As far as raw content goes: I strongly suggest a “Unified standard for print and Internet” rule. Judge content against whatever book or paper you could be reading instead. Often communities have separate incentives to promote and praise original content regardless of absolute quality. There’s also a novelty bias, where mediocre content in new mediums (youtube videos, blogs) is held to a lower standard. Since I’ve implement this rule, I’ve noticed a lot of what I considered great content is really just “great for the internet” content. I read more books now.
Against this standard, I find the most raw information value comes from individuals who explicitly collate links or summarize information from other sources. Democratic collation can be great as well, but faces too many ways to die. Long-form community and blog content is almost always overrated, except for cases like niche ideologies or at the cutting edge of some technical or business topic.
Meta Warning: I think this applies to lesswrong. There are exceptions, but the long-form posts and related blogs are often either “good for the Internet” content or decision theory stuff I don’t have the background to understand. I don’t mean to gripe: I’m very happy with LW, and I regularly skim the discussion section and read the open threads. I just think that LW over-hypes it’s own original content, like any other community.
Against this standard, I find the most raw information value comes from individuals who explicitly collate links or summarize information from other sources.
Are you after interaction or information content?
As far as raw content goes: I strongly suggest a “Unified standard for print and Internet” rule. Judge content against whatever book or paper you could be reading instead. Often communities have separate incentives to promote and praise original content regardless of absolute quality. There’s also a novelty bias, where mediocre content in new mediums (youtube videos, blogs) is held to a lower standard. Since I’ve implement this rule, I’ve noticed a lot of what I considered great content is really just “great for the internet” content. I read more books now.
Against this standard, I find the most raw information value comes from individuals who explicitly collate links or summarize information from other sources. Democratic collation can be great as well, but faces too many ways to die. Long-form community and blog content is almost always overrated, except for cases like niche ideologies or at the cutting edge of some technical or business topic.
Meta Warning: I think this applies to lesswrong. There are exceptions, but the long-form posts and related blogs are often either “good for the Internet” content or decision theory stuff I don’t have the background to understand. I don’t mean to gripe: I’m very happy with LW, and I regularly skim the discussion section and read the open threads. I just think that LW over-hypes it’s own original content, like any other community.
Would you care to name some of them?