Stop Using Discord as an Archive

post by Nicholas / Heather Kross (NicholasKross) · 2023-03-30T02:15:34.580Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

This is a link post for https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1260up9/essay_stop_using_discord_as_an_archive/

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/u/djarogames, on the /r/SlateStarCodex subreddit, recently wrote this esssay.

Basically, if you've used Discord for any rationality-community, AI-safety, or Effective-Altruism discussions, you've probably noticed that important, tacit knowledge ends up buried in the giant chronological list of messages. (EleutherAI is possibly the strongest example of this.)

I started and helped run a Discord server for a university's EA group. I've witnessed firsthand how much effort people put into Discord conversations, only for the results to be unfindable later. My cooperative blog started because my coauthor kept writing smart things about philosophy on Discord, and I wanted his ideas to get read by more people.

Most people seem unlikely to get that kind of encouragement!

I'm sick of tacit community knowledge being buried among day-to-day happenings. I'm sick of knowledge being locked to "cults" of active users. I would bet money that you are, too.

1 actionable thing we can do, basically immediately: Create/spread a Discord bot that allows for easy mass-archiving of Discord messages, with plenty of filters, privacy features, etc.

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