And yeah, the whole thing feels mostly like work, which can’t help.
This is partly why I haven’t done any reviews, despite feeling a vague moral obligation to do so. Another reason is that I wasn’t super engaged with LW throughout most of 2018 and few of the nominated posts jumped out at me (as something that I have a strong opinion about) from a skim of the titles, and the ones that did jump out at me I think I already commented on back when they were first posted and don’t feel motivated to review them now. Maybe that’s because I don’t like to pass judgment (I don’t think I’ve written a review for anything before) and when I first commented it was in the spirit of “here are some tentative thoughts I’m bringing up for discussion”.
Also, I haven’t voted yet because I don’t remember the details of the vast majority of the posts, and don’t feel comfortable just voting based on my current general feeling about each post (which is probably most strongly influenced by how much I currently agree with the main points it tried to make), and I also don’t feel like taking the time to re-read all of the posts. (I think for this reason perhaps whoever’s selecting the final posts to go into the book should consider post karma as much or even more than the votes?)
I think if there was a period where every few days a mod would post a few nominated posts and ask people to re-read and re-discuss them, that might have helped to engage people like me more. (Although honestly there’s so much new content on LW competing for attention now that I might not have participated much even in that process.)
Also, I haven’t voted yet because I don’t remember the details of the vast majority of the posts, and don’t feel comfortable just voting based on my current general feeling about each post
Reminder here that it’s pretty fine to vote proportional to “how good does the post seem” and “how confident you are in that assessment.” (i.e. I expect it to improve the epistemic value of the vote if people in your reference class weakly vote on the posts that seem good)
I think if there was a period where every few days a mod would post a few nominated posts and ask people to re-read and re-discuss them, that might have helped to engage people like me more. (Although honestly there’s so much new content on LW competing for attention now that I might not have participated much even in that process.)
That’s a pretty good idea, might try something like that next year.
the ones that did jump out at me I think I already commented on back when they were first posted and don’t feel motivated to review them now.
Not sure how helpful this is, but fwiw:
I think it’s useful for the post authors to write reviews basically saying “here is how much thinking has evolved since writing this, and/or ’yup, I still just endorse this and think it’s great”.
In the same way, I think it’d be useful people did most of their commenting back-in-the-day write a short review that basically says “I still endorse the things I said back then”, or “my thinking has changed a bit, here’s how.” (As I noted elsethread, I think it was also helpful when Vanessa combined several previous comments into one more distilled comment, although obviously that’s a bit more work).
This is partly why I haven’t done any reviews, despite feeling a vague moral obligation to do so. Another reason is that I wasn’t super engaged with LW throughout most of 2018 and few of the nominated posts jumped out at me (as something that I have a strong opinion about) from a skim of the titles, and the ones that did jump out at me I think I already commented on back when they were first posted and don’t feel motivated to review them now. Maybe that’s because I don’t like to pass judgment (I don’t think I’ve written a review for anything before) and when I first commented it was in the spirit of “here are some tentative thoughts I’m bringing up for discussion”.
Also, I haven’t voted yet because I don’t remember the details of the vast majority of the posts, and don’t feel comfortable just voting based on my current general feeling about each post (which is probably most strongly influenced by how much I currently agree with the main points it tried to make), and I also don’t feel like taking the time to re-read all of the posts. (I think for this reason perhaps whoever’s selecting the final posts to go into the book should consider post karma as much or even more than the votes?)
I think if there was a period where every few days a mod would post a few nominated posts and ask people to re-read and re-discuss them, that might have helped to engage people like me more. (Although honestly there’s so much new content on LW competing for attention now that I might not have participated much even in that process.)
Reminder here that it’s pretty fine to vote proportional to “how good does the post seem” and “how confident you are in that assessment.” (i.e. I expect it to improve the epistemic value of the vote if people in your reference class weakly vote on the posts that seem good)
That’s a pretty good idea, might try something like that next year.
Not sure how helpful this is, but fwiw:
I think it’s useful for the post authors to write reviews basically saying “here is how much thinking has evolved since writing this, and/or ’yup, I still just endorse this and think it’s great”.
In the same way, I think it’d be useful people did most of their commenting back-in-the-day write a short review that basically says “I still endorse the things I said back then”, or “my thinking has changed a bit, here’s how.” (As I noted elsethread, I think it was also helpful when Vanessa combined several previous comments into one more distilled comment, although obviously that’s a bit more work).