I don’t think it’s completely to blame, but I suspect that the way the LessWrong homepage is set up encourages this cultural norm. LessWrong 2.0 has paid some attention to the need to revisit content, but the homepage is still much closer to Reddit (where discussions die out quickly) than a forum (where they don’t).
My reason for thinking the website is not completely to blame is that it seems to reflect the revealed preferences of the users. If there was a strong (and conscious) preference for long running discussions, people would work around it via the notification system. There would also be frequent calls from users to change the homepage to a forum-first design, rather than making tweaks to the Reddit-based one to nudge people towards long running discussion. That’s not what we see, which would indicate that being able to have long running discussions on LessWrong is a minority preference.
I think there’s room on the site to accommodate both preferences.
With long running discussions, I think that a) more intellectual progress and b) deeper satisfaction happens. (a) and (b) seem like they would outweigh the downside of c) pleasing people who prefer shorter discussions.
I sense that (c) is actually a pretty small group. I think the majority of people here would be happier having longer, deeper conversations, and that similar to eg. Facebook, people’s revealed preference of shallow usage doesn’t actually indicate that it is what makes them happy.
I think points 2 and 3 are correct, but the thing I wanted to convey was that without strong explicit preferences for things to be different, it’s unlikely that the necessary changes would be made.
I think that while 1 is often true in general, it is not true in this specific case. We already have the positive sum solution (notifications) which allows anyone to continue discussions for as long as they like without having to manually check for new replies, and this clearly isn’t enough to unstick the norm of avoiding comment sections once a post is a few weeks old. This implies it would require a more drastic change, which likely involves making tradeoffs that will negatively impact people who are satisfied with the current homepage.
but the thing I wanted to convey was that without strong explicit preferences for things to be different, it’s unlikely that the necessary changes would be made.
Perhaps, but you’ve gotta start somewhere!
This implies it would require a more drastic change, which likely involves making tradeoffs that will negatively impact people who are satisfied with the current homepage.
How about if:
In between the Recommendations and Latest sections on the home page, there was a short Ongoing Discussions section with three posts? And if you want to see more you can expand it.
On the page for an individual post, eg. lesswrong.com/posts/:id, above the comments section, there was a section for making pledges about ongoing discussions?
Those two things seem like a) they’d be sufficient and b) wouldn’t get in the way too much of people who aren’t interested in ongoing discussions.
I think those things would be a step in the right direction, but I’d be surprised if they turned out to be sufficient. Remember, LessWrong already notifies the subset of the userbase most likely to reply (i.e. users who have already replied) when there are new comments, but those users choose to ignore them after ~2 weeks.
For things to actually change, I predict that we’d first need a widespread perception that this behaviour is a problem, then have various UI nudges put in place. The only way you’d get the desired behaviour change without that consensus is if the UI went beyond nudging and aggressively pushed it as the default.
For things to actually change, I predict that we’d first need a widespread perception that this behaviour is a problem, then have various UI nudges put in place. The only way you’d get the desired behaviour change without that consensus is if the UI went beyond nudging and aggressively pushed it as the default.
My apologies if I was being dense or if I was misunderstanding you before, but in reading this now, I agree and think it makes a lot of sense. So then, I think the question becomes much more social than technical. It’s not about how to design the UI, it’s about evolving cultural norms.
I suppose a good starting point there would be to have a post talk in more detail about why this would be a good thing (I didn’t really do that in this post). From there, maybe the next step would be if you started to see post authors do things like making pledges or holding office hours.
I think the question becomes much more social than technical. It’s not about how to design the UI, it’s about evolving cultural norms.
I would say it’s both, it’s getting users to want to do something and having the UI make it easy for them to do it.
(As a side note, for some reason people have become more reluctant in the past decade to rebel against interfaces and the implicit messages sent by its design choices. Like, until about last year you could not get people to use Discord as a tool for serious work, even though it was better than Slack, simply because it was associated with gamers.)
I suppose a good starting point there would be to have a post talk in more detail about why this would be a good thing
I think that would make sense as a next step.
From there, maybe the next step would be if you started to see post authors do things like making pledges or holding office hours.
I think the first question that needs to be explored here is why they are not already doing something like this already. I’ve only ever made a single post to LessWrong, and to me sticking around in the comment section seemed like the obvious thing to do. I didn’t do it out of a sense of duty, it just didn’t make sense to me to spend all that time writing a post and not hang around afterwards to talk about it. (One serious possibility is that most people who write posts are a lot more introverted than I am, so instead of seeing it as a reward for their efforts, they view answering questions as a necessary evil.)
short Ongoing Discussions section with three posts
How would that differ from the current curated posts list? What changes might happen to the currated post feature that it would work more like it does the job you are envisioning?
