I was disappointed by the new site, but still voted to migrate. The conversation is here, and content is king. Despite my bitching, your team deserves a great deal of credit just for breathing life back into the community.
That being said:
Performance was a big complaint, and kept me off lesserwrong until greaterwrong showed up, but you already know about that and for all I know it may have been fixed. My complaints are less with lesserwrong itself than with modern web design in general, and are mainly variants on “use of javascript as a first resort instead of a last resort,” “interfaces that want you to notice them,” and “overly complex underlying mechanics.” In short, lesserwrong may well be a fantastically engineered site, designed under a paradigm I am predisposed to despise. Discount my opinions accordingly.
(if I may nerdrage for a moment, the top navbar that folds down as soon as I scroll up, covering the text I scrolled up to see, is a common web misfeature that should die and its inventor should be forced to play a variant of the transparent newcomb’s problem where both boxes contain tigers.)
Note that the fact that greaterwrong can even exist (that is, that there’s an API with enough power and stability to make an alternate interface) is a huge win, and you and whoever else made the decision to allow third party clients deserve +gazillion karma for it. …but I still have to complain that said API is not documented.
Checking lesserwrong itself for the first time since GW became available, it looks as if it has improved. The comment box in particular is less odious, and the site as a whole no longer seems to grind my browser to a halt. These are good improvements. I’m sure there are other things not obvious at first glance.
If you do want to chat with a quasi-naysayer, I’m on the LW Slack as Error, on Freenode #lesswrong as ehs, and on xmpp as error@xmpp.feymarch.net. I’m best reached in the afternoons, eastern time.
the top navbar that folds down as soon as I scroll up, covering the text I scrolled up to see, is a common web misfeature
That definitely gets my vote for my biggest irritant on this site. The first thing I did after creating an account is to look in preferences for a way to prevent the bar from ever appearing. I suppose I am in the habit of being able to use the up-arrow key to scroll the window up a little bit, reliably, so that once I’ve hit the up arrow key and the page changes in any way (and my browser is the app that has focus) I can assume the scroll happened after the briefest glance at the page, and I can immediately turn my attention to something else.
When I need to interact with the elements that now live on the bar, I would be prepared to scroll to the top of the page or (if I don’t want to lose my place on the page) to visit LW2 in a new tab.
I’m also prepared to install a Chrome extension if that is the easiest way for someone to implement what I’m asking for.
Happy to answer questions sent to hruvulum@gmail.com.
I was disappointed by the new site, but still voted to migrate. The conversation is here, and content is king. Despite my bitching, your team deserves a great deal of credit just for breathing life back into the community.
That being said:
Performance was a big complaint, and kept me off lesserwrong until greaterwrong showed up, but you already know about that and for all I know it may have been fixed. My complaints are less with lesserwrong itself than with modern web design in general, and are mainly variants on “use of javascript as a first resort instead of a last resort,” “interfaces that want you to notice them,” and “overly complex underlying mechanics.” In short, lesserwrong may well be a fantastically engineered site, designed under a paradigm I am predisposed to despise. Discount my opinions accordingly.
(if I may nerdrage for a moment, the top navbar that folds down as soon as I scroll up, covering the text I scrolled up to see, is a common web misfeature that should die and its inventor should be forced to play a variant of the transparent newcomb’s problem where both boxes contain tigers.)
Note that the fact that greaterwrong can even exist (that is, that there’s an API with enough power and stability to make an alternate interface) is a huge win, and you and whoever else made the decision to allow third party clients deserve +gazillion karma for it. …but I still have to complain that said API is not documented.
Checking lesserwrong itself for the first time since GW became available, it looks as if it has improved. The comment box in particular is less odious, and the site as a whole no longer seems to grind my browser to a halt. These are good improvements. I’m sure there are other things not obvious at first glance.
If you do want to chat with a quasi-naysayer, I’m on the LW Slack as Error, on Freenode #lesswrong as ehs, and on xmpp as error@xmpp.feymarch.net. I’m best reached in the afternoons, eastern time.
That definitely gets my vote for my biggest irritant on this site. The first thing I did after creating an account is to look in preferences for a way to prevent the bar from ever appearing. I suppose I am in the habit of being able to use the up-arrow key to scroll the window up a little bit, reliably, so that once I’ve hit the up arrow key and the page changes in any way (and my browser is the app that has focus) I can assume the scroll happened after the briefest glance at the page, and I can immediately turn my attention to something else.
When I need to interact with the elements that now live on the bar, I would be prepared to scroll to the top of the page or (if I don’t want to lose my place on the page) to visit LW2 in a new tab.
I’m also prepared to install a Chrome extension if that is the easiest way for someone to implement what I’m asking for.
Happy to answer questions sent to hruvulum@gmail.com.