I regularly write posts on lesswrong (and cross-post when applicable to alignmentforum). Am I a blogger? I certainly describe myself that way. But I get a strong impression from the Effective Ideas website that this doesn’t count. (You can correct me if I’m wrong.)
I guess the question is: do we think of lesswrong as a “blogging platform” akin to substack? Or do we think of it as a “community forum” akin to hacker news? (Or both!)
The same question, of course, applies to people who “blog” exclusively on EA Forum!
You might say: Maybe my lesswrong posts don’t constitute a proper “blog” because people can’t see just my posts, separated from everyone else’s lesswrong posts? Ah, but they can! Not only that, they can also view just my posts on my solo RSS feed, or my solo twitter, or an index of my posts on my personal website!
For my part, I find lesswrong to be a nice “blogging platform”, and have not so far felt tempted to set up a separate substack / wordpress / whatever. If I did, I would probably wind up cross-posting to lesswrong anyway, and the end result would just be a split-up comment section and more hassle posting and editing, with no appreciable upside, it seems to me. However, maybe I’d do it anyway, if eligibility for this giant prize is on the line. Is it?
Good to hear that you are writing on LessWrong. We are all big fans. But one of our guiding principles for this project has been to incentivize getting content in venues where they get beyond a core in-group. From the outside, it’s easy to see LW as for rationalists (and EA Forums only for EAs). Standard blogs feel more neutral to outsiders. And while standard blogs don’t require a different tone and context assumptions, they often have them. So we view blogging and LW (and similar venues) as complementary but distinct things.
So we ask that qualifying blogs are not on LessWrong, though crossposting every post would be permissible. And I would also encourage others to do prizes for LessWrong posts, etc.
If I did [set up a separate substack / wordpress / whatever], I would probably wind up cross-posting to lesswrong anyway, and the end result would just be a split-up comment section and more hassle posting and editing, with no appreciable upside, it seems to me.
This is exactly why I post on Less Wrong and then link to it from my personal website instead of crossposting. I wrote a program that crawls Less Wrong and then generates links on my personal website.
I especially like how reliably the Less Wrong moderation team prevents spam in the comments. Spam was a chronic annoyance when I ran my own comments section.
I regularly write posts on lesswrong (and cross-post when applicable to alignmentforum). Am I a blogger? I certainly describe myself that way. But I get a strong impression from the Effective Ideas website that this doesn’t count. (You can correct me if I’m wrong.)
I guess the question is: do we think of lesswrong as a “blogging platform” akin to substack? Or do we think of it as a “community forum” akin to hacker news? (Or both!)
The same question, of course, applies to people who “blog” exclusively on EA Forum!
You might say: Maybe my lesswrong posts don’t constitute a proper “blog” because people can’t see just my posts, separated from everyone else’s lesswrong posts? Ah, but they can! Not only that, they can also view just my posts on my solo RSS feed, or my solo twitter, or an index of my posts on my personal website!
For my part, I find lesswrong to be a nice “blogging platform”, and have not so far felt tempted to set up a separate substack / wordpress / whatever. If I did, I would probably wind up cross-posting to lesswrong anyway, and the end result would just be a split-up comment section and more hassle posting and editing, with no appreciable upside, it seems to me. However, maybe I’d do it anyway, if eligibility for this giant prize is on the line. Is it?
Good to hear that you are writing on LessWrong. We are all big fans. But one of our guiding principles for this project has been to incentivize getting content in venues where they get beyond a core in-group. From the outside, it’s easy to see LW as for rationalists (and EA Forums only for EAs). Standard blogs feel more neutral to outsiders. And while standard blogs don’t require a different tone and context assumptions, they often have them. So we view blogging and LW (and similar venues) as complementary but distinct things.
So we ask that qualifying blogs are not on LessWrong, though crossposting every post would be permissible. And I would also encourage others to do prizes for LessWrong posts, etc.
I assume it’s fine to prominently link to the EA forum or LW as the place to leave comments? Like e.g. cold takes does.
Yes, that’s fine.
This is exactly why I post on Less Wrong and then link to it from my personal website instead of crossposting. I wrote a program that crawls Less Wrong and then generates links on my personal website.
I especially like how reliably the Less Wrong moderation team prevents spam in the comments. Spam was a chronic annoyance when I ran my own comments section.