Agree that there’s a different incentive for cooperative writing than for clickbait-y news in particular. And I agree with your recommendations. That said, I think many community writers may undervalue making their content more goddamn readable. Scott Alexander is a verbose and often spends paragraphs getting to the start of his point, but I end up with a better understanding of what he’s saying by virtue of being fully interested.
All in all though, I’d recommend people try to write like Paul Graham more than either Scott Alexander or an internal memo. He is in general more concise than Scott and more interesting than a memo.
Agree that there’s a different incentive for cooperative writing than for clickbait-y news in particular. And I agree with your recommendations. That said, I think many community writers may undervalue making their content more goddamn readable. Scott Alexander is a verbose and often spends paragraphs getting to the start of his point, but I end up with a better understanding of what he’s saying by virtue of being fully interested.
All in all though, I’d recommend people try to write like Paul Graham more than either Scott Alexander or an internal memo. He is in general more concise than Scott and more interesting than a memo.
He has several essays about how he writes.
Writing, Briefly — Laundry list of tips
Write like you talk
The Age of the Essay — History of the essays we write in school versus the essays that are useful
A Version 1.0 — “The Age of the Essay” in rough draft form with color coding for if it was kept