New tool for exploring EA Forum, LessWrong and Alignment Forum - Tree of Tags
post by Filip Sondej · 2022-09-13T17:33:55.167Z · LW · GW · 2 commentsContents
Explore the hidden treasures of the forums Features My hopes Tag similarity EA Forum: LessWrong: Alignment Forum: How does it work? None 2 comments
Explore the hidden treasures of the forums
With this tool you can zoom in on your favorite topics from EA Forum, LessWrong, and Alignment Forum. Or you can just wander around and see what you find.
You start by seeing the whole forum split into two main topics. Choose the one that you like more, and that topic will be split again into two subtopics. Choose a subtopic, and again, you will see it split into two subsubtopics (and so on).
It's like climbing a tree, where you start at the trunk and then choose which branches to go into as you go higher.
Choose a forum to climb:
Some tips:
- it's easier to choose a branch by looking at tags rather than posts
- on mobile, horizontal view is more practical
Features
Each topic has a unique and unchanging URL. So if you find a place you like, just bookmark it! The posts inside will be updated, but the theme stays the same.
The bar at the right of each post is the reading time indicator. Full bar means 30 min, half bar means 15 min, and so on.
At the top right, you can choose how to rank the posts:
- hot - new and upvoted - the default forum ranking
- top - most upvotes
- alive - has recent comments
- meritocratic - votes from high karma users are exaggerated
- regular - default scoring
- democratic - posts are scored as if everyone has the same voting power
My hopes
The amount of content is overwhelming. My problem is not that there's nothing good to read, but that there is so much to plow through to find what's best for me.
Also, it's sad to see great posts receive so little attention, the moment after they are pushed off the frontpage. But they are still valuable, and for each forgotten post, there is someone who should read it. So I want to make the right topics find their way to the right people.
Let's make the forums evergreen!
Tag similarity
For each tag, you can also see what tags are most related to it:
Explore EA Forum tags
Explore LessWrong tags
Explore Alignment Forum tags
Tip: you can go directly to some tag, by finding it's URL on the forum, and modifying this site's URL.
For example, to go to "Consciousness research", you find
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/consciousness-research
and go to
https://filyp.github.io/tree-of-tags/ea/consciousness-research
EA Forum:
LessWrong:
Alignment Forum:
How does it work?
Here I explain all the details.
Cross-posted to EA Forum [EA · GW].
2 comments
Comments sorted by top scores.
comment by MondSemmel · 2022-09-14T12:21:46.432Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I have no idea what this is, how it works, or why anyone would use it. It's commendable that you took the time and effort to make a new tool, but if you want people to try it, maybe first explain what it is and how it works and who it is for? :)
Replies from: Filip Sondej↑ comment by Filip Sondej · 2022-09-14T15:48:32.790Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hm, I thought those instructions (under "Explore hidden treasures...") are enough, but I probably misestimated it because I'm already used to that tool.
Thanks for pointing that out! I'll try to clarify it. (Also I'm not sure if you looked at this page which roughly explains how it works. I linked it at the end because to use that tool you don't need to understand those details.)
Are you able to pin down what causes the most confusion?
[edit] I also copied over the whole explanation into the post now, and made the details link more salient