The front page is, in my opinion, pretty terrible. The centre is filled with static content, the promoted posts are barely deserving of the title, and any dynamic content loads several seconds after the rest of the page, even though the titles of posts could be cached and loaded far more quickly.
My personal solution is to treat the URL of http://lesswrong.com/r/all/recentposts as my Less Wrong home page, since it appears to load all articles from Main and Discussion equally for convenient viewing in newest to oldest order without kruft. I can’t claim original credit for this url (which doesn’t appear to be prominently linked anywhere that I see), since I’m fairly sure someone else showed this feature to me, but it has been long enough ago that I don’t remember who.
If I were to be charitable, I could say the front page appears oriented to people who aren’t familiar with the site or the concepts behind it at all, and need an introduction.
But I agree that to someone that tries to read the site frequently, the front page is pretty terrible.
My personal solution is to treat the URL of http://lesswrong.com/r/all/recentposts as my Less Wrong home page, since it appears to load all articles from Main and Discussion equally for convenient viewing in newest to oldest order without kruft.
I also use this; it would be nice if it were prominently advertised. I also learned about it from a comment a long time ago.
If I were to be charitable, I could say the front page appears oriented to people who aren’t familiar with the site or the concepts behind it at all, and need an introduction.
I do think that having an introduction page is a good idea; when people hear about “less wrong” and punch it into Google, they should get a welcome page rather than a list of title links. But if someone’s already logged in, they should probably get a list of title links rather than a welcome page. It should be possible to have lesswrong.com redirect to lesswrong.com/about if the person isn’t logged in, and lesswrong.com/r/all/recentposts if they are.
I wish I would have known about this page earlier! Thanks for pointing it out. It seems like it should be highly advertised, or have it’s own permanent spot near the top of the page (next to “Main” and “Discussion” they should put “All Recent Posts”
The front page is, in my opinion, pretty terrible. The centre is filled with static content, the promoted posts are barely deserving of the title, and any dynamic content loads several seconds after the rest of the page, even though the titles of posts could be cached and loaded far more quickly.
My personal solution is to treat the URL of http://lesswrong.com/r/all/recentposts as my Less Wrong home page, since it appears to load all articles from Main and Discussion equally for convenient viewing in newest to oldest order without kruft. I can’t claim original credit for this url (which doesn’t appear to be prominently linked anywhere that I see), since I’m fairly sure someone else showed this feature to me, but it has been long enough ago that I don’t remember who.
If I were to be charitable, I could say the front page appears oriented to people who aren’t familiar with the site or the concepts behind it at all, and need an introduction.
But I agree that to someone that tries to read the site frequently, the front page is pretty terrible.
I also use this; it would be nice if it were prominently advertised. I also learned about it from a comment a long time ago.
I do think that having an introduction page is a good idea; when people hear about “less wrong” and punch it into Google, they should get a welcome page rather than a list of title links. But if someone’s already logged in, they should probably get a list of title links rather than a welcome page. It should be possible to have lesswrong.com redirect to lesswrong.com/about if the person isn’t logged in, and lesswrong.com/r/all/recentposts if they are.
It’s mentioned in this FAQ entry.
Thank you for finding that!
Heh… I wrote that part of the FAQ. I encourage you to add useful stuff you think of to the FAQ.
I wish I would have known about this page earlier! Thanks for pointing it out. It seems like it should be highly advertised, or have it’s own permanent spot near the top of the page (next to “Main” and “Discussion” they should put “All Recent Posts”