather, um, phygish in that era. I guess it’s a little more the norm these days.
Anyone want to make me feel young, and tell me about how in their day, it was all bboards? No?
after that the site regulars noticeably … backed away from extrapolation from the sequences.
Would you elaborate? Noticeably… backed away? Self consciously and purposively backed away? Why?
Then HPMOR lured in more newbies, who stuck around a bit but there have been no new chapters in a while.
I’m not an old timer here. 3 or 4 years now. Sucked in by HPMOR.
Me since late 2010, which is why reading the entire history was instructive. (And definitely something to pursue in the manner of working through a DVD box set.)
Would you elaborate? Noticeably… backed away? Self consciously and purposively backed away? Why?
It seems to me, looking through the entire history a couple of times, that after the Basilisk, the quantity of free-ranging extrapolation from the basic Sequence memes went right down. The Basilisk was definitely the high point of site weirdness. I didn’t see anyone saying “oh shit” out loud, but I don’t think it’s a remarkable inference to say that they did so collectively.
Me since late 2010, which is why reading the entire history was instructive.
Have you attempted reading the SL4 archieves? There are probably some gems in there. From the bit that I’ve heard and seen, it was at least as weird as LW.
It seems to me, looking through the entire history a couple of times, that after the Basilisk, the quantity of free-ranging extrapolation from the basic Sequence memes went right down. The Basilisk was definitely the high point of site weirdness.
Haha...yeah. It’s the reason I started criticizing MIRI/LW. Before I was mainly a lurker, and somewhat of a fan. There are even comments where I advertised LessWrong elsewhere. I even linked to MIRI on my website as far back as 2005. But the basilisk incident opened my eyes for how out of touch with reality and common sense these people really are.
Technically, this website started by Eliezer and Robin Hanson posting together on Overcoming Bias; then Eliezer took his articles (after the Sequences were written) to the new website. So in fact it never was one person’s blog, although the Sequences part seems so retroactively.
The history goes back further, i.e. many of the regulars from those days (not so much right now, which surprises me) and the concepts discussed dated back to the SL4 list and before that the Extropians list. (Haven’t archive-binged those yet—thinking of them as the dusty VHS box sets still on the shelf.) People followed Eliezer from site to site.
That still fits the distinction between the old days and new.
Back in the day, lists were about people getting together and discussing. A two man show splitting into two one man shows is both a break from that model, and the final progression of the drift from discussions to one man shows.
Here are some differences between these eras: nowadays there are (a) more places to debate online, (b) more people online, and (c) lower quality of an average person online.
The old model probably wouldn’t work now. I mean: Imagine that you create a new discussion forum to discuss, say, rationality. This is as easy as spending 2 minutes on Reddit website. Cool, you have a forum. What now? Because, if you can’t answer this, then a few years later you will likely have an empty forum, or a few random crazy or bored people, an occassional spambot, and generally nothing you wanted to have.
Two quick solutions: bring initial people, or bring initial content. Eliezer did the latter. I assume you prefer the former… but then you need to know a dozen high-quality people interested in the same project to start it. Which would be rather easy decades ago at a good university, when you were physically surrounded by smart people with similar hobbies, and they didn’t have much other options on internet anyway (at least this was my experience). But these days, there are millions of websites, people have different preferences (e.g. some of them prefer to write their thoughts on social networks, others hate social netwroks; some prefer e-mails, some prefer websites; etc.), so it is difficult to organize them. Not impossible, just… unlikely. For example I consider mailing lists horribly inconvenient, and leave them quickly even if the topic is very interesting; the user interfaces I tried (e-mail client, google groups website) feel painful. I know people who react the same way to web debates. So I guess some people are just too spoiled to have a discussion at the same place.
Are there some mailing lists you would recommend as a better alternative for LW? I’d like to see them (specifically something about spreading rationality). Or are you complaining generally, that the whole internet is getting worse and the old-style debates are no longer possible?
… aside from the big difference between ‘in decline’ and ‘about to be utterly destroyed’.
I’ve been places that have been in decline and then resurged to beyond where they were. Not that I see this occurring here any time soon barring something big happening.
This is something like the third time I’ve joined a community that seemed to think it was in decline. I have a theory: they were, and it is, and this is something I should expect.
Reasoning: A high-quality community will probably grow over time as new users discover it. As it grows, the quality of its user base will inevitably regress to the mean (i.e. decline). More people will experience the community during and after growth than before growth. Therefore, assuming I am a random community member, I should expect the community to be in decline during my tenure.
One could probably do some amusing math by taking growth rate at time T as a function of quality and population at T-1, and quality at time T as a function of quality at T-1 and population change between T and T-1. There is probably a word for that sort of setup but I don’t know it.
It’s more like the quality of posts will regress when the high quality community has largely shot it’s wad, and is satisfied with their answers. When newbies come, they’ll get pooh poohed by their elders, and often be intimidated. A newbie discussion starts, but an old timer will chime in with the “solution” and talk will peter out.
The culture of peers figuring it out dies, to be replaced by cranky old smarty pants who squash the kind of flailing about they used to do as “useless noise”.
