Improving the design of this forum

General
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Kicking off this thread to discuss how we can improve the design of this forum.

I think one major inspiration can be LessWrong:

Especially looking to have @Naeema’s participation here :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thanks for kicking this off Rufus, and for pointing to LessWrong as inspiration.
It’s a great example of deliberate community design. :sparkler:

From a higher altitude, I’d suggest we don’t just improve the design of this forum… we reimagine it. This is a moment to shape not just a better interface, but a new kind of intellectual and cultural agora one that feels alive, emergent, and generative.

Design isn’t just about usability, it’s about values, incentives, and the architecture of participation.

So the questions I’m holding are:

  • What kind of minds and conversations do we want to amplify here?
  • What mechanisms can we create that reward long-form thought and civic imagination?
  • How might we use structure to invite both dissent and coherence: complexity without chaos?

LessWrong optimized for rationality.
What are WE optimizing for? Wisdom? Co-creation? Renaissance?

Let’s architect this space not just for efficiency, but for enchantment.
Let’s shape this not just as a forum, but as a living commons for diverse voices, bold ideas, and collective imagination.

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Thanks both, great questions!

In terms of what we’re optimising for, my initial suggestion - currently on the about page - was that users may have the following three goals:

LEARN - By reading the contributions of others, and formulating your own thoughts, develop your understanding of diverse approaches to wisdom, inner growth and cultural evolution.

CONNECT - We hope that the forum allows for cross-pollination between different groups in the broader second renaissance ecosystem. We also encourage face-to-face and in-person meetings. The events category showcases opportunities to build deeper community.

SEED - Paradigmatic social change will likely happen gradually as new ideas and memes spread through society. Examples like LessWrong, which served to disseminate theories of AI risk, show that forums can be a critical way to expose interested newcomers to new ideas and so broadcast them into the world.

I agree with Rufus that LessWrong is a great model here, not least in terms of the Connect element (there are rationality in-person meetups and conferences around the world) - I noticed recently that they have a map on their community page showing where people and events are based, I think this would be an amazing initiative if we could do something similar: https://www.lesswrong.com/community

Personally I would love to see more of the long-form post approach model here too, where people post quite well-thought, carefully written posts, which then receive considered responses too - this is I guess the idea behind having the ‘research and sense-making category’ being quite prominent.

In terms of incentives and mechanisms, Lesswrong has a voting system where posts are upvoted and downvoted, separately in terms of ‘I’d like to see more of this’ and ‘I agree with this’. This does help to raise the profile of good content, and I think would be good for a forum like this, though this is where I think it would be great to explore other incentives and mechanisms that may fit beter with ideas of wisdom and co-creation..

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Two discourse plugins that would aid with this:

The latter seems to give a UX pretty similar to lesswrong

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As a starter for 10 how about switching to the minima theme which i think is quite elegant – and minimal.

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Thank you @JonahW
Really appreciate how clearly you’ve articulated the LEARN / CONNECT / SEED triad. That scaffolding already reflects a deeper orientation toward culture as catalyst, and it resonates powerfully with what I believe this space is here to become.

Building on what both you and @rufuspollock raised, I spent some time exploring LessWrong more deeply, not just for content inspiration, but to extract practices that have allowed it to evolve as a resilient, high-signal community. Here are a few reflections and recommendations that might serve as guiding patterns as we shape this forum into something distinctively Second Renaissance:

1. Structured Exploration

Their use of “sequences” allows for deep, curated learning journeys through complex themes.

2. Framing Uncertainty

Posts often begin with epistemic context — e.g., “half-baked thoughts” or “needs feedback” — creating a culture of openness and iterative thinking.

3. Signal Amplification (@JonahW +1)

A voting system (karma) surfaces quality and alignment, shaping attention through collective response.

4. Living Ontology (@Asimong +1)

User-generated tags function as a wiki creating an emergent, editable map of shared inquiry.

5. Rituals of Arrival

Welcome threads and onboarding touchpoints help newcomers acclimate and begin meaningfully participating.

6. Cultural Scaffolding

Epistemic and engagement norms are made explicit, shaping a shared sense of “how we do things here.”

7. Community Curatorship

Highlighted comments and thread summaries elevate high-signal contributions and create coherence across conversations.

I propose we create a container within the research team to explore these architectural elements further in conversation with what’s already emerging on the ground in the community field.

This could include a special Oasis Call edition focused on “Forum as Cultural Infrastructure,” inviting both reflection and imaginative prototyping. It’s less about copying and more about translating practices into a grammar that fits our unique purpose and texture.

In parallel, it may be timely for us to begin shaping a Manifesto of Conduct not as a list of rules, but as a living declaration of values-in-practice.

Where many communities lean on moderation and enforcement, we have an opportunity to lead with invitation, coherence, and shared responsibility. This wouldn’t be a top-down policy document, but a crowd-sourced, decentralized articulation of the tone we’re weaving together.

A manifesto that reflects not just what we do, but how we be:

  • Assume depth in others
  • Create, don’t perform
  • Share unfinished thoughts with courage
  • Tend complexity with care
  • Protect time for slowness
  • Honor both rigor and reverence
  • Practice generous interpretation
  • Speak to the future, not just the present

Inspired by the spirit of the Hacker Ethic and the Cluetrain Manifesto, this could emerge as a series of open, declarative statements, co-authored by the community, iterated in public, and held lightly as we evolve.

We might invite contributions from across the forum and evolve this into a collectively-held artifact a trust document that sets the emotional and relational tone of this space.

A call not just for conduct, but for culture.

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@JonahW @Naeema (and anyone else): are we good to try the switch to the minima theme?

Are there other concrete initial improvements we’d like to do?

And @Naeema your analysis is great. I’m wondering if we want to boot a google doc for a consolidated analysis as things can get lost in the threads here - i think the forum topic here is more of an entry and update point.

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Sounds good and happy to try the minima theme. I can implement when I’m back next week or happy for someone else to do in the meantime.

For the voting plugins I’d just like to understand better how they relate to sorting and display of posts, and are there a few different options we can choose between?