
Ask HN: Community software for Overcoming Bias? - Eliezer
The two main posters on the blog Overcoming Bias (which has appeared on HN many times) plan to cut back on posts in the near future.<p>One possibility under discussion is to split off/convert to a more community-oriented site - one that e.g. would let anyone submit their own articles or stories; the readers would vote up or vote down; and good posts would get promoted by editors to a front page.  E.g. Scoop has been suggested to us.<p>Dear Hacker News - over the last years, billions of dollars in venture capital have been spent on Web 2.0.  A rationalist community is surely a good cause.  What has that money built that can help us?<p>We're even willing to spend money - not enough money to develop code from scratch, but we aren't restricted to free products.<p>We don't want to throw sheep at each other.  We do want to have sensible discussions (which requires some kind of community policing such as downvoting).<p>We don't want people with lots of time to waste, to waste that time at our site.  We do want busy people to be able to check in, quickly see the newest comments, and check out again.<p>(Hacker News does great on e.g. downvoting trolls, making them nicely invisible, but still letting me drag-select to see the text.  But HN doesn't do so well on e.g. letting me see the latest comments on posts I've previously upvoted.)<p>We occasionally have meetups.  It'd be nice to know who else, or at least how many other rationalists, are within 10 miles of my zip code - that sort of thing.<p>But mostly I'll throw the question open - what has all that venture capital, and all the efforts of so many of you, built that will help us?<p>Please go ahead and say "obvious" things if no one else has said it yet, i.e., "You should have a Facebook group (and use it for X, Y, and Z)".  Think of it as if you were creating a standard reference list for new communities.  I don't know where to start, myself; and I'm sure this won't be the last time the question comes up.
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swombat
Very sad news that two OB contributors are stepping away.

I find that the reason why Overcoming Bias is a great source of articles for
me is that the articles there are without exception written by extremely
sharp, clearly brilliant people with both an excellent brain and a top notch
writing ability. The topics aren't what brings me there, it's the quality.

I don't think I'd bother reading a community powered Overcoming Bias... maybe
I'm wrong, maybe I will read it, but it doesn't sound appealing at all.

Perhaps it's better to just reduce the posting frequency but keep the
quality... as it is OB is too frequent for me to read everything, since each
post requires careful thought and concentration to get the many points made
within.

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khafra
I think part of the problem you're perceiving is that the examples that come
to mind for"web community"--reddit, digg, slashdot, something awful, kuro5hin,
sensibleerection, .+chan, etc.--carry inherent bias and groupthink: in
learning to overcome bias, they best serve as sources of what to avoid.

This site does, perhaps, better than any other non-dictatorial group at
keeping discussion rational: even groups of open-source developers working
toward a common goal often devolve into chaos if there's not a single, strong
personality in charge.

I'm not sure what the optimal solutions are, but if the hypothesized OB
community doesn't reach at least the very high bar set here, I wouldn't have
much interest.

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trickjarrett
Drupal is the powerhouse when it comes to these sort of sites, but it's not
for the faint of heart. It's got the flexibility to build whatever you want
but it doesn't have to be a deep indepth site or the endless links of a link
aggregator. It can provide the social base for those of your members who do
want forums or to organize meetups.

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aristus
Check out slinkset.com -- it's a pretty good roll-your-own-reddit. If you talk
to the guys they might help you customize it.

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Eliezer
Thanks for the pointer, but as Matt Maroon says, we're looking for something
where people can post original content.

~~~
brett
We've seen it used w/ success for original content. e.g.
<http://justhackit.slinkset.com/>

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mattmaroon
Check out bleacherreport.com. It's a lot like what I think you're describing,
but for sports. People write original articles, other people can edit them,
and everyone can vote. Writers who have gotten big on there have gotten
contracts.

I'd love something like that for rationalism, and would write for it a bit.
I'd even invest a small amount if you need. In fact, I'd be surprised if you
wouldn't get into YC with that idea :)

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aikiai
I am using Plone for a similar sort of venture. Same idea as Drupal, a bit of
overhead to get ramped up, but once you figure out how to get things done it's
a very cool, useful, well built tool.

Plus it's python based instead of PHP, which I prefer.

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Eliezer
Drupal, Plone, Joomla, Slinkset. And as previously referred, Scoop.

Thanks all!

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camerontaylor
One system that appears to meet your needs is Joomla Community Builder with
the Simple Machines Forum plugin.

This gives you a fully configurable forum including multiple ways of
configuring Karma/Reputation, etc. It also gives you the community features
that would potentially facilitate the rationalist meetups that you mention.

