Didn’t see the original, but it looks good now.
Gondolinian
Karma: 1,391
(The line spacing got all wacko, sorry about that)
That prompted me to look up how to make line breaks in Markdown syntax, which I’d been wondering about myself for a while.
Try typing two or more spaces and then hitting enter
whenever you want a new line.
Thanks for responding. Unfortunately I think that guide only works for comments? Or at least, it only works for Markdown syntax. Do you know of any way to put Markdown syntax in a Main or Discussion post?
Sorry for the late reply, and thanks for the offer! Unfortunately I wasn’t actually talking about doing it myself, just putting it out there as an idea. Good luck though; it sounds like a valuable thing for the rationality community to have.
Improbable idea for surviving heat death: computers made from time crystals. (h/t Nostalgebraist and Scott)
Keep the same upvote/downvote system for individual comments and posts, but don’t keep a total karma score for each user on their user page. Alternatively, keep a total karma score, but don’t keep a total percent-positive score. (I believe the EA forum uses the former system, and Reddit the latter, but please correct me if I’m wrong about this.) [pollid:1006]
True, but that’s only from a very limited number of sources (~4?); it doesn’t include the dozens of smaller blogs. It’s also a straight feed—no filtering out of housekeeping, meta posts, etc.--and it only shows 5 links which are quickly pushed aside by newer ones, while a section for links would keep all of them accessible and searchable.
Ideas from recent discussion regarding changes to the Promotion system:
[in progress]
Have Promotion be based on some kind of popular vote (not necessarily karma) or some other kind of community decision, instead of an Editor’s decision. [pollid:1004]
Allow posts from Discussion to be Promoted without having to first be moved to Main.
This is already possible by logging into the Username account and sending a message or reply from there, but we could do something to make it more convenient. Thanks for the idea.
ETA: One possible issue with this I see is that the anonymity might encourage people to be meaner than they would be when posting/messaging under their main account, but perhaps there are ways around this?
[pollid:1000]
Ideas from recent discussion regarding changes to the karma system and/or addition of new sections:
[in progress]
Make downvotes cost some of the downvoter’s karma. (h/t RichardKennaway and Houshalter) [pollid:997]
Only allow users with a certain amount of karma to downvote. (The actual amount can be worked out later.) (h/t ete and Houshalter) [pollid:998]
Create a new and separate from Main and Discussion section with either no karma, like the SSC discussions, or only upvotes, like Tumblr, Facebook and other social media services used by rationalists. [pollid:999]
Create a new section for links to interesting posts on external rationalist blogs. (h/t Houshalter) [I apologize for the overlap with the previous poll; I found this idea only after I’d made it.] [pollid:1001]
On second thought, I’ll risk it. (I might post a comment to it with a compilation of my ideas and my favorites of others’ ideas, but it might take me a while.)
Good point, thanks. I was already not a fan of the way the polls made the post look, so I went ahead and took them down. I could replace them with something better, but I think this thread has already gotten most of the attention it’s going to get, so I might as well just leave the post as it is.
Would you be willing to run a survey on Discussion also about Main being based on upvotes instead of a mix of self-selection and moderation? As well as all ideas that seem interesting to you that people suggest here?
I’d rather not expose myself to the potential downvotes of a full Discussion post, and I also don’t know how to put polls in full posts, only in comments. Nonetheless I am pretty pro-poll in general and I’ll try to include more of them with my ideas.
Perhaps official downvote policies messaged to a user the first time they pass that would help too.
Anything with messages could be implemented by a bot account, right? That could be made without having to change the Less Wrong code itself.
Maybe we could send a message to users with guidelines on downvoting every time they downvote something? This would gently discourage heavy and/or poorly reasoned downvoting, likely without doing too much damage to the kind of downvoting we want. One issue with this is it would likely be very difficult or practically impossible for a bot account to know when someone downvotes something without changing the LW code. (Though it probably wouldn’t require a very big change, and things could be limited to just the bot account(s).)
[pollid:989]
I do not have the time to engage in the social interactions required to even be aware of where all this posting elsewhere is going on, but I want to read it.
There’s a Masterlist for rational Tumblr, but I’m not aware of a complete list of all rationalist blogs across platforms.
Perhaps the Less Wrong community might find it useful to start one? If it were hosted here on LW, it might also reinforce LW’s position as a central hub of the rationality community, which is relevant to the OP.
It doesn’t help that even the most offhand posting is generally treated as if it was an academic paper and reviewed skewered accordingly :-p.
I agree. There are definitely times for unfiltered criticism, but most people require a feeling of security to be their most creative.
Is anyone in favor of creating a new upvote-only section of LW?
[pollid:988]
A few tangential ideas off the top of my head:
If the moderation and self selection of Main was changed into something that attracts those who have been on LW for a long time, and discussion was changed to something like Newcomers discussion, LW could go back to being the main space, with a two tier system (maybe one modulated by karma as well).
People have been proposing for a while that we create a third section of LW for open threads and similar content.
We could have a section without any karma scores for posts/upvote only, though we could still keep the same system for comments.
We could allow Discussion posts to be Promoted while still using the Discussion karma system.
We could have Promotion somehow be based on popular vote (not necessarily karma), instead of a moderator’s judgement.
I don’t think this is how it works with people. Especially ones with full ’net access.
You’re right; that was poorly phrased. I meant that they would have a lot less tying them down to the mainstream, like heavy schoolwork, expectations to get a good job, etc. Speaking from my own experience, not having those makes a huge difference in what ideas you’re able to take seriously.
The Internet exposes one to many ideas, but 99% of them are nonsense, and smart people with the freedom to think about the things they want to think about eventually become pretty good at seeing that (again speaking from personal experience), so I think Internet access helps rather than hurts this “blank slate”-ness.
I knew about melatonin and red/blue light from reading people in this community. I also had a vague understanding that circadian rhythms controlled falling asleep and were based on light, but I don’t think I’d seen things spelled out as clearly as they are here. Thank you for putting this together and I do look forward to the rest of your series.