A draft post

[John Salvatier]

I like the idea of helping people doing research (finding papers, troubleshooting, editing etc) in order to make them more likely to complete their projects. Below is a draft discussion post volunteering my services. If I had more commitments I would probably do a top level post. Any thoughts? Anyone want to participate?

The Public Goods Team wants to encourage useful research for the LW community. We suspect that there are a number of people who have the desire and inclination to do this kind of work but need assistance of some kind. If you're in this category, we want to help you. Perhaps you

• Don't know how to interpret a finding and you want help figuring it out
• Need access to a particular paper and need someone with a library subscription to download it for you 
• Need someone to edit your writing
• Are not even sure what you're having trouble with; all you know is that you're stuck and need someone to troubleshoot you

I personally commit to doing at least 3 hours a week of tasks like these for people doing LessWrong related projects (assuming demand for it). 

How do you request such help? For now, I think the best way is to post to the discussion section about your problem. That way other interested people can also provide help and be interested in your research. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you may post to the public goods team mailing list (lw-public-goods-googlegroups.com). 

[Laurent Bossavit]

Hi John,

I endorse your intentions. There's a couple things that I'm
uncomfortable with:

> We suspect that there are a number of people who have the desire
and inclination to do this kind of work but need assistance of some
kind.

This sounds like a hypothesis about why people aren't doing more of
the kind of thing we wish they were doing. I'd want to look for ways
to test this hypothesis, and to take a stab at enumerating other
hypotheses (for instance: "too little consensus on what useful
research consists of in the context of LW").

The other is the time commitment - I don't feel ready to commit to
that much and a public commitment from you to that level seems like it
implicitly creates a norm that all others will be judged against.

I'll hold off on proposing solutions to either issue. :)

Cheers,
Laurent

[John Salvatier]

Both excellent points.

I've tried to make it clearer that this is something we're trying to see if it produces good results.

I don't want to make a norm that only a sizable chunk of assistance giving is useful, but I also want to signal that this is a serious project and that people should actually take advantage of this. One way to make the norm smaller would be to have someone else volunteer a small chunk of time. Would you commit to doing, say an hour's worth of this?

What do you think of this?

The Public Goods Team wants to encourage useful research projects (as well other kinds of projects) for the LW community. If you're interested in doing this kind of work, you might run into a problem that its best solved by good outside assistance. Without assistance you might get discouraged and stop working on the project or never even start it. We want to help you. Perhaps you

• Don't know how to interpret a finding and you want help figuring it out
• Need access to a particular paper and need someone with a library subscription to download it for you 
• Need someone to edit your writing
• Are not even sure what you're having trouble with; all you know is that you're stuck and need someone to troubleshoot you

We're offering this kind of help, over email, comments, video chat to see whether it helps and encourages people. 

I personally commit to doing at least 3 hours a week of tasks like these for people doing LessWrong related projects (assuming demand for it) for at least the next month. Morendil has committed to doing at least an hour of this. If this kind of assistance turns out to be valuable, we hope to continue offering it. 

How do you request such help? For now, I think the best way is to post to the discussion section about your problem. That way other interested people can also provide help and be interested in your research. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you may post to the public goods team mailing list (lw-public-goods-googlegroups.com) or if it's not too long after this was posted, post in the comments.

If you would like to volunteer some time (a little or a lot), say so in the comments! 

[Laurent Bossavit]

> Would you commit to doing, say an hour's worth of this?

Yes. I'm willing to commit (as in - I'll spend it on the LW codebase
if there are no takers for other help) one hour in total, to start
with - not a weekly chunk. :)

> What do you think of this?

I like it now.

Suggestion: enter predictions (maybe in PredictionBook, maybe just
here on the list) as to how many people we expect will take up the
offer, or perhaps a total number of hours of help "consumed". If these
predictions turn out wrong, we know that we might have to update
toward people not contributing for a different reason than lack of help.

Cheers,
Laurent

[John Salvatier]

Great!

 I'm willing to commit 

Yes, that's what I meant. I'll clarify. 

That's a good idea. I'll post some before I post it.

[John Salvatier]

Does this "public goods team offers editing and troubleshooting help" seem like a discussion or main post? I am inclined to make this a discussion post but not strongly. If this was a successful initiative, I would expect it to be self publicizing via being mentioned in top level posts.

[John Salvatier]

I submitted to the discussion section

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/7hi/free_research_help_editing_and_article_downloads/

[John Salvatier]

James Blair recommends we mention any particular skills that might be useful for giving help:

While I'm assuming that you're willing to try helping with anything, people with more technical problems will appreciate a summary of what skills you can provide in particular.

If you get a chance, please do so.