Ask HN: Community software for Overcoming Bias?
One possibility under discussion is to split off/convert to a more community-oriented site - one that e.g. would let anyone submit their own articles or stories; the readers would vote up or vote down; and good posts would get promoted by editors to a front page. E.g. Scoop has been suggested to us.
Dear Hacker News - over the last years, billions of dollars in venture capital have been spent on Web 2.0. A rationalist community is surely a good cause. What has that money built that can help us?
We're even willing to spend money - not enough money to develop code from scratch, but we aren't restricted to free products.
We don't want to throw sheep at each other. We do want to have sensible discussions (which requires some kind of community policing such as downvoting).
We don't want people with lots of time to waste, to waste that time at our site. We do want busy people to be able to check in, quickly see the newest comments, and check out again.
(Hacker News does great on e.g. downvoting trolls, making them nicely invisible, but still letting me drag-select to see the text. But HN doesn't do so well on e.g. letting me see the latest comments on posts I've previously upvoted.)
We occasionally have meetups. It'd be nice to know who else, or at least how many other rationalists, are within 10 miles of my zip code - that sort of thing.
But mostly I'll throw the question open - what has all that venture capital, and all the efforts of so many of you, built that will help us?
Please go ahead and say "obvious" things if no one else has said it yet, i.e., "You should have a Facebook group (and use it for X, Y, and Z)". Think of it as if you were creating a standard reference list for new communities. I don't know where to start, myself; and I'm sure this won't be the last time the question comes up.