Thanks Noah! I cosign your suggestions, but probably not your ‘super dead’ diagnosis.
I’d add:
Remember to give and remove karma. A better sorted Forum is a better use of everyone’s time.
Consider commenting more. I started drafting a post about this last week, but basically I think that at its best, comments on the Forum can be its greatest comparative strength. Forum comments are definitely better than comments on Substack (in my view) and I’d like to make that difference even starker.
Addendum: don’t undervalue comments. A good comment can get as much karma as a good post. A graph I made last week [at bottom of quick take] shows that the average karma given to comments has decreased. Proportionally this can’t be completely explained by the userbase being smaller—so either people are giving less karma across the board for a non-quality reason, or they value comments less. (LMK if you have other Qs about this, now AI can write the SQL for me I can access a lot more statistics.)
Tell me people I should crosspost (dm me or comment here). When we ask substackers if we can crosspost them they almost always say yes.
Also FWIW—I don’t see the LessWrong thing as the reason for the Forum seeming more dead, that isn’t a new development.
PS- The Forum team will be on a retreat this week, and we are having a team day on Friday, so all comments on the state of the Forum/​ suggestions and requests for what you want to see are massively appreciated and timely.
Thanks Noah! I cosign your suggestions, but probably not your ‘super dead’ diagnosis.
I’d add:
Remember to give and remove karma. A better sorted Forum is a better use of everyone’s time.
Consider commenting more. I started drafting a post about this last week, but basically I think that at its best, comments on the Forum can be its greatest comparative strength. Forum comments are definitely better than comments on Substack (in my view) and I’d like to make that difference even starker.
Addendum: don’t undervalue comments. A good comment can get as much karma as a good post. A graph I made last week [at bottom of quick take] shows that the average karma given to comments has decreased. Proportionally this can’t be completely explained by the userbase being smaller—so either people are giving less karma across the board for a non-quality reason, or they value comments less. (LMK if you have other Qs about this, now AI can write the SQL for me I can access a lot more statistics.)
Tell me people I should crosspost (dm me or comment here). When we ask substackers if we can crosspost them they almost always say yes.
Also FWIW—I don’t see the LessWrong thing as the reason for the Forum seeming more dead, that isn’t a new development.
PS- The Forum team will be on a retreat this week, and we are having a team day on Friday, so all comments on the state of the Forum/​ suggestions and requests for what you want to see are massively appreciated and timely.