u/gwern

I've been browsing /r/LessWrong for many years, due to having toggled on 'subscribe' and never quite getting around to leaving. I will be leaving shortly (and /r/ControlProblem as well), but before I do:

I think this subreddit has gotten so bad over the years it should be shut down or rebooted with a new set of moderators.

I look at the front page right now. There's at least 3 AI slop/spam links (there's engagement bait self-posts daily), including NoLabelJustMe who appears to have dedicated his life to submitting LLM psychosis spam every day here forever no matter how clearly downvotes tell him to 'go away'. Half the links are low-effort memes. Most of them are generic AI-related hot takes or news, which have little to do with LW. There are no LW submisions - zero! None! In 100 items! Skimming through https://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong/comments/ I see little of value, and no commenters I know or respect. Checking my bookmarks, the only valuable conversation or link I have ever bookmarked from this subreddit was 16 years ago, when the subreddit was new and still had a chance.

All of the discussion which might happen here happens on LW2 proper, or ACX, or /r/slatestarcodex, or maybe Twitter. ("But I want a place I can submit links and have informal discussions about LW topics!" Yeah, we have that already - it's called LessWrong. Short Form, if you want to be informal. "OK, but I think it's ugly compared to Old Reddit." Fair enough, no arguing taste, but then you can configure any UI you want in GreaterWrong including Old Reddit-style graphics - and now you aren't dependent on the Reddit Powers That Be deciding that AI monetization demands disabling old.reddit.com... "They banned me for posting my 99%-LLM-written essay / the commenters there didn't just upvote me but criticized me!" Good. You'll thank them someday.)

The moderators don't exist. Sole moderator Oliver Habryka hasn't commented on Reddit in 3 years, and is extremely busy with vastly more important things like AI safety, Lighthaven, and the actual LessWrong. Spammers continue indefinitely for months until, presumably, they earn a site-wide ban.

Rebooting is infeasible because there are not high-quality mods on tap, especially with short timelines (I and everyone else who would do a good job have better, or at least more fun, things to do); and there is simply no need for this subreddit to continue to exist and besmirching the good name of LessWrong as an attractive nuisance. It does not fill any niche and if it hasn't in 16 years, it's not about to start. It was maybe possibly justifiable 10 years ago, but in mid-2026, with the blasted wasteland it is now...? No. Let's just shut it down.

Given the economics of AI & online trends, communities should be proactive about cleaning up and reducing vulnerability surfaces, and trying to engage in a flight to quality. So I appeal to /u/Habryka to pull the plug on this stillbirth of a subreddit, and lock all submissions/comments forever. (/u/Bakkot can help explain the mechanics.)

Background:

• Me: I have been the only mod for a while now. I originally started trying to use this subreddit as part of my anime deep learning work dating back to ~2015, hoping to make it a bit like /r/MLscaling or /r/DecisionTheory - a small, focused, high-quality subreddit for research, which would get instantly drowned out on larger more popular subreddits like /r/anime - but I wound that work down ~4 years ago and moved on. (Essentially, post-NAI/SD, a solved problem and highly popularized, so no longer any role for me.) Particularly with my latest focus, I expect to have less time for Reddit moderation.
• This subreddit: Appears to have never developed a meaningful identity or community, and to provide little value in general - most commenters are drive-by one-offs or bots. Submissions are ~100% irrelevant, low-quality, or spam. I remove some, but not all (see above), leaving the problem largely intact. Other moderators appear to have attrited away due to this. It is a zombie subreddit, with no sign of ever getting better. Given the economics of AI & online trends, communities should be proactive about cleaning up and reducing vulnerability surfaces, and trying to engage in a flight to quality.

What would it take to fix this? I think: much more active moderators and submitters. We need moderators with the time to remove crap quickly and only allow through meaningful research. And then, because a subreddit defined by negation is useless or toxic, we need submitters who will go out and submit high-quality 'anime research'. I don't necessarily mean, 'submit only articles in Mechademia', but that would at least be better than the status quo of a /r/AnimeResearch which satisfies no one.

I have sent out a few invites to some of the only reasonable commenters I can find going back an entire year in https://www.reddit.com/r/AnimeResearch/comments/ but we need more moderators. Ideally at least two reasonably active moderators beyond myself. If you are interested, please leave a public comment here saying so and including some high-quality link submissions you've made (or at least comments).

If we can't do this, because no one cares, then this subreddit is indeed a dead end and not worth investing any more time in. In that case, I will lock the subreddit, after 1 week from now, to end the slop/spam flood and prevent it from becoming a derelict zombie subreddit which would eventually be deleted (eg. due to too much porn discussion) or hijacked for nefarious purposes.