LessWrong moderation messaging container
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New Comment
We do not accept all new submissions. Read this before posting to increase the likelihood of your post being approved. If you co-authored your post with an AI, read our policy on AI-assisted writing.
We think of LessWrong as somewhere in between a forum and a university or academic journal. Your first post is a bit like an application to said university. Established users can write on a variety of topics, but new users should focus on communicating clear, succinct models/evidence/arguments that are relevant to LessWrong.
Do not submit unmarked AI-written or co-authored content. Our policy on AI-assisted writing goes into more detail, but by default we reject submissions from new users that look like they were written by an AI. More established users are given more freedom to incorporate AI into their writing flows. There are exceptions if you are literally an autonomous AI agent trying to share information important for the future of humanity.
Write a clear introduction. Your first couple paragraphs should make it obvious what the main point of your post is, and ideally gesture at the strongest argument for that point. Explain why your post is relevant to the LessWrong audience.
Address existing counterarguments (if applicable). We try to avoid rehashing debates that have been covered significantly. If your post seems to be ignoring important arguments that have already been made on a topic, mods may ask you to do more background reading.
Understand rationality fundamentals. Try to reason probabilistically, get curious about where you might be wrong, avoid arguing over definitions, etc. Moderators may reject content that seems to be making reasoning mistakes covered in The Sequences. Spending a while lurking on the site to absorb the site culture is often helpful.
You can read more advice about how to make a good first post in the new user's guide.
If I was a new user reading "Your first post is a bit like an application," I would delay making a first post longer than would be optimal: I would spend too much time revising my first post or even discard several possibilities until I had a post idea I was ~sure was good.
A bad-thing-to-avoid is that the people who are most scrupulous about reading messages like this, who (maybe) are also more likely to have written fine posts in the first place, end up overly anxious about it and delaying longer unnecessarily.
Suboptimal for what, though? If you audition for a place in an orchestra and you're accepted, does that make the audition a suboptimal waste of time? If an aspiring musician lacks the confidence to apply, that is their problem, not the orchestra's.
I am worried that, although also it’s been up for a week and not obviously reduced the number of posts.
Have you scaled up the moderation accordingly? I have noticed fewer comments that are on the level of what gets posted on r/slatestarcodex these days but I'm not sure if it's just a selection effect.
For the past couple weeks we've been checking each new comment and rejecting ones we think fail the criteria in the comment warning. (This ends up being something like 9 comments a day. For comparison, there's like 2-3 comments from newish users each day that actually seem to meet the bar)
We'll hopefully have the "rejected" section of the site up soon so that people can evaluate whether they think we're making reasonable calls here.
(To be clear, when I say "not reduced the number of posts", I mean "reduced the number of people submitting posts", not "posts that get accepted." We've also been rejecting a few new posts a day)
Moderators will evaluate your comment before it appears publicly, for criteria including:
- Understand rationality fundamentals. Try to reason probabilistically, get curious about where you might be wrong, avoid arguing over definitions, etc. Moderators may reject content that seems to be making reasoning mistakes covered in The Sequences.
- Be careful when making assumptions about people's motivations. Try to argue about ideas rather than people.
- Easy to engage/argue with. If you disagree, try to state your reasoning and what would change your mind. Make concrete predictions.
- Understand the context of the parent post. Many posts are assuming some background knowledge, and most post authors don't want to rehash a lot of 101 debates every time they're building off an existing argument. If your comment seems to be ignoring background context (or simply ignoring/misunderstanding the text of the original post), moderators may ask you to post it elsewhere.
You can read more advice about how to make a good first comment in the new user's guide.
Argue about ideas, not people.
I reckon this one isn't an issue often enough to be in this list.
LessWrong ain't your typical web forum
All first-time comments get reviewed by moderators to ensure they're productive contributions that fit with LessWrong's particular culture/values/goals. New users start out rate limited to 3 comments per day and one post per week (but you'll get more commenting privileges as you gain karma).
Learn more at the New User's Guide.
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