n=1 evidence but I thought I would share from a random external perspective who enjoys doing some writing and who's in the potential audience for a future version (if run) of inkhaven.
For this version, I had no clue how it would be and so I thought it was too high risk to gamble on it being good. Given what I've seen of the setup this year I would basically be a guaranteed sign up if it was less than 15-20% of my cash reserve to go next year. Potentially upwards of 30-40% (reference class: currently doing more or less independent work and getting by with money for going to uni from the swedish state).
(For some reason I feel a bit weird about making this comment but I also want to practice sending unfinished comments that are more random feedback as it is often useful for the individuals involved given the assumption that my perspective is somewhat indicative of a larger audience.)
2
2(For the record, I'm mainly doing the publish after midnight thing because I don't want to have an admin task of hitting publish hanging over me during my day <3 )
1I’ve been reading lots of the Inhaven posts and appreciate the initiative!
- Typing at 40 wpm is not the same thing as writing at 40 wpm. It can take me a lot more than 12.5 minutes to write 500 words if I’m putting thought into them.
- Try passing around a bowl of spicy green chillis and ask people to bite into them raw. I found out today that doing this makes me complete tasks faster. I believe the capsaicin may stimulate the nervous system. Obviously be careful that no one gets sick. I’m not sure if one can purchase Capsazepine online.
If you don't know, Inkhaven is a residency where you come and publish a blogpost every day. No "Oh it would be nice to blog some day" or "Oh I'm working on something, I'm sure I'll publish it some day". No, you have to publish today, otherwise you are asked to leave.
After 10 days into the first ever Inkhaven cohort, here are some things I've learned.
1. Everyone publishes.
I have 41 people here writing, most of them living at Lighthaven, all of them visiting at least a few days per week. In recent weeks, I knew I was hurtling toward their arrival and I'd be in the thick of it; while I believed this abstractly, I didn't know what to concretely visualize.
Any time that anyone has said to me that they want to push down the publishing requirement, maybe to every 2 or 3 days, I have said "No. The typical human adult types at 40 words per minute. Writing 500 words should take only 12.5 minutes. I can get a reasonably long LessWrong comment written in under 30 minutes. This isn't that hard."
Yet this has not always been satisfying to these people. One of them decided not to come. Another one did and has had some dissatisfaction with the quality of their writing.
But overall, it's borne out. Not one person has dropped out so far.[1]
We've published over 400 blogposts.
2. Essentially everyone is yoloing it every single day
Here is the data about how many blogposts residents have written right now that they can hit publish on.
That's 24 ppl with 0, and 11 ppl with more. (A few residents haven't filled out this form.)
To explain further, see this graph of what hour people publish their post each day.
People are finishing their posts increasingly close to the deadline—about 20% of posts so far have been published after 11pm!
3. People do not use physical spaces the way you planned.
I made beautiful coworking space for people! With height-adjustable desks and external monitors! But they mostly write in the living room, or at the lunch tables. Bah.
4. It's not too stressful, and is kind of energizing.
In the feedback form yesterday, I asked how stressful Inkhaven has been (from "1= Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezey" to "10 = Close to having a panic attack").
Only two people gave an 8, and one of them was a mentor who is also doing a lot of writing while here.
I also asked "How emotionally energized vs. drained have you felt this week?" from "1 = Totally drained / spent" to "10 = Incredibly energized / inspired".
This leans toward the energizing side.
5. Residents suck at proactively getting help from other people
I brought them so many people to give them advice.
I brought Gwern, Scott Alexander, Aella, Alexander Wales, Clara Collier, Adam Mastroianni, Sasha Chapin, Andy Matuschak, Slime Mold Time Mold, and many more.
And man, people are mostly just sitting on their own.
We tried to incentivize getting help.
As background, to incentivize publishing, we made a winners' lounge. It's a cool room with ice cream, alcohol, and super smash bros; but you can only go there once you've published today. It's pretty fun.
Then, to get people to utilize the contributing writers, we said that if you just have one such person read a draft of yours this week, you get access to the Diamond Platinum Elite Double Secret Winner's Lounge.
Now we're edging toward sensible things happening.
Like, Gwern has done over 10 cumulative hours of office hours, where you can just show up with a draft, he'll read it and discuss it with you for up to 60 mins, with others listening, then move on. He gives great feedback. The first person in the first office hours brought him a list of 30 blogpost ideas, and he spent 40 mins going through them, talking about what would be the interesting parts in each one, giving more ideas, etc.
And yet, I think ~most of the Residents haven't shown up to one of these yet? Even though we're a third of the way in?
Or consider: I've made a form where you can submit essays to these established writers for feedback. Only 27 of the Residents have used it. The most popular person to submit to is Scott Alexander, and if you do he is known to write a whole goddam essay back to you about the structure and argument of your piece. Yet this has happened only 13 times.
These writers are around and want to help. I will keep working on fixing this market failure.
Bonus thing: We've had a bunch of essays spend time on the frontpage of Hacker News.
I'm interested in hearing questions that people have about Inkhaven! I may address them in the comments or in future posts.
I will acknowledge there have been two close calls. One person cut over 1,000 words of drafts down to ~460 words, not noticing it was under the minimum of 500. We have since implemented a mandatory word-count check. And another person only submitted the form to our system at exactly midnight, which is technically the next day. I trust them that they published the post more than one minute before then, but we told them not to do it again.