If you to go www.alignmentforum.org you will see that a lot more users have their full-name displayed than on LW.
Oh, I didn’t know that was a feature, but it would be pretty hard to take advantage of it for me. I tend to use GW and it takes two clicks to go from a post on GW to the same post on AF (via LW), and there doesn’t seem to be a way to directly navigate from a comment on LW to the same comment on AF.
Making real names available to see on hover would help a lot, but might not work on mobile. Maybe you could put the real names in parenthesis after the user name, or make that an option that people can enable? And expose it to GW via your API (if it isn’t already) so they can implement this too?
GW should have that data available by querying the fullName field on users, so that should be easy to implement for them.
I think at the least we should allow users to set a setting to display their full-name by default and show them on hover. I am a bit hesitant to do the parenthesis thing, just because it would make usernames quite big, which I think will cause some problems with some upcoming redesigns we have for the frontpage.
I am a bit hesitant to do the parenthesis thing, just because it would make usernames quite big, which I think will cause some problems with some upcoming redesigns we have for the frontpage.
Given this, maybe it would still be a good idea to officially encourage people to use their real names as their user names (or something that’s very easy to associate with their real name like a shortened form of it)? Because unless the real name is displayed everywhere, I still have to keep a mapping in my brain between their username and their real name, which seems like a pointless cognitive burden to impose on someone.
Is there’s some important benefit to letting people (who don’t want to keep their real names completely private) choose a different display name, that I’m missing?
People do assign a fair amount of status based on attractiveness of faces, and I think it’s good on the margin to not introduce that class of bias to the discussion. My current guess is that the costs aren’t commensurate with the benefits of faster recognition.
I think that faster recognition matters a great deal. If I go to a big event like the LessWrong Community Weekend or EA Global and I know the faces of people I can actually talk to them in person and build in person relationships with them.
In general I’m also doubtful of the philosophy that you get people to be more rational by withholding information from them.
The natural act of relating to other people does influence cognition but it’s not something that should be simply seen as a bias to be eliminated.
Oh, I didn’t know that was a feature, but it would be pretty hard to take advantage of it for me. I tend to use GW and it takes two clicks to go from a post on GW to the same post on AF (via LW), and there doesn’t seem to be a way to directly navigate from a comment on LW to the same comment on AF.
Making real names available to see on hover would help a lot, but might not work on mobile. Maybe you could put the real names in parenthesis after the user name, or make that an option that people can enable? And expose it to GW via your API (if it isn’t already) so they can implement this too?
OK, I added real names in a hover popup. I might try out some other options later.
GW should have that data available by querying the
fullName
field on users, so that should be easy to implement for them.I think at the least we should allow users to set a setting to display their full-name by default and show them on hover. I am a bit hesitant to do the parenthesis thing, just because it would make usernames quite big, which I think will cause some problems with some upcoming redesigns we have for the frontpage.
Given this, maybe it would still be a good idea to officially encourage people to use their real names as their user names (or something that’s very easy to associate with their real name like a shortened form of it)? Because unless the real name is displayed everywhere, I still have to keep a mapping in my brain between their username and their real name, which seems like a pointless cognitive burden to impose on someone.
Is there’s some important benefit to letting people (who don’t want to keep their real names completely private) choose a different display name, that I’m missing?
If you do implement hovering like that I would be happy about a gravatar image as well as remembering faces is often easier then remembering names.
People do assign a fair amount of status based on attractiveness of faces, and I think it’s good on the margin to not introduce that class of bias to the discussion. My current guess is that the costs aren’t commensurate with the benefits of faster recognition.
I think that faster recognition matters a great deal. If I go to a big event like the LessWrong Community Weekend or EA Global and I know the faces of people I can actually talk to them in person and build in person relationships with them.
In general I’m also doubtful of the philosophy that you get people to be more rational by withholding information from them.
The natural act of relating to other people does influence cognition but it’s not something that should be simply seen as a bias to be eliminated.