Hi all,
I have some small news. Since the forum's launch, Trike have made two updates. The first fixed some login issues. The second made several improvements:
- If you visit a url from the old blog, it now redirects to the corresponding pages on the forum.
- The default font in articles and comments is now darker and more readable.
- When you try to post an article but can't, the forum now explains why more clearly.
To recap, if you can't post an article, you can earn posting rights by:
- Getting 30 karma. Your karma is the upvotes on your comments minus the downvotes.
- Sending a draft to ry.duff [at] gmail.com. I'm keen to post articles that will be of interest to a wide range of aspiring effective altruists. Academic style is not required.
After three more weeks, the karma requirement will be eased to 10-20 to allow wider participation.
If you notice any further bugs, you can continue to submit them here.
In possibly the most exciting news of all, Vipul Naik, Evan Gaensbauer and Jacy Anthis have already broken the 30 karma barrier. First was Vipul, co-creator of OpenBorders.info, who displayed minimal difficulty, earning 30 karma in six posts across three days. It'll be great to see what they contribute when they choose to do so. Hot on their tails, Michael_Dickens, lincolnq and Geuss, each have over 20 karma.
To earn karma, you can contribute a quote, an introduction, an idea, or comment on one of over 100 existing articles.
Thanks for the suggestions, Michael.
I want more users too. In terms of article creation, there are some good ones on the way so we're not yet constrained. In terms of new user-created aricles, we haven't yet had any, and so it might be useful to see some before we make a comparison. Comparing based on comments is a good start, though it's not quite the same. I think it's unlikely that I would need to decrease the karma requirement before the stated timeframe of October 10 but I think it's good to think of creative ways to increase participation.
This would be an interesting feature, and I think I would like it. So far, we've prioritised bugs and I've tried not to impose excessively on the time of Trike Apps (they have made a large and entirely voluntary contribution). So far, they've done an awesome job creating the site with basic functionality. I think that before we install any new features, it would either be necessary for the code to be made public to allow other volunteer contributions, or for the site to demonstrate a lot of usage over a period of months so that we could go to Trike with a case that further development was of high value.
I lean against creating multiple fora. Even if it was a good idea in the long run, I think that it's better to start with one forum so that it's easier to achieve a critical mass. It's no exaggeration to say that LW's Main/Discussion distinction was one of the most hated features of the site. I also think that fragmenting an online community and decreasing its usability are two of the most damaging things you can do to a budding community website. I think that we can bridge the gap by making main a bit more lenient to short questions. If the open threads are too big, and some high quality comments are being lost, then we can move whichever kinds of posts were most successful in the open threads to the main page to make more space. We could also create more specific open threads e.g. a careers open thread.
Lastly, for future reference, if you have multiple suggestions, it's often good to post them in separate comments so that users can give feedback on them independently.
Less Wrong has various other special threads. I want there to keep being open threads, effective altruist quote threads, welcome threads, and meetup announcements on this site. Additionally, we could borrow from Less Wrong:
'What Are You Working On?: a (bi)monthly thread on which users can showcase their current activities. Of course, such a thread on this forum would be specific activity at least tangential to effective altruism. Still, it could act as a way for effective altruists to find collaborators, and other volunteers, a la .impact, or have their