I don’t understand how one is supposed to choose whether to post to Main or Discussion. Just on how important/well-written/engaging the article seems to you, the author?
Why not have everyone post to a single queue. Then either the editors, following karma whenever possible, either (1) just promote the best ones to Main, eliminating Discussion or (2) promote the best ones to Main, and the not-quite-best ones to Discussion.
The point of the current setup is that it doesn’t need editors—what would be editorial decisions are crowd-sourced to upvoting and downvoting.
Incidentally, “have everyone post to a single queue” and “editorial decisions are crowd-sourced” aren’t mutually exclusive. Kuro5hin combines the two: authors submit to a queue where other users vote submissions up or down. Submissions appear on the front page, get posted to a less prominent subsection, or get dumped, depending on the votes.
(This isn’t to say LW needs or should use the same system. I’m just noting a possibility.)
I don’t understand how one is supposed to choose whether to post to Main or Discussion. Just on how important/well-written/engaging the article seems to you, the author?
Why not have everyone post to a single queue. Then either the editors, following karma whenever possible, either (1) just promote the best ones to Main, eliminating Discussion or (2) promote the best ones to Main, and the not-quite-best ones to Discussion.
The point of the current setup is that it doesn’t need editors—what would be editorial decisions are crowd-sourced to upvoting and downvoting.
Some forums might need a different setup than used here, but I’m not sure LW is such a forum.
Incidentally, “have everyone post to a single queue” and “editorial decisions are crowd-sourced” aren’t mutually exclusive. Kuro5hin combines the two: authors submit to a queue where other users vote submissions up or down. Submissions appear on the front page, get posted to a less prominent subsection, or get dumped, depending on the votes.
(This isn’t to say LW needs or should use the same system. I’m just noting a possibility.)