What is the LessWrong Diaspora Problem Database?
Contents
The LessWrong Diaspora Problem Database is a central repository for collecting issues which have been discussed in the community. The idea is that this will let us do the following:
- Create a long term stable backup of complaint information which will exist beyond the normal link rot and decay.
- Make it possible to start providing statistics on what kind of issues are discussed in the community.
- Provide Common Knowledge of what the problems are, so that people can start saying "hey I see that too" and solving them.
- Unify the various gripes and mutterings into a more cohesive picture of what's going wrong, penetrate filter bubbles that might be stopping essential information from getting through.
What Kind Of Submissions Are Allowed
Unlike the Preregistration Database, these entries are dynamic and we reserve the right to delete them with prejudice. Just so we're on the same page there, lets outline a good entry and a bad one.
Traits Of A Good Entry
- Is a genuine complaint from someone in a public context
- Bonus points go to capturing 'natural' complaints that arise in the course of ordinary conversation, rather than submitting directly to this database
- All fields are properly filled out to the best of the filers ability
Traits Of A Bad Entry
- Personal Drama - In general complaints focusing on the behavior of specific people are disallowed. We're not interesting in being a forum for rumors and call outs. There will be some lenience with this for complaints which are primarily about something that is not a person. In general we would prefer filers be very careful about individual attacks.
- Overly hostile or negative - If someone just hates the entire Diaspora, that's fine but it's not useful to us. Entries whose basic gist is "you're doing literally everything wrong and should switch to my radically different worldview" aren't welcome. So for example, don't submit stuff like this.
- Unauthorized submission from a private conversation - Taking peoples words from a local safe context to a global awareness context without their permission, implicit or explicit, is incredibly rude. We're not interested in facilitating the sort of chilling effect that would come from normalizing behavior in that realm.
Comments
On each entry there's a comment section. Comments are for elaborating on an issue, or pointing towards solutions. New instances of people complaining about the problem should be separate entries. While we can theoretically go in and clean it up if problems are submitted as comments, it makes our job harder.
