Hypothesis: The problem with your proposal is that, as a practical matter, no one ever clicks on the damn links and reads the definition. It makes sense from the reader’s perspective—they assume they know what you mean, why would they bother reading a link? Even if you define the word in the post, many people will skim over the definition. I also think definitions are sort of ‘sticky’: for example, if someone wrote a post where ‘chair’ was defined to mean ‘table’, you would probably end up confused when they suggest putting food on the chair, even if they’d put in a sentence explaining that they mean a chair to be a flat thing with four legs.
I also dislike calls to punish people for things. It seems like figuring out how to use jargon well is hard, and I think rewarding people who get it right is going to be a better course.
Do you know if the issue is that the ‘reply’ button is not easy-to-read enough (or more generally, does this seem like a place where the UI should be different, or just a place where you were in a rush or whatever?)
I think I am used to commenting in places where the comments are a single line and not ranked by upvotes/downvotes, so if you want to respond to someone you go to the “reply” button in the original comment. It seems hard to come up with a UI that would direct me away from this default behavior (other than having my comments be misthreaded until I get it, I guess :) ).
Hypothesis: The problem with your proposal is that, as a practical matter, no one ever clicks on the damn links and reads the definition. It makes sense from the reader’s perspective—they assume they know what you mean, why would they bother reading a link? Even if you define the word in the post, many people will skim over the definition. I also think definitions are sort of ‘sticky’: for example, if someone wrote a post where ‘chair’ was defined to mean ‘table’, you would probably end up confused when they suggest putting food on the chair, even if they’d put in a sentence explaining that they mean a chair to be a flat thing with four legs.
I also dislike calls to punish people for things. It seems like figuring out how to use jargon well is hard, and I think rewarding people who get it right is going to be a better course.
Meta—is there a reason this isn’t a reply to Hypothesis? (it shows up earlier than his comment in my default-sorting)
Because I am confused about how to use the website, I think. :)
Coolio. :)
Do you know if the issue is that the ‘reply’ button is not easy-to-read enough (or more generally, does this seem like a place where the UI should be different, or just a place where you were in a rush or whatever?)
I think I am used to commenting in places where the comments are a single line and not ranked by upvotes/downvotes, so if you want to respond to someone you go to the “reply” button in the original comment. It seems hard to come up with a UI that would direct me away from this default behavior (other than having my comments be misthreaded until I get it, I guess :) ).
Gotcha.