I am considering turning a bunch of relevant lists into Wiki entries. Wikipedia allows for lists of this sort (see e.g. the list of utilitarians) and some (e.g. Julia Wise) have remarked that they find lists quite useful. The idea occurred to me after a friend suggested a few courses I may want to add to my list of effective altruism syllabi. It now seems to me that the Wiki might be a better place to collect this sort of information than some random blog. Thoughts?
I think it’s better if they’re accessible via the Forum search function than if they’re elsewhere
I think it’s probably better if they’re EA wiki entries than EA Forum posts or shortforms because that makes it easier for them to be collaboratively built up
And this seems more important for and appropriate to a list than an average post
Posts are often much more like a particular author’s perspective, so editing beyond copyediting would typically be a bit odd (that said, a function for making suggestions could be cool—but that’s tangential to the main topic here)
I don’t think I see any other advantage of these lists being wiki entries rather than posts or shortforms
I think the only disadvantages of them being lists are that then we might have too many random or messy lists that have an air of official-ness or that the original list creator gets less credit for their contributions (their name isn’t attached to the list)
But the former disadvantage can apply to entries in general and so we already need sufficient policies, other editors, etc. to solve it, so doesn’t seem a big deal for lists specifically
And the former disadvantage can also apply to entries in general and so will hopefully be partially solved by things like edit counters, edit karma, “badges”, or the like
So overall this seems worth doing
Less important:
Various “collections” on my own shortform might be worth making into such entries
Though I think actually most of them are better fits for the bibliography pages of existing entries
(And ~ a month ago I added a link to those collections, or to all relevant items from the collections, to the associated entries that existed at the time)
I am considering turning a bunch of relevant lists into Wiki entries. Wikipedia allows for lists of this sort (see e.g. the list of utilitarians) and some (e.g. Julia Wise) have remarked that they find lists quite useful. The idea occurred to me after a friend suggested a few courses I may want to add to my list of effective altruism syllabi. It now seems to me that the Wiki might be a better place to collect this sort of information than some random blog. Thoughts?
Quick thoughts:
I think more lists/collections would be good
I think it’s better if they’re accessible via the Forum search function than if they’re elsewhere
I think it’s probably better if they’re EA wiki entries than EA Forum posts or shortforms because that makes it easier for them to be collaboratively built up
And this seems more important for and appropriate to a list than an average post
Posts are often much more like a particular author’s perspective, so editing beyond copyediting would typically be a bit odd (that said, a function for making suggestions could be cool—but that’s tangential to the main topic here)
I don’t think I see any other advantage of these lists being wiki entries rather than posts or shortforms
I think the only disadvantages of them being lists are that then we might have too many random or messy lists that have an air of official-ness or that the original list creator gets less credit for their contributions (their name isn’t attached to the list)
But the former disadvantage can apply to entries in general and so we already need sufficient policies, other editors, etc. to solve it, so doesn’t seem a big deal for lists specifically
And the former disadvantage can also apply to entries in general and so will hopefully be partially solved by things like edit counters, edit karma, “badges”, or the like
So overall this seems worth doing
Less important:
Various “collections” on my own shortform might be worth making into such entries
Though I think actually most of them are better fits for the bibliography pages of existing entries
(And ~ a month ago I added a link to those collections, or to all relevant items from the collections, to the associated entries that existed at the time)