[krapp]

Lobsters is trying to do the same thing as Hacker News - avoid the Eternal September effect at all costs. It just has more direct and overt methods of maintaining and enforcing its culture than here, and that starts with barring the door against the rabble.

[082349872349872]

I wonder if the Dutch Strategy might work for a link aggregator: explicitly provide a well-signposted "front page", where the rabble congregates and the groupthink is at its Grundyest, yet implicitly expect any non-Septemberist discussions to occur well away from those few sacrificial links?

[OutOfHere]

Those links are not sacrificial; it is everything else that is sacrificed. It is a healthy rabble, better called a bustle, that leads to the discovery of wisdom. Everything else is a non-event.

[gsf_emergency]

And in what sense are the Shakespearean monkeys an unhealthy rabble?

I'm currently vibing that those popular+attentionally-limited links are necessary, but not sufficient, for wisdom uncovery..

And that a healthier route may involve actively compensating for the intrinsic asymmetry between Rao's weird & hypernormal in his "new systems of survival".

(Contrast with Jane Jacobs' guardian/commercial, or Rao's latest Mandala/Machine dichotomy, when the yinyang dynamic is much more obvious)

As I mentioned to GP earlier, one design bug with the current dynamic is that there is no affordance* for the hook of enlightenment (moksha) to turn into sustainable (re)production (flow, aka samsara)

Imagine the Shakespearean monkeys, but with a mechanism to string together some of the shorter uncoveries..

* Adfordance, heh

Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgeworth%27s_limit_theorem

[gsf_emergency]

Looks like we (or just i?) missed this discussion on the frontpage

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42502659

(Why did you call this dutch strategy, did Dijkstra use it? Ah you mean the oudekerk? Straathoertje?)

[082349872349872]

Sorry, "dutch strategy" because the good burghers of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, etc. realised that although sailors have deplorable* morals, the burgher's prosperity depended upon having many sailors transiently around, so the burgher's solution was to create neighbourhoods catering to vice, with the idea that it would be tolerated there, and specifically there — far from the "good" neighbourhoods where their silk-skirted patent-leather-shod daughters hung out.

* we've already touched upon LaSalle(?)'s riposte to Bonaparte, right?

[gsf_emergency]

Haha first stab was closer then

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Wallen#History*

I hear that it's still a question of which came first, De Oude Kerk or De Wallen

*CMI gets a mention, it's where LaSalle would have been practically deployed as a direct commissar of the Man?

Recall also a protodiscussion of standardization of artillery in the revolutionary army vs navy?

[082349872349872]

direct commissar: yes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41947667

odd, the coastal artillery seems to have been organisationally army but supplied and staffed by navy...

[082349872349872]

excellent! "This suited everyone including the authorities."

(now I'll have to check to see if health checks occurred under the ancien regime, or if Bonaparte introduced them here as well)

[gsf_emergency]

I see, you meant the Dutch defence? Sorry zero chess knowledge here..

[gsf_emergency]

As a side effect you may observe that PhD cred'd professional designers (architects) are about as rare as nonsocialist(?) "Democratic Republics" (DRC?)

[OutOfHere]

That's something that Slashdot does by limiting registrations. In contrast, by disallowing anonymous registrations (without a recommendation), Lobsters actively seeks out those who don't think differently at all, perpetuating its closed-mindedness.

[krapp]

They're optimizing for quality and civility - a certain standard of intellectual and emotional maturity - rather than controversy. Vetting through personal relationships and requiring reputation risk to let someone new in is an effective way to do that. Not every platform wants or needs to be a debate club.

[Karrot_Kream]

I think that's certainly a goal of invite systems but I don't think Lobsters really lands this. The quality of its discussion isn't much to write home about. It is much friendlier to some opinions over others but quality is not the discriminator. If you write a middling article on Rust I can guarantee you that you'll get more positive feedback than a good article on Go or on LLMs simply because of the opinion bias of the community.

[OutOfHere]

On the contrary, quality is not intrinsic; it emerges from a healthy debate, something that isn't generally possible on Lobsters.