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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   7817 thread views

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Hi all,

Firstly, well done to the mods and everyone who contributed in getting the new site off the ground. It's a relief to finally be off Reddit and out from under Big Brother. I've lurked in this forum for years, since it was still a part of /r/slatestarcodex and I'm glad to see it continuing. I do have a question though. Prior to the move, I remember one of the points in favour of remaining on Reddit was that it allowed for a steady trickle of new users which kept the community from stagnating. Is there any plan to try maintain a steady flow of new visitors to the site?

P.S The irony of my first comment on my new account being one fretting about the potential lack of new accounts isn't lost on me haha.

Is there any plan to try maintain a steady flow of new visitors to the site?

There's a few!

I'm hoping to contact a few other similar, or we-would-be-similar-if-they-wanted-to-deal-with-this-mess-but-they-don't, discussion sites and get crosslinking going with them. I don't know if I can actually succeed on this, but I'm going to try.

I'm hoping to get us posting weekly quality-contribution lists, one way or another, to make that easier to draw people in. I'd also like to get that up on the Vault, and I'd also like to attach that to a mailing list.

I'm trying to figure out any sane way to make "post things you enjoy on your relevant social networks" a thing that people do regularly. I don't know if that's going to work.

I'm going to see if I can convince Scott to shill us in an Open Links post, though I suspect that'll be a one-time thing at best.

I'm hoping to set up a donation system, and I'm going to at least experiment with spending some donation money on ads, though I suspect this won't be worth the money.

I'm also really tempted to set up a referral system so people can get bling on their username if they refer people.

That's kinda my TODO list right now. I'm not sure it'll be enough. More suggestions welcome. Obviously a lot of these are shots in the dark.

Yeah, the pipeline's going to be tricky.

I support crosslinking. Prior art for that would be the weird "imageboard federation" of ~2019 involving, say, https://trashchan.xyz/boards.html (sorry for blowing up the spot?). We could try finding friendly Lemmy instances, although that might be tough.

The Vault is good. Maybe it should come with a cover page linking directly to some of the more accessible/popular ones?

We could try more traditional things like having events or competitions, or other easy on-ramps into the community. That would pair with analyzing existing larger communities we could advertise in. Just like (he said, perhaps descending into self-parody) some scientist once said there's a farmer somewhere in Africa who would do his job twice as well, there are definitely people on Facebook (or even more cursed and corporate venues, like the clocksite) who have no idea any of this exists but would be better contributors and participants than me. The fun part is getting them here.

The Vault is good. Maybe it should come with a cover page linking directly to some of the more accessible/popular ones?

I'd love to! But this takes review work and coding work, and right now we're really limited by volunteer time :/

We could try more traditional things like having events or competitions, or other easy on-ramps into the community.

I think the issue here is that we have to get people here before they're aware of events and competitions. And once people are here, the hard part is done already.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

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On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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