LessWrong has more activity / participation
Mostly just an increase in posting from old/good quality posters
As a committed Christian, I value the ways that rationalism challenges my faith. But I think there's too much of an inferential gap for me to explain my own beliefs.
More friendly environment
If I had more free time
I believe the content being posted is consistently and predictably interesting
Regular quality content
If friends linked me to 2-3 articles on LW and I felt like after I read them I was actually less wrong than before
I can't find other material to read unless I do
Stop the downvoting by randoms. It's super annoying seeing people trying to explore tricky ideas being constantly kicked into the dirt. Humans take negative reinforcement *hard*, and the reason you don't see many complaints is those people have left+it's bad form to complain about downvotes. At the very least, put a *high* bar for downvote power, and get everyone to read guidelines when they pass it. Note: I have 90%+ positive and extensive experience running online communities.
If the community became the kind that I like.
I don't know
I would post if it was fun
New articles on par with the Sequences or SSC coming out regularly and also not surrounded by lots of shitty articles
if its content started to interest me again
Significant SNR improvement
More engagement with outside websites/sources
good new stuff
Something really new and different came around not just an incremental change.
If the best people who left LW (Scott etc.) returned
it could hold my interest
Ability to "follow" particular users only (like social media), maybe within a forum-like structure
interesting new content was regularly posted
The site becomes interesting again. (I don't really know what that means either, sorry.)
Less abstraction
I'd prefer an interface more Tumblr-like and less Reddit-like, though I'd be willing to give it a shot anyway. (Most of the value of the community for me is being able to interact with like-minded individuals, not so much the crowd-sourced insight porn. Tumblr, despite the terribleness of its interface, is more friendship-oriented than content oriented compared to Reddit's framework.)
More new interesting content is being posted
I became more techincally skilled in philosophy and math
If there was new, interesting content, and I felt like I had something to contribute to it.
Less nerd culture
If content on LessWrong caught and maintained my interest.
I am not interested in contributing to an organization that provides its Founders a career.
More good original content
If it could hold my attention
There was substantially more networking. Sounds terrible, but there has to be a concrete benefit to losing control of what I write.
More open, tolerant and friendly community
Some degree of change in the posts and comments in line with the preferences I expressed on the last page.
See defensiveness answers
More quality content
I'm actually referring to personal conditions, like having time to engage properly.
Had regular interesting content
Actual useful content / critical mass
good content
Clear standards of civility
less "rationalist" pontificating about random subjects that the author doesn't know about
Feeling like I had something to contribute (like if there were frequent quick quiz-like surveys to participate in, with some kind of gamification).
Put new interesting stuff there again.
A more inclusive culture that is not as dismissive of out-group voices.
If my irl social life degrades enough that I turn to the internet
If "everyone else" did so too
Yudkowsky/Yvain would have to write more on LW instead of other places.
It starts being interesting again
There would have to be interesting content
A reason to interact: more content I can apply and comment on
Regular interesting content.
Friends rejoin as well and recommend content
if i get more free time
More *good* content
Higher quality content
basically if it was exactly like rationalist tumblr
Less stringency of comment/post quality in at least one area of the site
active posting community
Coming back to life
More new content.
Less sneering atheism
The community was as vibrant and full of good articles as SSC. Yvain is a one-man website and honestly if there was even one person on LW with that kind of quality and quantity of content output I would be on LW.
Eliezer resumes posting
If it was good
Posts of sufficient quality
If the site stopped being dead and filled with casuals.
Site less dead
Expected value of content rises substantially
If I get lots of good content without having to filter
More content devoted to self improvement
Someone is saying something interesting I want to respond to.
LessWrong gets revived or someone makes a different, better LessWrong successor. The issue is the lack of cool people there, if they all came back for some reason I would too - but this seems more likely with a successor site.
If I changed my own values
More interesting content
WAY less of a barrier to entry - knowledge-wise, there's a lot of jargon and technical stuff to process and internalize before you can interact with any of LW.
Actual consistent content relevant to the crippled dyke lifestyle
Better forum structure
Less hostile to the academy, especially to the social sciences and philosophy
enough people i considering interesting content-creators also join/rejoin
Interesting Content
Active participation from "founders" (Yudkowsky, Scott Alexander, etc.)
Frankly, it would have be less boring and less focused on treating the Sequences as a "canon", more focused on academic science. But that's just me.
If there were more opportunities to meet up in-person near my location
New interesting content
sequences-quality content
It became more active and interesting, and worthy of coming out of lurkerdom for.
