A rambling, cursing tirade against a polite discussion of things that might be wrong with the group (or perceptions of the group) doesn't improve my perception of the group. I have to say, I have a significant negative impression from Grognor's response here. In addition to the tone of his response, a few things that added to this negative impression were:
"how painstakingly and meticulously Eliezer idiot-proofed the sequences, and it didn't work because people still manage to be idiots about it"
Again, the name dropping of Our Glorious Leader Eliezer, long may He reign. (I'm joking here for emphasis.)
"LW is a cult hur hur"
People might not be thinking completely rationally, but this kind of characterization of people who have negative opinions of the group doesn't win you any friends.
"since it's exactly what Eliezer was trying to combat by writing it."
There's Eliezer again, highlighting his importance as the group's primary thought leader. This may be true, and probably is, but highlighting it all the time can lead people to think this is cultish.
Specialized terminology is really irritating to me personally, and off-putting to most new visitors I would think. If you talk to any Objectivists or other cliques with their own internal vocabulary, it can be very bothersome. It also creates a sense that the group is insulated from the rest of the world, which adds to the perception of cultishness.
And yet there are plenty of things that don't cost much money that they could be doing right now, that I have previously mentioned to SIAI staff and will not repeat (edit: in detail) because it might interfere with my own similar efforts in the near future.
Basically I'm referring to public outreach, bringing in more members of the academic community, making people aware that LW even exists (I wasn't except when I randomly ran into a few LWers in person), etc.
What's the reason for downvoting this? Please comment.
Why was this downvoted instead of responded to? Downvoting people who are simply stating negative impressions of the group doesn't improve impressions of the group.
As I've discussed with several LWers in person, including some staff and visiting fellows, one of the things I disliked about LW/SIAI was that so much of the resources of the organization go to pay the staff. They seemingly wouldn't even consider proposals to spend a few hundred dollars on other things because they claimed it was "too expensive".
I don't think the best way to win is to avoid the topic. A healthy discussion of false impressions and how to correct them, or other failings a group may have, is a good indication to me of a healthy community. This post for example caused my impression of LW to increase somewhat, but some of the responses to it have caused my impression to decrease below its original level.
"I have become fully convinced that even bringing it up is actively harmful."
What evidence leads you to this conclusion?
Can you provide evidence to support this characterization?
Can you provide evidence to support this characterization?
I would like to see some empirical analysis of the points made here and by the original poster. We should gather some data about perceptions from real users and use that to inform future discussion on this topic. I think we have a starting point in the responses to this post, and comments in other posts could probably be mined for information, but we should also try to find some rational people who are not familiar with less wrong and introduce them to it and ask them for their impressions (from someone acting like they just found the site, are not affiliated with it, and are curious about their friend's impressions, or something like that).