Communities: A single moderator is often superior to the wisdom of crowds

It is very hard to find new content buried among all of the noise.

I don't think "newness" is the core measuring stick for content. Seeking new advice seems to me a bit like seeking insight porn.

I think if you read one article on a subject and then don't read anymore about it you are very unlikely to develop new phenomenological primitives. It's quite easy to say "be yourself". On the other hand it's quite hard lesson to teach and unlikely that someone learns the lesson in a month or less. Especially outside of a seminar context.

Politics isn't banned here, just discouraged.

At this point, LW is mostly self-policing. I'm the moderator and I don't have a whole lot of work. This doesn't mean LW would be in good shape after (I'm guessing) a year with no moderator.

Sites with a lot of traffic tend to have multiple moderators. When Ta Nehisi Coates used to have an excellent comment section on a blog about mostly controversial topics at a national magazine, he eventually had sub-moderators. Coates was the only one who could offer articles. Making Light has at least three moderators, possibly as many as five. That is, there are only five people who can write top-level articles, but only three of them seem to be active moderators.

Does reddit have the ability to offer moderated fora? That would be a good compromise. People would even have a handy place to post rejected articles in other fora.

Another situation is when a forum is highly moderated. Examples include Less Wrong, which bans politics

Less Wrong doesn't ban politics.

Question: Are you seeking an effective community, or an effective stream of new information?

Duplicate information encourages community formation; it makes it easy for new members to join the community, as the average content level never deviates too far from what a new member can readily be expected to pick up. A continual stream of new information very rapidly becomes impossible for a new user to incorporate, and so if the community emphasizes new information, new members have ever-increasing amounts of catching-up to do before they get to participate. Given that participation is part of the appeal of communities, you'll lose the vast majority of all potential members, productive or otherwise. A graduation system doesn't work either; if your best members are always busy discussing the latest-and-greatest piece of information, they're -not- helping newbies past the difficult introductory hurdles.

More simply, you're missing the point of a community. A community doesn't exist to feed you an endless stream of new and interesting things, it exists so you can exchange new and interesting things you've encountered with other people. "Ask not what your forum can do for you, but what you can do for your forum." What you seem to want can be better served by an encyclopedia or textbook.

It is very hard to find new content buried among all of the noise.

The solution is to facilitate micropayments. People aren't going to spend as much money on topics that there's a surplus of. The more readily available something is... the less money that people are willing to pay for it. So facilitating micropayments will allow the crowd to help lift the scarcest/rarest and most valuable content to the top of the list.

Oranges used to be a luxury. In other words, an orange was uncommon but valuable content. Then what happened? Payment.

Orchids used to be a luxury. In other words, an orchid was uncommon but valuable content. Then what happened? Payment.

So we add (micro)payments to Reddit, Youtube, Less Wrong and what will happen? What will happen when we incentivize/reward people who produce scarce but valuable content?

This is a shame because social skills, dating and personal development are all important areas.

I guess LW nails the third one like jocks do to cheerleaders, at least it should otherwise.. well shit. But for the two other two I like HughRistik's comments. He had a comment with plenty of links to other comments of his. I'll look for it but not promising anything.

EDIT: here it is: http://lesswrong.com/lw/44r/post_proposal_attraction_and_seduction_for/3hn5

Now go get laid!

All they would have to do,

Still plenty of work, especially it's your hourly variant of "HOW DO I ASK THIS GIRL OUT". You either have a well-kept garden or you don't.

few moderators could be selected to divide up the work

I would settle for a moderator-user ratio.

On topic, I have no idea why I haven't been banned yet.