This is much much better than the draft version. In particular, I no longer have the same impression from my draft feedback, that it read like “Here’s how you can audition for a spot in our prestigious club”.
So kudos for listening to feedback <3, and apologies for my exhausting style of ultra-detailed feedback.
Anyway, you made the mistake (?) of asking for more feedback, so I have more of it T_T. I’ve split it into three separate comments: typos, language, and substantial feedback.
Substantial feedback (incl. disagreements)
Excessive demands on first contributions by new users
“Don’t worry! You don’t have to know every idea ever discussed on LessWrong to get started, this is just a heads up on the kind of place this is.” → I’m confused who this kind of phrasing is addressed at, and wonder whether the current version would have the desired effect. After all, “Don’t worry” often means “Do worry”.
“Even if you found your way to LessWrong because of your interest in AI, it’s important for you to be aware of the site’s focus on rationality, as this shapes expectations we have of all users in their posting, commenting, etc.” → Once again I’m skeptical about these vague end-of-section paragraphs.
“How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received” → Once again I don’t like any sections which imply that you have to write a Bachelor’s Thesis before you can begin participating on the site.
I would reconsider the motivation for that section and cut it entirely, or substantially rewrite and shorten it, or just spin it off into a separate post.
Who is this section even written for? “A lot of the below is written for the people who aren’t putting in much effort at all, so we can at least say “hey, we did give you a heads up in multiple places”.” → That seems like a bad reason for something to be part of the New User’s Guide. Brevity is a virtue; here you’re displaying text to people in the expectation that those who should read it won’t, and those who don’t need to read it will.
Another indication for why this section seems dubious to me is that it once again ends on something like “Don’t worry about it too hard.”. If you don’t want new users to worry about something too hard, don’t put it into the New User’s Guide in the first place.
Re: the section “Initial user/content review” → See my comments on “How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received”.
Excessive reading material for new users
The “How to get started” section begins with “Because LessWrong is a pretty unusual place, it’s usually a good idea for users to have spent some time on the site before writing their own posts or getting deep into comment discussions – doing so ensures you’ll write something well received.” → This section is drowning new users in potential reading material, and I’m skeptical of that approach.
Also, part of the advice in “How to get started” boils down to “read the Sequences”, which is a ridiculously huge ask. That’s not “how to get started”, at best that’s “how to get much more involved”. (As an example, IIRC I read the Sequences back in 2013 as a university student, and reading them took me two full months during summer vacation.)
Suggestions for how to welcome new users instead
“Participate in welcome threads” → This kind of suggestion should be at the top of the “How to get started” section, not (to paraphrase) “read several million words”. That said, I don’t know to which extent questions in those threads are currently answered. But since the mods already take the time to review any comments by new users, I think responding to questions in these threads would be a comparatively good use of mod time, to the point that you could even make it an unspoken rule that in Welcome threads, all requests for further reading will be answered.
“The monthly general Open and Welcome thread … “all questions welcome” AI Open Threads” → These tag pages are currently sorted by Most Relevant for me, which is to say, Not Relevant At All. If the site infrastructure allows this, I’d suggest setting these two tags to default to sort by New whenever they’re linked without a preferred sorting method. If not, I suggest replacing all links to the open threads such that the sorting is part of the link. Like this: Open Threads (sorted by New) and AI Open Threads (sorted by New).
On the FAQ
The “Helpful Tips” section mentions that the FAQ is outdated. If the FAQ is outdated, either don’t link to it, or maybe actually update it?
Alternatively, consider turning the FAQ from a post into a tag page; then other LW power users could update it rather than just the LW team. (This seems like a good rule of thumb for all “living documents” related to LW, i.e. ones which are meant to be kept up-to-date; blogposts aren’t really the right format for documents which are meant to be continuously edited, whereas the tag pages are. Also, what if the FAQ essay is replaced by a new one in the future? Then you’d have to update all links to the old FAQ.)
In fact, I suspect that if you turned the FAQ into any format which the community can continuously edit, and then wrote a post à la “Request: Help Us Update our FAQ”, then I expect that this problem might just “solve itself”.
On the Length
Shorter is better. Approximately all LW posts, including my comments here, are way too long.
Here are some parts I think could be cut or spun off:
Footnote 2 (on why human rationality) seems superfluous. I don’t think this footnote pulls its weight in this intro.
The section “How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received”. See my “Substantial feedback” section for why I don’t like it.
