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A Better Web is Coming - LessWrong

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(Cross-posted from my blog) It bums me out when I see how much of the Web is trolling, ads, and endless re-shares of yesteryear's memes. The cynic in me thinks that this is it, this is as good as it gets–we're stuck and cursed to never realize the full potential of this amazing, planet-spanning network we've built. But then, I remind myself that what I see is a coordination problem. And we, humans, have been pretty decent at solving these for thousands of years. Like the time when we went from living in caves to cities (with lights and flush toilets!). Or when we built up from tiny semi-barbarian princedoms to vast organizations like the East India Company. So there's hope. How would a better Web look like though? I got a small hint when I read a paper about Wust. Wust is an experimental online discussion system that sort of reminds me of knowledge organization tools such as Obsidian.md or Roam Research –however, instead of being tailored to individuals or small groups like those two, it is designed for large groups of strangers. To accomplish that, it includes features that specifically aim to improve discourse quality. I found that fascinating because if it could do that, it could potentially raise the Web's sanity waterline by a few inches. I've never seen anything like it before. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we will see more Wust-like systems pop up and stem the tide of low-quality content flooding the Web today. To explain why I think so, let me tell you about a discussion system called Wust. DEFINING THE PROBLEM Wust's creator traces low quality discourse to two problems: ineffective moderation and the duplication of content. Moderation is hard. Early on, most of it was done by small groups of volunteers. They enforced norms by bans, warnings, and locking or deleting offensive content. But this approach had problems. First, it was difficult to scale because finding trustworthy, dependable people in a sea of strangers that wanted

x A Better Web is Coming — LessWrong Software Tools Coordination / Cooperation World Optimization Frontpage 34 A Better Web is Coming by matto 21st Aug 2021 8 min read 20 34 (Cross-posted from my blog ) It bums me out when I see how much of the Web is trolling, ads, and endless re-shares of yesteryear's memes. The cynic in me thinks that this is it, this is as good as it gets–we're stuck and cursed to never realize the full potential of this amazing, planet-spanning network we've built. But then, I remind myself that what I see is a coordination problem. And we, humans, have been pretty decent

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