The curation discussion made me think of this recent shortform post: “EA forum content might be declining in quality. Here are some possible mechanisms: [...]”
It seems like there has been an effort to get people less intimidated about posting to the Forum. I think this is probably good—intimidation seems like a somewhat bad way to achieve quality control. However, with less intimidation and higher post volumes, we’re leaning harder on upvotes & downvotes to direct attention and achieve quality control. Since our system is kind of like reddit’s [I believe reddit is the only major social media site that’s primarily driven by upvotes+downvotes rather than followings and/or recommendations], the obvious problems to fear would be the ones you see when subreddits get larger:
People who disagree with the current consensus get dogpiled with downvotes and self-select out of the community
Memes get more upvotes than in-depth content since they are more accessible and easier to consume
(My sense is that these are the 2 big mechanisms behind the common advice to seek out niche subreddits for high-quality discussion—let me know if you’re a redditor and you can think of other considerations.)
Anyway, this leaves me feeling positive about two-factor voting, including on toplevel posts. It seems like a good way to push back on the “self-selection for agreement” problem.
It also leaves me feeling positive about curation as a way to push back on the “popcorn content” problem. In fact, I might take curation even further. Brainstorming follows...
Imagine I am a forum user thinking about investing several weeks or months writing an in-depth report on some topic. Ian David Moss wrote:
...it’s pretty demotivating when a post that reflects five months and hundreds of hours of work is on the front page for less than a day. I feel like there’s something wrong with the system when I can spend five minutes putting together a linkpost instead and earn a greater level of engagement.
Curation as described in the OP helps a bit, because there’s a chance someone will notice my post while it’s on the frontpage and suggest it for curation. But imagine I could submit an abstract/TLDR to a curator asking them to rate their interest in curating a post on my chosen topic. After I finish writing my post, I could “apply for curation” and maybe have some back-and-forth with a curator to get my post good enough. Essentially making curation on the forum work a bit like publication in an academic journal. While I’m dreaming, maybe someone could be paid to fact-check/red team my post before it goes live (possibly reflected in a separate quality badge, or maybe this should actually be a prereq for curation).
I think academic journals and online forums have distinct advantages. Academic journals seem good at incentivizing people to iron out boring details. But they lack the exciting social nature of an online forum which gets people learning and discussing things for fun in their spare time. Maybe there’s a way to combine the advantages of both, and have an exciting social experience that also gets boring details right. (Of course, it would be good to avoid academic publishing problems too—I don’t know too much about that though.)
Another question is the role of Facebook. I don’t use it, and I know it has obvious disadvantages, but even so it seems like there’s an argument for making relevant Facebook groups the designated place for less rigorous posts.
The curation discussion made me think of this recent shortform post: “EA forum content might be declining in quality. Here are some possible mechanisms: [...]”
It seems like there has been an effort to get people less intimidated about posting to the Forum. I think this is probably good—intimidation seems like a somewhat bad way to achieve quality control. However, with less intimidation and higher post volumes, we’re leaning harder on upvotes & downvotes to direct attention and achieve quality control. Since our system is kind of like reddit’s [I believe reddit is the only major social media site that’s primarily driven by upvotes+downvotes rather than followings and/or recommendations], the obvious problems to fear would be the ones you see when subreddits get larger:
People who disagree with the current consensus get dogpiled with downvotes and self-select out of the community
Memes get more upvotes than in-depth content since they are more accessible and easier to consume
(My sense is that these are the 2 big mechanisms behind the common advice to seek out niche subreddits for high-quality discussion—let me know if you’re a redditor and you can think of other considerations.)
Anyway, this leaves me feeling positive about two-factor voting, including on toplevel posts. It seems like a good way to push back on the “self-selection for agreement” problem.
It also leaves me feeling positive about curation as a way to push back on the “popcorn content” problem. In fact, I might take curation even further. Brainstorming follows...
Imagine I am a forum user thinking about investing several weeks or months writing an in-depth report on some topic. Ian David Moss wrote:
Curation as described in the OP helps a bit, because there’s a chance someone will notice my post while it’s on the frontpage and suggest it for curation. But imagine I could submit an abstract/TLDR to a curator asking them to rate their interest in curating a post on my chosen topic. After I finish writing my post, I could “apply for curation” and maybe have some back-and-forth with a curator to get my post good enough. Essentially making curation on the forum work a bit like publication in an academic journal. While I’m dreaming, maybe someone could be paid to fact-check/red team my post before it goes live (possibly reflected in a separate quality badge, or maybe this should actually be a prereq for curation).
I think academic journals and online forums have distinct advantages. Academic journals seem good at incentivizing people to iron out boring details. But they lack the exciting social nature of an online forum which gets people learning and discussing things for fun in their spare time. Maybe there’s a way to combine the advantages of both, and have an exciting social experience that also gets boring details right. (Of course, it would be good to avoid academic publishing problems too—I don’t know too much about that though.)
Another question is the role of Facebook. I don’t use it, and I know it has obvious disadvantages, but even so it seems like there’s an argument for making relevant Facebook groups the designated place for less rigorous posts.