Here’s some more features of GreaterWrong.com that weren’t important enough to make it into the OP:
Many functions have access keys associated with them, notably the navigation tabs (Home, Featured, etc.) and the first three editor buttons (bold, italic, hyperlink). (Hover over them to see what key is bound to what.)
Top-level comment threads can be collapsed by clicking the minus-sign button at the top right (and stay collapsed when you return to that post, but auto-expand if you navigate to a new comment in that thread)
The number under the comment thread collapse button indicates the number of comments in that thread
New comments are clearly highlighted
Click on a person’s username to go to a listing of their comments
Automatically generated table of contents (for any post with header elements)
Edit: Added ToC to feature list (Raemon, thanks for pointing it out!)
Besides the fact that GW’s front page is a list of posts and LW2′s isn’t (where I strongly prefer the GW way), I think the main difference is that LW2 is for click-happy people while GW is for tab-happy people. I’m the latter kind, and I guess Said is as well. We like cmd-clickable links and instant page loads, we don’t care about snappy page updates after load, and we hate loaders/expanders/spinners.
Do you have a tab-happy alternate self who would open twenty HN threads and then slowly read them? Maybe you could just ask it :-)
That seems like a reasonable preference. Is there any link on the page that is not cmd-clickable in a way that has been bothering you? Have you noticed any extensive loading times when opening new pages? (In many cases those are quite fixable)
I agree that the general philosophy of the page is designed for single-page browsing instead of tab-explosions, so I expect some natural divergence in preferences, which seems fine and is one of the reasons why I am happy to have alternative platforms like GW. But I am still in favor of making the page marginally better to use for everyone.
Here’s some more features of GreaterWrong.com that weren’t important enough to make it into the OP:
Many functions have access keys associated with them, notably the navigation tabs (Home, Featured, etc.) and the first three editor buttons (bold, italic, hyperlink). (Hover over them to see what key is bound to what.)
Top-level comment threads can be collapsed by clicking the minus-sign button at the top right (and stay collapsed when you return to that post, but auto-expand if you navigate to a new comment in that thread)
The number under the comment thread collapse button indicates the number of comments in that thread
New comments are clearly highlighted
Click on a person’s username to go to a listing of their comments
Automatically generated table of contents (for any post with header elements)
Edit: Added ToC to feature list (Raemon, thanks for pointing it out!)
I am also curious what aspects of the site/what features they would most like to see on the main site. Or what aspects of GW they prefer over LW2.
Besides the fact that GW’s front page is a list of posts and LW2′s isn’t (where I strongly prefer the GW way), I think the main difference is that LW2 is for click-happy people while GW is for tab-happy people. I’m the latter kind, and I guess Said is as well. We like cmd-clickable links and instant page loads, we don’t care about snappy page updates after load, and we hate loaders/expanders/spinners.
Do you have a tab-happy alternate self who would open twenty HN threads and then slowly read them? Maybe you could just ask it :-)
That seems like a reasonable preference. Is there any link on the page that is not cmd-clickable in a way that has been bothering you? Have you noticed any extensive loading times when opening new pages? (In many cases those are quite fixable)
I agree that the general philosophy of the page is designed for single-page browsing instead of tab-explosions, so I expect some natural divergence in preferences, which seems fine and is one of the reasons why I am happy to have alternative platforms like GW. But I am still in favor of making the page marginally better to use for everyone.
This is indeed an accurate description of my preferences :)