This is much much better than the draft version. In particular, I no longer have the same impression from my draft feedback, that it read like “Here’s how you can audition for a spot in our prestigious club”.
So kudos for listening to feedback <3, and apologies for my exhausting style of ultra-detailed feedback.
Anyway, you made the mistake (?) of asking for more feedback, so I have more of it T_T. I’ve split it into three separate comments: typos, language, and substantial feedback.
Substantial feedback (incl. disagreements)
Excessive demands on first contributions by new users
“Don’t worry! You don’t have to know every idea ever discussed on LessWrong to get started, this is just a heads up on the kind of place this is.” → I’m confused who this kind of phrasing is addressed at, and wonder whether the current version would have the desired effect. After all, “Don’t worry” often means “Do worry”.
“Even if you found your way to LessWrong because of your interest in AI, it’s important for you to be aware of the site’s focus on rationality, as this shapes expectations we have of all users in their posting, commenting, etc.” → Once again I’m skeptical about these vague end-of-section paragraphs.
“How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received” → Once again I don’t like any sections which imply that you have to write a Bachelor’s Thesis before you can begin participating on the site.
I would reconsider the motivation for that section and cut it entirely, or substantially rewrite and shorten it, or just spin it off into a separate post.
Who is this section even written for? “A lot of the below is written for the people who aren’t putting in much effort at all, so we can at least say “hey, we did give you a heads up in multiple places”.” → That seems like a bad reason for something to be part of the New User’s Guide. Brevity is a virtue; here you’re displaying text to people in the expectation that those who should read it won’t, and those who don’t need to read it will.
Another indication for why this section seems dubious to me is that it once again ends on something like “Don’t worry about it too hard.”. If you don’t want new users to worry about something too hard, don’t put it into the New User’s Guide in the first place.
Re: the section “Initial user/content review” → See my comments on “How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received”.
Excessive reading material for new users
The “How to get started” section begins with “Because LessWrong is a pretty unusual place, it’s usually a good idea for users to have spent some time on the site before writing their own posts or getting deep into comment discussions – doing so ensures you’ll write something well received.” → This section is drowning new users in potential reading material, and I’m skeptical of that approach.
Also, part of the advice in “How to get started” boils down to “read the Sequences”, which is a ridiculously huge ask. That’s not “how to get started”, at best that’s “how to get much more involved”. (As an example, IIRC I read the Sequences back in 2013 as a university student, and reading them took me two full months during summer vacation.)
Suggestions for how to welcome new users instead
“Participate in welcome threads” → This kind of suggestion should be at the top of the “How to get started” section, not (to paraphrase) “read several million words”. That said, I don’t know to which extent questions in those threads are currently answered. But since the mods already take the time to review any comments by new users, I think responding to questions in these threads would be a comparatively good use of mod time, to the point that you could even make it an unspoken rule that in Welcome threads, all requests for further reading will be answered.
“The monthly general Open and Welcome thread … “all questions welcome” AI Open Threads” → These tag pages are currently sorted by Most Relevant for me, which is to say, Not Relevant At All. If the site infrastructure allows this, I’d suggest setting these two tags to default to sort by New whenever they’re linked without a preferred sorting method. If not, I suggest replacing all links to the open threads such that the sorting is part of the link. Like this: Open Threads (sorted by New) and AI Open Threads (sorted by New).
On the FAQ
The “Helpful Tips” section mentions that the FAQ is outdated. If the FAQ is outdated, either don’t link to it, or maybe actually update it?
Alternatively, consider turning the FAQ from a post into a tag page; then other LW power users could update it rather than just the LW team. (This seems like a good rule of thumb for all “living documents” related to LW, i.e. ones which are meant to be kept up-to-date; blogposts aren’t really the right format for documents which are meant to be continuously edited, whereas the tag pages are. Also, what if the FAQ essay is replaced by a new one in the future? Then you’d have to update all links to the old FAQ.)
In fact, I suspect that if you turned the FAQ into any format which the community can continuously edit, and then wrote a post à la “Request: Help Us Update our FAQ”, then I expect that this problem might just “solve itself”.
On the Length
Shorter is better. Approximately all LW posts, including my comments here, are way too long.
Here are some parts I think could be cut or spun off:
Footnote 2 (on why human rationality) seems superfluous. I don’t think this footnote pulls its weight in this intro.
The section “How to ensure your first post or comment is well-received”. See my “Substantial feedback” section for why I don’t like it.