You’re making a very generous offer of your time and expertise here. However, to me your post still feels way, way more confusing than it should be.
Suggestions & feedback:
Title: “Get your math consultations here!” → “I’m offering free math consultations for programmers!” or similar.
Or something else entirely. I’m particularly confused how your title (math consultations) leads into the rest of the post (debuggers and programming).
First paragraph: As your first sentence, mention your actual, concrete offer (something like “You screenshare as you do your daily tinkering, I watch for algorithmic or theoretical squiggles that cost you compute or accuracy or maintainability.” from your original post, though ideally with much less jargon). Also your target audience: math people? Programmers? AI safety people? Others?
“click the free https://calendly.com/gurkenglas/consultation link” → What you mean is: “click this link for my free consultations”. What I read is a dark pattern à la: “this link is free, but the consultations are paid”. Suggested phrasing: something like “you can book a free consultation with me at this link”
Overall writing quality
Assuming all your users would be as happy as the commenters you mentioned, it seems to me like the writing quality of these posts of yours might be several levels below your skill as a programmer and teacher. In which case it’s no wonder that you don’t get more uptake.
Suggestion 1: feed the post into an LLM and ask it for writing feedback.
Suggestion 2: imagine you’re a LW user in your target audience, whoever that is, and you’re seeing the post “Get your math consultations here!” in the LW homepage feed, written by an unknown author. Do people in your target audience understand what your post is about, enough to click on the post if they would benefit from it? Then once they click and read the first paragraph, do they understand what it’s about and click on the link if they would benefit from it? Etc.
You’re making a very generous offer of your time and expertise here. However, to me your post still feels way, way more confusing than it should be.
Suggestions & feedback:
Title: “Get your math consultations here!” → “I’m offering free math consultations for programmers!” or similar.
Or something else entirely. I’m particularly confused how your title (math consultations) leads into the rest of the post (debuggers and programming).
First paragraph: As your first sentence, mention your actual, concrete offer (something like “You screenshare as you do your daily tinkering, I watch for algorithmic or theoretical squiggles that cost you compute or accuracy or maintainability.” from your original post, though ideally with much less jargon). Also your target audience: math people? Programmers? AI safety people? Others?
“click the free https://calendly.com/gurkenglas/consultation link” → What you mean is: “click this link for my free consultations”. What I read is a dark pattern à la: “this link is free, but the consultations are paid”. Suggested phrasing: something like “you can book a free consultation with me at this link”
Overall writing quality
Assuming all your users would be as happy as the commenters you mentioned, it seems to me like the writing quality of these posts of yours might be several levels below your skill as a programmer and teacher. In which case it’s no wonder that you don’t get more uptake.
Suggestion 1: feed the post into an LLM and ask it for writing feedback.
Suggestion 2: imagine you’re a LW user in your target audience, whoever that is, and you’re seeing the post “Get your math consultations here!” in the LW homepage feed, written by an unknown author. Do people in your target audience understand what your post is about, enough to click on the post if they would benefit from it? Then once they click and read the first paragraph, do they understand what it’s about and click on the link if they would benefit from it? Etc.
Thanks, edited. If we keep this going we’ll have more authors than users x)