The first way in which this post is an experiment is that it’s work-in-progress that I’m presenting at a Forethought Research progress meeting. The experiment is just to publish it as a draft and then have the comments that I would normally receive as GoogleDoc comments on this forum post instead. The hope is that by doing this more people can get up to speed with Forethought research earlier than they would have and we can also get more feedback and thoughts at an earlier stage from a wider diversity of people.
I’d welcome takes from Forumites on how valuable or not this was.
I like the idea, though I think a shared gdoc is far better for any in-line comments. Maybe if you only want people to give high-level comments this is better though—I imagine heaps of people may want to comment on gdocs you share publicly.
The EA forum team should be able to import lesswrong’s in-line commenting system, if there’s demand for that. I.e., you select some text in the post, you can comment on it directly, then the comments appear at the bottom and also at the side if they have enough upvotes.
I’m in favor. Mostly because it seems mildly useful, not because there are very big upsides outweighing big downsides. I don’t really see what the downsides would be.
Perhaps the main downside is people may overuse the feature and it encourages people to spend time making small comments, whereas the current system nudges people towards leaving fewer more substantive comments and less nit-picky ones? Not sure if this has been an issue on LW, I don’t read it as much.
The first way in which this post is an experiment is that it’s work-in-progress that I’m presenting at a Forethought Research progress meeting. The experiment is just to publish it as a draft and then have the comments that I would normally receive as GoogleDoc comments on this forum post instead. The hope is that by doing this more people can get up to speed with Forethought research earlier than they would have and we can also get more feedback and thoughts at an earlier stage from a wider diversity of people.
I’d welcome takes from Forumites on how valuable or not this was.
I like the idea, though I think a shared gdoc is far better for any in-line comments. Maybe if you only want people to give high-level comments this is better though—I imagine heaps of people may want to comment on gdocs you share publicly.
The EA forum team should be able to import lesswrong’s in-line commenting system, if there’s demand for that. I.e., you select some text in the post, you can comment on it directly, then the comments appear at the bottom and also at the side if they have enough upvotes.
+1 on we should be able to implement this. I welcome takes for and against (I think the team has been split on this, personally I’m quite pro).
I’m in favor. Mostly because it seems mildly useful, not because there are very big upsides outweighing big downsides. I don’t really see what the downsides would be.
Perhaps the main downside is people may overuse the feature and it encourages people to spend time making small comments, whereas the current system nudges people towards leaving fewer more substantive comments and less nit-picky ones? Not sure if this has been an issue on LW, I don’t read it as much.
Love this idea—keen to hear afterwards whether it felt useful from your end.