It would be helpful to have a few threads that are sticky, or otherwise easy to find. For example, the current open, welcome, and stupid questions threads. Today when I created that spurious welcome thread, I noticed a post made by a new user that seemed appropriate for the welcome thread and I wanted to link them to it. The link to the welcome thread at http://lesswrong.com/about/ points to a 2015 edition. I tried a few different searches in the Google search bar, then checked a few of the tags that customarily go along with the welcome threads. Then I got anxious that I was double posting, and checked again. So I finally posted it, and within two hours, before I was even aware that I’d double posted, the thread got two new users posting on it, even though the original had sat idle for over a week.
This makes me think that I’m not the only one that had trouble finding it. The Google search that’s integrated into the site is great for searching based on content and popularity, especially for older content, but it’s slow to index, and sometimes the title of the link is misleading (it actually finds the original January 2017 Welcome thread, but the link shows up as January 2016). It looks like the way to have found it would have been ctrl-F on the discussion page. If the standard, regularly-reposted threads were sticky’d at the top, or had links on a sidebar or something, this wouldn’t be an issue. A search that allows to filter by date would probably also suffice, so long as it indexes quickly enough.
I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m making excuses; I made a mistake, and I feel appropriately embarrassed (and even as I type that, I get the mental image of Vaniver looking at me critically and saying “But do you?”). I realize that this may be mainly a case of me being bad at searching for things, and if I’m the only one who experiences this, then we can probably just not worry about it.
I agree totally about sticky threads. I’d never even seen a forum without them until I came here. Having to repost the Welcome thread and the open threads over and over seems like such a PITA.
It would be helpful to have a few threads that are sticky, or otherwise easy to find. For example, the current open, welcome, and stupid questions threads. Today when I created that spurious welcome thread, I noticed a post made by a new user that seemed appropriate for the welcome thread and I wanted to link them to it. The link to the welcome thread at http://lesswrong.com/about/ points to a 2015 edition. I tried a few different searches in the Google search bar, then checked a few of the tags that customarily go along with the welcome threads. Then I got anxious that I was double posting, and checked again. So I finally posted it, and within two hours, before I was even aware that I’d double posted, the thread got two new users posting on it, even though the original had sat idle for over a week.
This makes me think that I’m not the only one that had trouble finding it. The Google search that’s integrated into the site is great for searching based on content and popularity, especially for older content, but it’s slow to index, and sometimes the title of the link is misleading (it actually finds the original January 2017 Welcome thread, but the link shows up as January 2016). It looks like the way to have found it would have been ctrl-F on the discussion page. If the standard, regularly-reposted threads were sticky’d at the top, or had links on a sidebar or something, this wouldn’t be an issue. A search that allows to filter by date would probably also suffice, so long as it indexes quickly enough.
I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m making excuses; I made a mistake, and I feel appropriately embarrassed (and even as I type that, I get the mental image of Vaniver looking at me critically and saying “But do you?”). I realize that this may be mainly a case of me being bad at searching for things, and if I’m the only one who experiences this, then we can probably just not worry about it.
I agree totally about sticky threads. I’d never even seen a forum without them until I came here. Having to repost the Welcome thread and the open threads over and over seems like such a PITA.