Having “Joined in Year XXXX” classes, each with their own forum, would be a way to segregate freshly minted eager beavers from cranky old codgers who have heard it all a thousand times before. Everybody wins. A class of Johnny Come Latelies might even come up with new ideas to challenge the geezer consensus.
(speaking as someone who has read through literally every post in Main since the start of LW a couple of times; I haven’t attempted all of Discussion, probably should)
The interesting thing is that LW started with all the answers: it was seeded with almost the entirety of The Sequences. It went along for a few years as (approximately) a Sequences fan site, discussing and extrapolating from them.
That led to some unpleasant weirdness, and after that the site regulars noticeably (well, I noticed it, looking through the history) backed away from extrapolation from the sequences.
Then HPMOR lured in more newbies, who stuck around a bit but there have been no new chapters in a while.
So basically there looks like there’s nothing happening because there’s nothing happening. I still read the Open Threads, but I thought it was just me finding them the last vestige of liveliness; it’s evident from this thread that there are lots of others.
Really? It started with the sequences? A different kind of site than I assumed. No wonder people have their panties in a bunch over being called a phyg.
I’m not an old timer here. 3 or 4 years now. Sucked in by HPMOR.
I am an old timer to the web, though. I had my first web site back around 93 or 94. Fringe philosophy site. I scanned in obscure essays and books to make them available to others.Sure made a great commercial decision there, didn’t I?
Back in my day, it was all mailing lists, listservs, and Usenet. A few people connected on a topic, or splintered from some existing group, and started their own list. It was a discussion, usually of a lot of grad students, hashing out ideas. A list focused on some bozo posting his weekly pontifications would have seemed rather, um, phygish in that era. I guess it’s a little more the norm these days.
Anyone want to make me feel young, and tell me about how in their day, it was all bboards? No?
Would you elaborate? Noticeably… backed away? Self consciously and purposively backed away? Why?
And none today too. Ugh!
Me since late 2010, which is why reading the entire history was instructive. (And definitely something to pursue in the manner of working through a DVD box set.)
It seems to me, looking through the entire history a couple of times, that after the Basilisk, the quantity of free-ranging extrapolation from the basic Sequence memes went right down. The Basilisk was definitely the high point of site weirdness. I didn’t see anyone saying “oh shit” out loud, but I don’t think it’s a remarkable inference to say that they did so collectively.
Have you attempted reading the SL4 archieves? There are probably some gems in there. From the bit that I’ve heard and seen, it was at least as weird as LW.
Haha...yeah. It’s the reason I started criticizing MIRI/LW. Before I was mainly a lurker, and somewhat of a fan. There are even comments where I advertised LessWrong elsewhere. I even linked to MIRI on my website as far back as 2005. But the basilisk incident opened my eyes for how out of touch with reality and common sense these people really are.
I think of SL4 and Extropians as the dusty VHS box sets still on the shelves :-)
Technically, this website started by Eliezer and Robin Hanson posting together on Overcoming Bias; then Eliezer took his articles (after the Sequences were written) to the new website. So in fact it never was one person’s blog, although the Sequences part seems so retroactively.
The history goes back further, i.e. many of the regulars from those days (not so much right now, which surprises me) and the concepts discussed dated back to the SL4 list and before that the Extropians list. (Haven’t archive-binged those yet—thinking of them as the dusty VHS box sets still on the shelf.) People followed Eliezer from site to site.
But yes, I concur.
That still fits the distinction between the old days and new.
Back in the day, lists were about people getting together and discussing. A two man show splitting into two one man shows is both a break from that model, and the final progression of the drift from discussions to one man shows.
Here are some differences between these eras: nowadays there are (a) more places to debate online, (b) more people online, and (c) lower quality of an average person online.
The old model probably wouldn’t work now. I mean: Imagine that you create a new discussion forum to discuss, say, rationality. This is as easy as spending 2 minutes on Reddit website. Cool, you have a forum. What now? Because, if you can’t answer this, then a few years later you will likely have an empty forum, or a few random crazy or bored people, an occassional spambot, and generally nothing you wanted to have.
Two quick solutions: bring initial people, or bring initial content. Eliezer did the latter. I assume you prefer the former… but then you need to know a dozen high-quality people interested in the same project to start it. Which would be rather easy decades ago at a good university, when you were physically surrounded by smart people with similar hobbies, and they didn’t have much other options on internet anyway (at least this was my experience). But these days, there are millions of websites, people have different preferences (e.g. some of them prefer to write their thoughts on social networks, others hate social netwroks; some prefer e-mails, some prefer websites; etc.), so it is difficult to organize them. Not impossible, just… unlikely. For example I consider mailing lists horribly inconvenient, and leave them quickly even if the topic is very interesting; the user interfaces I tried (e-mail client, google groups website) feel painful. I know people who react the same way to web debates. So I guess some people are just too spoiled to have a discussion at the same place.
Are there some mailing lists you would recommend as a better alternative for LW? I’d like to see them (specifically something about spreading rationality). Or are you complaining generally, that the whole internet is getting worse and the old-style debates are no longer possible?
Sort of like the Mathic societies of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. Nice.
This is the Doomsday argument.
… aside from the big difference between ‘in decline’ and ‘about to be utterly destroyed’.
I’ve been places that have been in decline and then resurged to beyond where they were. Not that I see this occurring here any time soon barring something big happening.