New content as vital as the sequences felt back in the day
If there was more discussion there, it was interesting, and I didn't experience too much social friction from being there. Sorry that this isn't very concrete!
Forum moderation to prevent abuse
More feminist critique (it's gotten better but not enough better)
Would have to consider it less boring than being a member.
more new good content
I would have to anticipate they will have a fairly constant stream of new, high quality content
Eliezer taking active and personal responsibility for raising the quality of the site.
Return of interesting discussions and people
Return of interesting content. I just got tired of checking back and repeatedly seeing nothing that felt worth reading.
Not feeling like I have to read a textbook's worth of material to understand discussion
new good content
If it effectively worked as the center of the rationality community
Free audiobook recordings of the sequences. Maybe a Librivox project?
I still sometimes use its guides for learning from other resources (ex: Data Science).
Expansion of content with segregation of broad topics (politics, self-improvement, etc) as needed
If there were actually active members there
fewer assholes; take that as you will
Focus on practical applications
If there is content that I am interested in, I will participate.
It would have to have interesting new content
I finish my PhD and have literally one moment of free time
move focus back to philosophy and abstract rationality, away from community
Changes in the desired directions.
Not having tons of other things to do on my own time
What does it even mean to 'join' LessWrong?
Less obtuse pretentious language
Significant number of "rationalists" across internet coalesce there again
If it looked like it makes sense to spend time on LW; if, wanting to save/take over the world, LW would be the place for me to come and bounce ideas off of other intelligent people, gain collaborators on specific projects, talk about our approach with other people and post updates on our progress... if LW was actually harnessing the collective intelligence of the (supposedly) sanest group of people on the planet (it's hard to verbalize this image of 'what a rationalist community could be' more specifically)
When I am in such a place that it would improve my life
I'd have to have more time to care about significant online interaction. I can't take online forums too seriously.
An average reading experience at least as stimulating as the average of the ~20 blogs I follow
Steady flow of quality content
New good content
An environment that didn't exacerbate my tendencies toward laziness and elitism.
If the content addressed more humanities and design questions. I think the writing style is too esoteric and intimidating, there seems to be an absence of people with arts backgrounds with whom to relate, or their arts background is simply not discussed.
If there were more discussion of applied probability/decision theory, e.g.
Compelling advantages over posting to Medium/personal blog
More discussion of epistemology (as before), less discussion of identity issues.
High-quality new content
I'd re-engage if there were lots of good content or if I came to believe that there was a good audience to write for there
More good content!
A series of posts and followups (1) on LW itself, (2) using active personal accounts, (3) restating the core mission around rationality refinement, (4) plus the nature of the mission's urgency, (5) by various leaders of (6) singularitarian, extropian, X-risks, effective altruist, and/or "rationalist" NGOs (7) that makes it clear that LW is "the schelling point forum" for (8) going meta on being effective at world saving.
I've not yet "joined" - more of an active lurker
More content
If it became an active and interesting community again.
sufficient temptation to submit myself to criticism of online strangers
More academic but in the right ways. Pedantry is not a substitute for expertise, or at the least, having taken actual algorithms, machine learning, complexity, or statistics classes at a university.
Throw out the Moldbuggians, seeing as this particular violation of the naive idea of "neutrality" would likely greatly reduce the rate of evaporative-cooling
when it stops being so darn male
My friends are all posting there and it seems like the best place to encounter new ideas to discuss with them
A series of posts made there on a topic that captured my interest, which was advertised elsewhere so I heard of it.
I don't know how to answer this question in anything less than a thousand words, let alone a one-line text field. But to put it shortly: I think about half of the LW ecosystem is really fresh and interesting, and about half is intellectual masturbation. But I am one of those strange people who spends many hours reading people I disagree with in order to become a well-rounded person, and LW, when wrong, is always wrong in a novel and interesting way, and this changes my thinking regularly (but perhaps not in the way an LW writer intends). Overall my philosophy is not compatible enough with standard LW philosophy for me to consider myself a tribal member. But then again, not being a tribal member is part of the attraction for me of following the community closely. To that point, this question feels like it is soliciting ideas for a change in direction to encourage more participation, but I wonder if the kind of community I might like better is actually the kind of community I might like worse. For that reason, I decline to provide any concrete suggestions as a consequence of decision theory.
More frequent high quality content. I check LessWrong every few months and it usually has interesting content, but if I find that if I come much more frequently that there doesn't seem to be much additional value for me.
Better and more frequent content
Rebrand the site
less jargon and ingroup signalling
It somehow fixes the stuff I said in the earlier sections, also Eliezer and Scott come back or other people of such caliber start posting (hah)
If it becomes worthy.