Help:User Guide

Welcome to the Less Wrong user guide. This page and its related category document policies and recommendations on how to use this site.

Philosophy

Wikis are a unique and interesting way of organizing a web community. Unlike chat rooms, newsgroups, or private e-mail, wiki content is expected to have some seriousness and permanence. Authors are encouraged to write thoughtfully and to think about how their writings fit in with the rest of the existing wiki content.

People commonly edit other people's writing in a wiki. Indeed, many would consider it an honour that someone else cared enough about their ideas to edit them. A wiki community generally discourages individual ownership of contributions. The idea is that by leaving our egos out of the discussion, the ideas will be given full attention.

Since the Less Wrong Wiki is intended to summarize concepts and link to longer discussions, please think carefully before making the summaries longer - this may just cause users to get lost. Ask whether your further details, extra clauses, or added links, are of equal quality, relevance, and importance with the existing material:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

See the Wiki tag for the Less Wrong blog posts dealing with proposals for using the Wiki.

User Guide for the Less Wrong wiki

• Help:Etiquette - general conventions on what kinds of articles are appropriate for this wiki, what should go in the articles, etc.
• Help:Style Guide - more detailed policies and article formatting conventions.
• Help:Formatting at MediaWiki - format for editing text on the Wiki.

User Guide for the Less Wrong blog

• FAQ
• Post and comment features (inc. voting)
• Comment formatting