Like I don’t expect to miss stuff i really wanted to see on LW, reading the titles of most posts isn’t hard (i also have people recommend posts in person which helps...).
I do think you are very likely overfitting heavily on your experience :P
As an example, the majority of traffic on LW goes to posts >1 year old, and for those, it sure matters how people discover them, and what UI you have for highlighting which of the ~100k LessWrong posts to read. Things like the Best of LessWrong, Sequences and Codex pages make a big difference in what people read and what gets traffic, as does the concept page.
I agree for some of the most engaged people it matters more what the culture and writing tools and other things are, but I think for the majority of LessWrong users, even weighted by activity, recommendation systems and algorithm changes and UI affordances make a big difference.
I do think you are very likely overfitting heavily on your experience :P
As an example, the majority of traffic on LW goes to posts >1 year old, and for those, it sure matters how people discover them, and what UI you have for highlighting which of the ~100k LessWrong posts to read. Things like the Best of LessWrong, Sequences and Codex pages make a big difference in what people read and what gets traffic, as does the concept page.
I agree for some of the most engaged people it matters more what the culture and writing tools and other things are, but I think for the majority of LessWrong users, even weighted by activity, recommendation systems and algorithm changes and UI affordances make a big difference.