My most significant reservation about the wiki as a project is that most similar projects seem to fail ā e.g., they are barely read, donāt deliver high-quality content, or are mostly abandoned after a couple of months. This seems to be the case both for wikis in general and for similar projects related to EA, including EA Concepts, PriorityWiki, the LessWrong Wiki, and Arbital.
This was also my most significant reservation about both whether the EA Wiki should get a grant (I wasnāt a decision-maker on thatāI just mean me thinking from the sidelines) and about whether I should spend time contributing to the wiki.
That said, I think those sentences have a quite notable omission: The new LessWrong wiki, which does seem to be fairly actively used, to have fairly high-quality content, and to not have been abandoned even after itās been around for several months. (I havenāt looked at page views, nor carefully reviewed many articles, so these claims are tentative.)
This is especially notable because:
Thatās the most recent analogous case
And some variables have changed since the previous cases, e.g. the amount of people and money in EA, how much research there is that can be distilled, etc.
The EA Wiki is drawing directly on many elements of the LessWrong wiki and mirroring its strategy in some ways, making the analogy stronger
E.g., both are closely paired with an already frequently visited forum site and with a tagging system, and this seems likely to help both to continue getting traffic, contributions, etc.
As far as Iām aware, that wasnāt the case for the four previous things you mentioned
(Itās still definitely plausible to me that the EA Wiki will be abandoned within a year, will never receive much traffic, or will fail/āfizzle out/āprovide little value for some other reason. But I think itās less likely than one might think if one considered only the four projects you mentioned and not the new LessWrong wiki.)
(Just to clarify, what I meant was their tagging+concept system, which is very similar to the EA Wikiās system and is being drawn on for the EA Wikiās system. I now realise my previous commentānow editedāwas misleading in that it (a) said āThe new LessWrong Wikiā like that was its name and (b) didnāt give a link. Google suggests that they arenāt calling this new thing āthe LessWrong Wikiā.)
Yep, the new wiki/ātagging system has been going decently well, I think. We are seeing active edits, and in general I am a lot less worried about it being abandoned, given how deeply it is integrated with the rest of LW (via the tagging system, the daily page and the recent discussion feed).
Also worth mentioning is that LessWrong has recently extended the karma system to wiki edits. You can see it here. Iām pretty excited about this feature, which I expect to increase participation, and look forward to its deployment for the EA Wiki.
The improvements are now ported to the Wiki. Not only can you vote for individual contributions, but you can also see, for each article, a list of each contributor, and see their contributions by hovering over their names. Articles now also show a table of contents, and there may be other features I havenāt yet discovered. Overall, Iām very impressed!
This was also my most significant reservation about both whether the EA Wiki should get a grant (I wasnāt a decision-maker on thatāI just mean me thinking from the sidelines) and about whether I should spend time contributing to the wiki.
That said, I think those sentences have a quite notable omission: The new LessWrong wiki, which does seem to be fairly actively used, to have fairly high-quality content, and to not have been abandoned even after itās been around for several months. (I havenāt looked at page views, nor carefully reviewed many articles, so these claims are tentative.)
This is especially notable because:
Thatās the most recent analogous case
And some variables have changed since the previous cases, e.g. the amount of people and money in EA, how much research there is that can be distilled, etc.
The EA Wiki is drawing directly on many elements of the LessWrong wiki and mirroring its strategy in some ways, making the analogy stronger
E.g., both are closely paired with an already frequently visited forum site and with a tagging system, and this seems likely to help both to continue getting traffic, contributions, etc.
As far as Iām aware, that wasnāt the case for the four previous things you mentioned
(Itās still definitely plausible to me that the EA Wiki will be abandoned within a year, will never receive much traffic, or will fail/āfizzle out/āprovide little value for some other reason. But I think itās less likely than one might think if one considered only the four projects you mentioned and not the new LessWrong wiki.)
Fwiw I think that looking at the work thatās been done so far, the EA Wiki is very promising.
Thanks, I agree that this is an interesting data point. I had simply not been aware of a new LessWrong Wiki, which seems like an oversight.
(Just to clarify, what I meant was their tagging+concept system, which is very similar to the EA Wikiās system and is being drawn on for the EA Wikiās system. I now realise my previous commentānow editedāwas misleading in that it (a) said āThe new LessWrong Wikiā like that was its name and (b) didnāt give a link. Google suggests that they arenāt calling this new thing āthe LessWrong Wikiā.)
Yep, the new wiki/ātagging system has been going decently well, I think. We are seeing active edits, and in general I am a lot less worried about it being abandoned, given how deeply it is integrated with the rest of LW (via the tagging system, the daily page and the recent discussion feed).
Also worth mentioning is that LessWrong has recently extended the karma system to wiki edits. You can see it here. Iām pretty excited about this feature, which I expect to increase participation, and look forward to its deployment for the EA Wiki.
The improvements are now ported to the Wiki. Not only can you vote for individual contributions, but you can also see, for each article, a list of each contributor, and see their contributions by hovering over their names. Articles now also show a table of contents, and there may be other features I havenāt yet discovered. Overall, Iām very impressed!
Great! Iām also intuitively optimistic about the effect of these new features on Wiki uptake, editor participation, etc.