re-reading the comments makes me realize that “totally flummoxed” is a massive overstatement—I was surprised, but I kind of get it (and kind of don’t—there’s not enough separation to make me believe that they’re not mostly the same).
And we’ve also added some features the help clarify things a bit – personal blogposts now have a little “person” icon when you’re looking at lists of posts (such as the home page, or all posts). It also appears directly on the post itself (similar to how GreaterWrong does it).
In several places there are now tooltips that explain what sorts of things are good fits for personal blogpost and what is good for frontpage.
I’m not sure I’ve properly understood the complaint, but I think the recently posted Frontpage/Personal site guide post sheds light on what kind of content is welcome on LessWrong and where it goes.
Posts on practically any topic are welcomed on LessWrong [1]. I (and others on the team) feel it is important that members are able to “bring their entire selves” to LessWrong and are able to share all their thoughts, ideas, and experiences without fearing whether they are “on topic” for LessWrong. Rationality is not restricted to only specific domains of one’s life and neither should LessWrong be.
However, to maintain its overall focus while still allowing posts on any topic, LessWrong classifies posts as eitherPersonal blogpostsor asFrontpage posts.
If you go to the AllPosts page and apply no filter, you will see personal blogposts too on which there are few restrictions of topic.
I don’t think I would quite embrace a distinction of “really part of LW” vs “not really part of LW”, though I do expect the Frontpage vs Personal Blogpost distinction will map to a fair extent onto “is material representative of what people associate with LW” vs “material on lots of random topics.”
As with that recent post, we’re working to make it clear what material is welcome on LessWrong, where it can be seen, and how people can use the site to see what they want to see.
It came up in this thread: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WwTPSkNwC89g3Afnd/comment-section-from-05-19-2019#5wECFA9o8T6ohzrNE . I can’t easily find the other comments from people who say or strongly imply that they think of LessWrong being mostly promoted posts, and have different content and topic expectations for blog posts on the site.
re-reading the comments makes me realize that “totally flummoxed” is a massive overstatement—I was surprised, but I kind of get it (and kind of don’t—there’s not enough separation to make me believe that they’re not mostly the same).
One note is that since then we wrote this post:
Site Guide: Personal Blogposts vs Frontpage Posts
And we’ve also added some features the help clarify things a bit – personal blogposts now have a little “person” icon when you’re looking at lists of posts (such as the home page, or all posts). It also appears directly on the post itself (similar to how GreaterWrong does it).
In several places there are now tooltips that explain what sorts of things are good fits for personal blogpost and what is good for frontpage.
I would like to react to this in some positive way :)
I was away for a bit and had missed that post.
:)
I’m not sure I’ve properly understood the complaint, but I think the recently posted Frontpage/Personal site guide post sheds light on what kind of content is welcome on LessWrong and where it goes.
If you go to the AllPosts page and apply no filter, you will see personal blogposts too on which there are few restrictions of topic.
I don’t think I would quite embrace a distinction of “really part of LW” vs “not really part of LW”, though I do expect the Frontpage vs Personal Blogpost distinction will map to a fair extent onto “is material representative of what people associate with LW” vs “material on lots of random topics.”
As with that recent post, we’re working to make it clear what material is welcome on LessWrong, where it can be seen, and how people can use the site to see what they want to see.