When I look at the curated posts, I don’t have the sense of “this post will stay here for a very long time and continue to receive comments”. I think to myself, “this very well might be removed tomorrow and replaced with something else”. So what I envision with the Ongoing Discussions section is to make it clear that it will stay there for a long time and that the intent is to have long running discussions. However, after discussion here, I think it would be important for a cultural shift to happen before launching such a feature. (Well, it might still be worth launching as an experiment, because the bar for experiments is low.)
I don’t think it’s completely to blame, but I suspect that the way the LessWrong homepage is set up encourages this cultural norm. LessWrong 2.0 has paid some attention to the need to revisit content, but the homepage is still much closer to Reddit (where discussions die out quickly) than a forum (where they don’t).
My reason for thinking the website is not completely to blame is that it seems to reflect the revealed preferences of the users. If there was a strong (and conscious) preference for long running discussions, people would work around it via the notification system. There would also be frequent calls from users to change the homepage to a forum-first design, rather than making tweaks to the Reddit-based one to nudge people towards long running discussion. That’s not what we see, which would indicate that being able to have long running discussions on LessWrong is a minority preference.
Agreed. However:
I think there’s room on the site to accommodate both preferences.
With long running discussions, I think that a) more intellectual progress and b) deeper satisfaction happens. (a) and (b) seem like they would outweigh the downside of c) pleasing people who prefer shorter discussions.
I sense that (c) is actually a pretty small group. I think the majority of people here would be happier having longer, deeper conversations, and that similar to eg. Facebook, people’s revealed preference of shallow usage doesn’t actually indicate that it is what makes them happy.
I think points 2 and 3 are correct, but the thing I wanted to convey was that without strong explicit preferences for things to be different, it’s unlikely that the necessary changes would be made.
I think that while 1 is often true in general, it is not true in this specific case. We already have the positive sum solution (notifications) which allows anyone to continue discussions for as long as they like without having to manually check for new replies, and this clearly isn’t enough to unstick the norm of avoiding comment sections once a post is a few weeks old. This implies it would require a more drastic change, which likely involves making tradeoffs that will negatively impact people who are satisfied with the current homepage.
Perhaps, but you’ve gotta start somewhere!
How about if:
In between the Recommendations and Latest sections on the home page, there was a short Ongoing Discussions section with three posts? And if you want to see more you can expand it.
On the page for an individual post, eg.
lesswrong.com/posts/:id, above the comments section, there was a section for making pledges about ongoing discussions?Those two things seem like a) they’d be sufficient and b) wouldn’t get in the way too much of people who aren’t interested in ongoing discussions.
I think those things would be a step in the right direction, but I’d be surprised if they turned out to be sufficient. Remember, LessWrong already notifies the subset of the userbase most likely to reply (i.e. users who have already replied) when there are new comments, but those users choose to ignore them after ~2 weeks.
For things to actually change, I predict that we’d first need a widespread perception that this behaviour is a problem, then have various UI nudges put in place. The only way you’d get the desired behaviour change without that consensus is if the UI went beyond nudging and aggressively pushed it as the default.
My apologies if I was being dense or if I was misunderstanding you before, but in reading this now, I agree and think it makes a lot of sense. So then, I think the question becomes much more social than technical. It’s not about how to design the UI, it’s about evolving cultural norms.
I suppose a good starting point there would be to have a post talk in more detail about why this would be a good thing (I didn’t really do that in this post). From there, maybe the next step would be if you started to see post authors do things like making pledges or holding office hours.
(As a side note, for some reason people have become more reluctant in the past decade to rebel against interfaces and the implicit messages sent by its design choices. Like, until about last year you could not get people to use Discord as a tool for serious work, even though it was better than Slack, simply because it was associated with gamers.)
Ah, great point. Seems obvious in retrospect, but it’s always good to talk to users. I agree that that would make sense as the first step.
If you don’t write a seperate post about it, you could reply to this comment with the results. (i have nothing further to add at this time.)
How would that differ from the current curated posts list? What changes might happen to the currated post feature that it would work more like it does the job you are envisioning?
When I look at the curated posts, I don’t have the sense of “this post will stay here for a very long time and continue to receive comments”. I think to myself, “this very well might be removed tomorrow and replaced with something else”. So what I envision with the Ongoing Discussions section is to make it clear that it will stay there for a long time and that the intent is to have long running discussions. However, after discussion here, I think it would be important for a cultural shift to happen before launching such a feature. (Well, it might still be worth launching as an experiment, because the bar for experiments is low.)